How to Start Your Story: The Ordinary World, the Hook, and the Art of Making Readers Care

You’ve got about three seconds—maybe a sentence or two—to convince a reader not to toss your book aside. Harsh? Absolutely. But that’s the reality in a world brimming with distractions and unlimited reading options.

A killer opening is your best chance at survival. But how do you craft one that sets up your protagonist’s regular life, without lulling everyone to sleep? Enter the delicate dance between the Ordinary World and The Hook.

No pressure, but your first page decides everything.

It doesn’t matter how brilliant your plot is, how deep your character arcs run, or how mind-blowing your twist ending will be—if your first few pages don’t hook the reader, none of that will ever matter.

This is the brutal truth of writing. Readers are ruthless. They’re juggling a hundred distractions. They don’t have patience for meandering openings that take too long to establish their footing. You have mere seconds to convince them they should stay.

And yet, you can’t just throw them into the middle of an explosion or a knife fight and expect them to care. If we don’t know who the protagonist is or why the action matters, we won’t feel the stakes.

This is the delicate balance of story openings: you have to ground the reader while also pulling them in. You need the Ordinary World—a glimpse into the protagonist’s status quo—so that when things inevitably go sideways, we feel the impact. But you also need a Hook, something that grabs attention immediately and refuses to let go.

Get these two things right, and your reader won’t just continue—they’ll be invested.

The Ordinary World: Why Normal Life Matters Before You Rip It Apart

Before your characters charge off to slay dragons or commit corporate espionage, we need to see who they are before their life flips upside down. This is the “Ordinary World”—the baseline from which everything will change. If we don’t see your protagonist’s status quo, we won’t appreciate how far they’ve come when the climax rolls around.

Why Bother With “Normal”?

• Contrast: Picture Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, living in drab, monochrome Kansas. The vibrant, colorful chaos of Oz hits even harder because we know how dull her normal world is. Or Luke Skywalker stuck on a moisture farm on Tatooine. His monotonous desert life amplifies the wonder and danger of his space adventure.
• Character Context: Who is your protagonist before fate taps them on the shoulder? Show their quirks, struggles, or comfort zone.
• Establishing Lack/Want: We need to sense what’s missing. Is your hero bored? Grieving? Trapped? That unmet desire or tension sets the stage for the big call to action.

Every story begins somewhere, but a great story begins somewhere specific. Before your protagonist’s world changes, we need to see what "normal" looks like for them.

Not a neutral normal, but one that carries weight. One that hints at something missing.

Think of The Hunger Games. Katniss isn’t just wandering around District 12—we see the grinding poverty, the injustice, the weight of survival on her shoulders. That’s what makes it meaningful when she steps forward to take Prim’s place.

Or Belle in Beauty and the Beast. Her quaint village life isn't merely quiet; it’s suffocating. She craves adventure and something "more," so when she finds herself trapped in a magical castle, the shift feels meaningful and inevitable rather than random.

How about Walter Mitty in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: his boring office life is painfully unfulfilling, punctuated by vivid daydreams of heroism. His ordinary world isn’t neutral—it's sharply defined by longing, setting the stage for a real-life adventure to feel profound.

These openings don’t waste time on elaborate histories or exhaustive explanations. They show us just enough to establish what’s important:

• Who the protagonist is before the change
• What they believe about themselves or the world
• What’s keeping them stuck

Contrast is what makes change feel meaningful. If we don’t know what the protagonist had, we won’t appreciate what they lose. If we don’t see what they’re afraid of, we won’t feel the weight of their choices.

But here’s the mistake many writers make: they linger too long.

If you’re curious about how a strong setup can make dramatic change feel more impactful, check out: The Inciting Incident: How to Create an Unforgettable Call to Adventure.

Pitfall: Too Much Ordinary

The easiest way to kill momentum is burying readers in backstory. No one needs three pages describing a 9-to-5 office job unless the copy machine’s about to catch fire (and even then, keep it brief). Show just enough of daily life so we “get” the protagonist—then give us a reason to stick around.

Tip: Launch with a mini problem or tension related to the hero’s current life—something that reveals personality. Maybe they’re late for work, or lying to their boss, or daydreaming about an escape. Keep it concise, then pivot to your actual story catalyst.

The Biggest Opening Mistake: Backstory Dumps and Setup Overload

Too many writers think the Ordinary World means explaining everything—the protagonist’s childhood, their job, the intricacies of the magic system, the history of the war that happened 200 years ago.

Readers don’t need all of that up front.

The biggest test? If your story doesn’t actually start until page five, you’re starting too late.

Readers only need enough to understand the shift when everything changes. Give them something solid, but brief. If they need more information later, they’ll get it as the story unfolds.

For example, instead of dumping backstory, you can show glimpses through action:

• If your protagonist hates their job, open with them enduring another soul-crushing shift.
• If they have a tragic past, let that surface naturally when it affects them, not in a prologue info-dump.
• If the world is oppressive or strange, let the way characters interact with it reveal that.

The best openings don’t feel like a history lesson—they feel like a moment in motion. Besides, your emotional backstory doesn't belong until the final act when the pressure is great enough to force the character to identify their shard of glass, face their demons and become great enough to triumph; and your worldbuilding infodumps belong after the point of no return when the character is resigned to their new reality and trying to understand how it works.

The Hook: Making Readers Sit Up and Listen

Once you’ve sketched a bit of “normal,” it’s time to plant a seed of intrigue that compels people to keep reading. That’s your Hook. It can be quiet and eerie, or loud and in-your-face, but it must demand attention.

Now that you’ve grounded the reader, the next question is: Why should they care?

A Hook isn’t necessarily a car chase or an explosion. It’s the thing that stops the reader from skimming, makes them sit up, and think, "Okay, I need to see where this goes."

A great hook does one (or more) of these things:

1. Asks a compelling question. “At midnight, I found a severed lock of my own hair on the porch. I live alone.” Readers immediately think: What? Who? Why? Curiosity is piqued. (Gone Girl starts with the protagonist wondering what happened to his missing wife.)
2. Introduces an unusual situation. “Ellie woke up on Tuesday to find her entire town floating three feet above the ground.” Strange enough to raise eyebrows, but not so random that it’s confusing. (The Metamorphosis opens with a man waking up as a giant insect.)
3. Creates immediate tension. “The plan was simple: rob the bank before sunrise, or my sister dies.” Straight into conflict. Stakes are personal, and we’re hooked.(The Road begins in the aftermath of an unnamed apocalypse.)
4. Presents an unforgettable voice. “I used to think ghosts were imaginary—until one followed me home from the library.” Show your protagonist’s personality. Sarcasm, dread, humor—whatever your genre, let the tone shine through. (The Catcher in the Rye starts with Holden Caulfield’s cynical, biting narration.)

A hook can be quiet, ominous, unsettling—as long as it makes the reader curious.

Too many writers confuse "hook" with immediate action—but action is meaningless without context. If the reader doesn’t care about the character, an opening gunfight is just noise.

Instead of throwing readers into chaos with no emotional grounding, a better approach is to introduce tension immediately—something off-kilter, something intriguing, something that suggests trouble ahead.

Pitfall: Action Overload

Don’t mistake “hook” for “explosions.” If your story is more introspective, you can still start with a subtle hook—maybe a line hinting at a secret or regret. Surprises only matter if there’s context or meaning. A random car chase means little if we don’t care about who’s behind the wheel.

Striking the Balance

The Ordinary World provides the baseline; The Hook injects urgency or intrigue. The best openings weave these elements seamlessly—just enough day-to-day detail to orient us, plus a hint (or wham!) of excitement to keep us turning pages.

Something very important is about to happen. Something that matters and that they've been waiting for. Everything is on the line. So all the little things that go wrong escalate into potentially life-changing disaster. What happens next?

Practical Tips

1. Open In Medias Res, But Ground Us
   Drop the reader into a small conflict or moment of tension—nothing too huge yet, but enough to show daily life under mild stress. We see who the character is when pressured. Then, hint at bigger stakes looming.
2. Embed the World’s ‘Normal’ in the Hook
   If you’re writing fantasy, maybe the protagonist does a mundane chore—but they’re cleaning their stable of miniature dragons. The “ordinary” for them is already intriguing to us.
3. End the Scene with a Question or Catalyst
   If you can close your first chapter on a mini cliffhanger—like a mysterious letter arriving, or a phone call that changes everything—you’ll hook readers into Chapter Two effortlessly.

For additional strategies on crafting compelling openings, you might also enjoy: Storytelling Is a Science (And Here’s How to Hack It).

Examples That Nail It

1. 1984 (George Orwell)
   “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
   We see a seemingly mundane day… except for that “thirteen.” Ordinary life, quietly warped—instant intrigue.
2. The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman)
   “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.”
   Instant darkness, immediate threat—ordinary life shattered. We’re compelled to learn more because peace has already been disrupted, promising dramatic change.
3. Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)
   “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.”
   Soft, mysterious, personal. We glimpse the narrator’s nostalgia or haunting, a subtle hook that pulls us into her world.
4. The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)
   “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”
   Zero to weird in one line—still, it’s his normal morning, now shockingly different. The tension is immediate.

A book’s first pages don’t just introduce a story—they decide whether a reader keeps going or moves on to something else. No pressure, right?

I’ve abandoned books after a single paragraph. Not because they were bad—sometimes the writing was gorgeous, the premise solid. But something wasn’t pulling me in.

Writers obsess over their openings because they know the brutal truth: if you don’t hook your reader early, nothing else matters. A great twist, a brilliant character arc, a killer ending—none of it will land if the reader never gets past chapter one.

Discover Your Page-Turning Promise

A stellar opening is half handshake, half promise. You’re telling the reader, “Here’s a glimpse of the protagonist’s world—and trust me, things are about to get interesting.” The Ordinary World grounds us just enough so we care when that world flips. The Hook is the spark, the taste of conflict or mystery that compels us to keep flipping pages.

Ask yourself: If you were a random reader scanning this in a bookstore, would you be intrigued or bored? If it doesn’t grab you, it likely won’t grab anyone else. That’s the litmus test. And remember—an opener can always be polished.

Write first, worry about perfection later. Because no matter how brilliant the rest of your novel is, it’s the first chapter that decides if readers get to see it at all. So make it count.

Ready to craft a killer opening that grabs readers from the first sentence? Try Sudowrite now!