Tips on How to Write Good Hooks for Persuasive Essays

Writing a good hook would grab the reader’s attention from the beginning of the essay. The persuasive essay hooks engrosses the reader in the first paragraph itself. This can be achieved in a variety of ways for instance using some famous quotations, telling an anecdote, giving a definition of some topic, stating an interesting fact or statistic and many others. The more attractive your hook, the more likely a reader would continue to go through your work as well as be open to the writer’s perspective.

Almost every successful “hook” included in the work is put into the following categories:

• Anecdote
• Analogy
• Quote from famous literature/other source
• Rhetorical question
• Interesting statistics
• Humorous or philosophical musing
• Attention-Grabbing statement

While writing a persuasive essay, it is always better to be concise as well as take an objective or a third person viewpoint. A good hook for persuasive essay would either be a statistic that is cited properly, any relevant quote, some musing as a consequence of the essay’s topic, any shocking statement that the writer can back up later in the writing or make the conclusion interesting enough leaving some impact on the reader’s mind.

For a persuasive essay hook, anecdotes, analogies and rhetorical questions are not the appropriate hooks as these might end up breaking the overall structure of the third-person of the essay as well as make the introduction of the essay too long. While writing a persuasive essay, the writer should consider the following points:

• Before you begin to write, determine the people you are trying to persuade and design the persuasive essay hooks accordingly. The audience could be your peers, someone in the society, any specific group or individual in the community etc. it is the writer’s job to choose and decide who he wants to persuade and select the hook as well.
• The persuasive essay hook should convince the readers with the writer’s perspective. Divide the arguments under two headings: factual and emotional.
• The writer should find out whether his reader’s would be more convinced by emotional or factual appeals. The persuasive essay hooks should be a combination of the both appeals; however, the writer must select any one type of hook in order to engage the readers.

Factual Appeal

You can also choose a fact, definition, statistic or non-fictional hooks for persuasive essay. Make sure that you do a good research on the topic you are writing as well as the information you use is accurate.

A good hook for a persuasive essay would have a great and deep impact on the reader’s mind. In the first few sentences use some facts, statistics, definition or an anecdote so that the writing seems interesting to the reader and he is compelled to continue reading your article. In the rest of the article add supporting details as well as outline the arguments for the remaining part of the essay.

Emotional Appeal

If you choose an emotional appeal for your essay, select a question, fictional scenario or quotation to write the hook for your persuasive essay. The writer must be sure of the emotions he wants his readers to feel while they read the opening paragraph. Do you want your reader to be happy or angry over a situation, or feel sympathy and compassion for someone and always make sure that thesis is nicely tied at the end of your introduction.