Mastering the Art of Writing Book Blurb Hooks: This Might Be The Most Important Sentence You Ever Write

Spend about 15 seconds Googling “how to write a book blurb,” and you’ll soon discover that step one is almost always the same:

• “Write an enticing hook”
• “Write a hook readers can’t walk past”
• “Start with a hook that draws readers in”

Great idea, right? But… how? Over the past four years, I’ve written somewhere in the vicinity of 400 book blurbs and edited hundreds more. Without fail, the one part of the process that I get questions about on a near-weekly basis is, “How on earth do I write a hook?!”

Interestingly, I think the real reason hook-writing is such a struggle for us all (it’s still the hardest and most rewarding part of my job) is that it’s also the most creatively daring. You’re going out on a limb, screaming, “LOOK OVER HERE, I’M INTERESTING”…but, y’know…in a cool way. That’s scary. Vulnerable. And a huge creative challenge. You have to be new every time. Interesting every time. Enticing every time.

Because hooks have relatively few “rules,” there’s no magic formula I can hand you that will make hook-writing suddenly easy. In fact, you should probably run a mile from anyone who says otherwise.

But there are solid techniques and principles that allow you to take creative leaps in the right direction—and with practice, arrive at that light-bulb moment when you know you’ve “got it.”

And unlike your other disappointing internet searches, this article is about to show you how.

So… What Is a Hook?

Glad you asked! The hook is often confused with the tagline—but both have separate functions, and only one of them is essential to your book’s blurb.

The tagline appears on the front cover of your book, somewhere near the title (your cover designer will be able to advise on this). It’s usually much shorter than the hook, and its main function is to signal genre and/or tropes.

Taglines are entirely optional—take a look around at your comp titles to get a feel for whether it’s advisable for you.

The hook, on the other hand, can be thought of as the “headline” of your blurb, and every blurb needs one! It appears on the back cover of your book, at the top of your blurb—usually formatted in a slightly bigger and more eye-catching font. For online book descriptions, I recommend putting the hook in bold (and sometimes italics too).

Hooks are short and snappy, focused on “vibe” and curiosity, as their sole purpose is to make readers curious and interested enough to read on.

To clarify what this might look like, here’s an example of each:

Tagline for a murder mystery:
Murder is only a minute away…

Hook for that same murder mystery:
I didn’t know how easy it was to kill a man until I’d done it.

Notice that the tagline doesn’t give any specific plot info, includes the keyword “murder,” and gives a sense of pace.

The hook, on the other hand, steps straight into the main character’s shoes—and gives us a detail (they killed a man) that we have to find out more about!

Why Does the Hook Matter So Much?

All readers read blurbs the same way: one sentence at a time. This means that each sentence in your blurb has only one job—to get readers to read the next sentence, and the next sentence, and so it goes all the way to (hopefully) purchase.

The flip side of this is that if the hook doesn’t grab ‘em…you’ve likely lost that sale. No matter how incredible the rest of your blurb is, they’re never going to read it if they don’t get past the hook.

In other words, it is the responsibility of the hook to get readers to read the blurb at all.

Freaking out? You’re not alone.

So let’s learn how to write hooks.

The Nuts and Bolts of Hook Writing

I said at the beginning of this article that I couldn’t just hand you a magic formula for writing hooks. That’s still true, because hooks should be as individual as the books they belong to. But in this section, we’re going to look at what a hook is and isn’t—so you can start to recognize what makes a good one, and begin to visualize (and write) your own.

First of all, let’s answer a super basic question: How long should a hook be?

Of course, it varies. But in my experience, a strong hook is in the vicinity of (and often under) fifteen words. Think one sentence, or 2-3 very short ones.

In addition to a tight word count, strong, eye-catching hooks often include at least two of the following three characteristics:

• Some form of juxtaposition, contrast, or contradiction.
• Language that doesn’t just interest but involves the reader immediately.
• An element of uncertainty, curiosity, or a literal question mark.

Take the hook for Dervla McTiernan’s The Murder Rule:

First rule: make them like you. Second rule: make them need you. Third rule: make them pay.

The contrast of “like” and “need” with “make them pay” is arresting because of its sudden dark turn. The conversational language instantly involves the reader in a dialogue with the main character, and the uncertainty of what making them “pay” means is enough to have us reading onwards.

This example weighs in at 17 words, so a little on the longer side—but the snappy sentences make it effortless to scan. Here’s a much shorter hook, this time from Jenny Jackson’s Pineapple Street:

Old money. New family.

The perfect juxtaposition of “old” and “new” are just one layer of this clever hook. Beneath the surface, it’s also playing with reader expectations. “Old money” is a term that comes with pre-conceived notions, but the addition of “new family” creates curiosity; how did they get their hands on this old money? Do they deserve it? Are they different from our associations of old money?

On that note, it’s worth saying here that playing with common assumptions and reader expectations is a great way to get them asking questions and falling hook, line, and sinker for your story. Ideally, you want to get your reader asking questions—and then coming to you for the answers.

This Is Not a Hook…

By now, hopefully, you can see that hooks are like snowflakes—all made of the same stuff, but crafted individually, with very few hard-and-fast rules and lots of creativity.

Before you get carried away, here are some things to avoid in your hooks:

• Important plot info — As crucial as the hook is, the rest of your blurb should make perfect sense without it, so don’t put any info in here that they’re not getting later on. As doubling-up is a bad idea in blurbs in general, avoid this by focusing on concepts, not specifics.
• Tricky jargon or proper nouns — Hooks should be instantly readable and able to be understood by anyone who can read. Think 5th-grade level readers to be safe. I’m dead serious. This means you’re better off without big words, fancy terms, or magical names and places.
• Character names — Instead of name-dropping them in the hook, give your characters a full and proper introduction in the body of the blurb. This makes for a much stronger connection with your readers, because what’s in a name?

More on that last point: there are notable (and well-done) exceptions to the “no character names in the hook” advice. But I don’t recommend it for beginners, and I’m still of the opinion that it rarely benefits you or your readers. Personally, I’ve broken this “rule” only once or twice in hundreds of blurbs, and only ever for very specific reasons.

But Where Do I Start?!

The examples above may be all well and good, but what about the actual contents of your hook?

What is it supposed to say?

This is by far the trickiest part of hook-writing, and once again, I don’t have a prescription for you. But I can tell you what I do in my own blurb-writing practice.

As I read my client’s synopsis, there is almost always either a theme or a word that pops out at me. It may be a recurring theme of control and a character who’s learning to relinquish it. It may be the phrase “self-love” as a memoirist untangles their life story on the page. Or it could be that certain tropes catch my eye—in some genres, tropes are everything, and making them clear in the first line can be an excellent marketing strategy.

From these standout words and themes, I brainstorm well-known phrases and quotes connected to them and start to play with my own versions. Sometimes, these can be really silly, but in this phase of creation, anything goes! You never know what will trigger the final idea.

I also create lists of “theme words” and synonyms that are related to my initial impressions. For example, a firefighter romance might have me writing down things like “sparks,” “ignites,” “too hot to handle” and so on.

Most of all, I keep coming back to whatever the central idea is—and spoiler alert, this is not necessarily your carefully constructed literary theme. It’s sometimes just an undercurrent that ties everything together. And it’s different for every book.

Honestly, I stare into space a lot. And go on walks.

Eventually, the pieces fall into place.

The Hook Is Your Secret Advantage

If you’ve got this far, you’ve hopefully realized that hook-writing is more of an art than a science. That’s the fun part! It’s also the hard part.

But here’s the really, really, really good news.

Take a quick scroll on Amazon (or wherever you buy your books online) and you’ll notice a proliferation of lazy blurb headlines that don’t even deserve to be called hooks.

You know the type:

“TIKTOK MADE ME BUY IT! THE VIRAL SENSATION EVERYONE’S TALKING ABOUT!”

“From the New York Times bestselling author of [book title] a story of love, tragedy, and holding on to hope”

Or worse, a celebrity endorsement quote along the lines of “I couldn’t put it down!” in lieu of anything that actually tells us about the content of the book. But the lazy marketing of the trad publishing world (that likes to hurl money anywhere but at blurb writers, it seems) is your advantage as an indie author. Master the art of writing hooks that captivate, entice, and tease…and you’ll be in with more than a fighting chance, no matter the competition. Then it’s up to your book to do the rest.

______________

About the Author: Jessie Cunniffe is a professional blurb writer and book blurb coach from Sydney, Australia. Forever obsessed with the art of brevity, Jessie has dedicated herself to taking the pain out of blurb-writing with her custom blurb services and two signature courses: Book Blurb Magic and The Spicy Blurb Playbook. On the occasion that Jessie manages to snatch some reading time, she’s probably buried in the words of Graham Greene, P. G. Wodehouse or Agatha Christie. Grab her free blurb cheatsheet at anatomyofabookblurb.com