hook 'em hard

A writer's job #1 is to hook a reader. John Green is a master of the fearsome hook. Hence the good man's millions of adoring fans. I invite you to read (or reread) the first paragraph from his Paper Towns prologue, below, and number its many layers of awesome. 

The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightning, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.

What did you notice? Here are my thoughts:

1. The first sentence promises a miracle. Who doesn't want a miracle? Note that the sentence ends on the most powerful word. Always a bright idea. It also suggests the theme and genre: the miracle of romance.
2. The second sentence starts with "like" both to suggest a teen voice (which Green always nails) and to pave the way for a worlds-spanning list.
3. The list is comical, mysterious, full of big ideas: lightning, a Nobel Prize, a dictator, the Pacific Islands (more specific = more memorable), ear cancer (memorable and strange and gross) and spontaneous combustion (ditto). Bonus: a rain of frogs, a Mars landing, death by whale, a royal wedding, epic survival at sea.
4. All this nerdy, sometimes biblical hyperbole (pitch-perfect for YA minds) connects the amazing (#3) to the mundane (houses, subdivisions, Florida, a neighbor). And so the mundane becomes amazing.
5. The last words in the paragraph, "Margo Roth Spiegelman," are the punchline to the bemusing, miraculous setup. Just as the first sentence promises a miracle, the first paragraph promises a story about a miracle of a girl, our hero's life-changing love interest. If we want to know more about this girl, and now we simply must, then we must keep reading. 

Which is why John Green is John Green and I am writing about his writing.

So take a page out of the John Green playbook. Hook 'em hard and land yourself an agent, a publisher and hordes of rabid Nerd Fighters (except maybe let your fans name themselves).