Hooking Your Readers
By Susan Mandel Glazer

"I know that I have to have a beginning, middle and end when I write a story," remarked Megan. "But I always start it the same way."

"What do you mean?" asked her teacher, Mrs. Rubin.

"Well, I always say, 'Once upon a time,'" replied Megan.

"How did you notice that?" Mrs. Rubin questioned.

"Well, remember when you told us to reread our writing and circle words that we used more than three times in a story? Well, I found out I used 'Once upon a time' and 'One day' at the beginning of all my stories. It makes my writing sound boring," Megan said.

Writers of all ages sometimes get into a first line habit. Once we find a successful way to begin, we use it repeatedly. So, we need to find ways to guide students towards beginning their writing in different ways.

Good first lines are often called hooks because they do just that; they latch into your mind and insist you read on.

How to write a good hook
Rebecca Olness, the author of Using Literature to Enhance Writing Instruction, (International Reading Association, 2004, ISBN: 0-872-07560-5) has students select books whose first lines lure them to want to read more. She often takes different kinds of first lines and displays them on an overhead projector. The class then discusses what they want to find out after reading great first lines. Our teachers at the Center for Reading and Writing have found that good first lines provoke children to ask questions and comment further on the story.

Great first lines
Here are some examples of great first lines, according to our students:

First line: "When Mrs. Frederick C. Little's second son was born, everyone noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse," from Stuart Little (Harper Collins, 1945, ISBN: 0-064-40056-5) by E.B. White.

Student response: "When my brother was born, he was really little, but bigger than a mouse," said Stefan, age 9.

First line: "Outside, the milk truck rattled along Midwood Street, the horse clopping, the bottles vibrating in their cases," from All The Way Home (Dela-corte, 2001, ISBN: 0-385-32209-7) by Patricia Reilly Giff.

Student response: "Did this story take place in the early part of the 1900s?" asked Christine, an 11-year-old.

First line: "At night, I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin," from The Secret Life of Bees (Penguin, 2002, ISBN: 0-142-00174-0) by Sue Monk Kidd.

Student response: "Did she have insomnia? I would never sleep in a room where bees lived. Does she get stung?" wondered Megan, an 11-year-old.

Class discussion
Our teachers encourage the students to predict what will occur in the story based on the first line. They also guide youngsters to paraphrase good first lines when writing their own stories.

The first line of eight-year-old Carol's story was, "Once upon a time it was a very warm day but the sky was dark." Her teacher used a slotting strategy to guide her to make the opening sentence a grabber.

Discussion led the youngsters to use more interesting words than in their first attempts at a first line. In a group discussion about the word "once," the following list of story openers were suggested.

• In the past
• At one time
• One time
• Earlier
• Way back when
• Back then
• Late one night
• Before today

Several children commented about the fact that the word "once" can mean many things. Still others observed that in some cases one word was represented by many.

The teachers have noticed that children between the ages of five and nine often begin stories by asking a question. They seem to do this naturally and without coaching. For example, a question a child might start a piece of their writing with is "Do you know what?" or "Do you want to know what happened?"

Almost all of the children respond orally, and when they have finished their statements, our teachers always say, "Now, go and write that down!"

Susan Mandel Glazer is the Director of the Center for Reading and Writing at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ.