The immense job that the hook has to undertake daunts every writer. How do we get the reader to care–to keep reading? The intensity of those questions have prompted writers to scale the answers to match that intensity. That the hook has to be bombastic to grab a reader’s attention. If a hook doesn’t have an explosion or a shocking death, on page one, then it’ll be a pass by the reader. This conflation of intensity misses the point, however.Answering the question of how to keep readers reading is actually to beget a question from them (to make them ask what will happen next/why is something happening?). Yes, we are answering a question with a question. It is not only allowable here, it is imperative. The questions should cascade over one another. The bottom of page one should be begetting a question already. It is the hook within the hook. Prompting the reader to turn the very first page with a good impression. Leading to a question (and possibly answer) cascade through the rest of the hook.Of course, leading with a death works if the subject matter and genre call for it. Jurassic Park (1993) has a very memorable opening scene of a creature unseen snaring a guard and killing him. But not every movie is a creature feature. What works as a hook will be different for every movie. On page one, Sing Sing (2023) opens on an actor performing onstage. It’s a normal Shakespearean production for 6/8 of a page. But then the final lines cut to the actors swapping their costumes for prison jumpsuits. Is this some sort of marathon production of multiple plays? Then two corrections officers watch over the actors. Wait, are they in prison? With just 2/8 of the page, the entire sequence is recontextualized for the reader, and they’re left asking a question. The only thing to do is to keep reading.
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Common practice and the stock advice has congealed around 10 pages being the space given to the writer by prospective readers to hook them. If you can’t get them in ten pages, too bad. Agency readers have countless scripts come across their desks (or more likely screens) and don’t have the time or bandwidth for them all. Even in screenwriting competitions and fellowships that read every script, the beginning of the script colors the impressions of the readers who have to get through all of the submissions. The judgement of a script’s quality comes in fast and hot.
Despite the fact that DNFing a script does occur, the 10 pages cookie-cutter advice is reductive. An approximation. A generic script should hook a reader by “this” place or else. But every script is different. Some scripts can hook in the first 3 pages, some scripts (e.g. character studies) earn a bit of patience. So treat the 10 page rule as an approximation, a guideline as the pirate would say in Curse of the Black Pearl. Don’t treat the rule as gospel.
Page 1: the smaller hook inside the hook
No matter what, a reader will read the first page (otherwise they’re not the reader). It is the initial impression, and the initial impression can color the rest of the read. A legible tone and a confident voice will be noticed regardless of what the subject matter is on the page. It could be an atmospheric night with a stranger stepping out of the darkness, it could be the Jurassic Park animal’s “yellow, distinctly inhuman” eye staring out at us (which turns out to be a velociraptor).
In Past Lives (2023), three people sit at a bar (labeled as Nora Moon, Korean-Canadian American; Hae Sung Jung, Korean; and Arthur Zaturansky, White Jewish-American. Nora and Hae Sung are talking while Arthur plays on his phone. We’re in the POV of a couple that is people watching our 3 lead characters from across the bar. The girl, off-screen, asks, “Who do you think they are to each other?” The POV couple go back and forth with suggestions before finally settling on, “I have no idea.” This hook very directly plants the question within the text for the reader to ask. Your mileage may vary for doing that. But for Past Lives, it’s the entire film encapsulated into the opening scene (which chronologically takes place near the end of the film). Brief Encounter (1945) uses this same framing device. Starting the film during a confusing intimate moment between 2-3 people, and then using the rest of the film to contextualize what we already saw. Both films ask very deliberately, “who are these people to each other?”
The first page of Children of Men (2006) shows our protagonist, Theo, ordering a coffee while everyone else hopelessly looks at the television announcement, that the youngest person in the world, at 18 years old, has died in a barfight. Theo is unfazed but the rest of the populace is devastated. What on earth is going on here? From the first line of dialogue, we’re immediately aware of the dystopian setting, and the protagonist’s demeanor is on display being unfazed by the news. We know a defining characteristic of the protagonist and the foundation of the setting in one page.
A hook within a hook, the first page is your best shot at a first impression. Make it count because it may be the only impression a script gets.
The four jobs of the first ten pages
After begetting the reader to ask a question in our hook within a hook on the first page, the rest of the approximate nine pages satisfies whatever the minihook didn’t cover. The four jobs being the protagonist introduction, the establishment of the setting and tone, genre signaling, and the central dramatic question along with the stakes it entails. These should not be seen as a sequential checklist. They can happen simultaneously, or in an order a specific story sees fit. And before going further, it's important to keep in mind that just like the 10 pages not being treated as gospel, these four jobs shouldn’t be treated as gospel either.
That being said, if you’re breaking them, know why you’re deliberately doing so. In Star Wars: A New Hope (1977), we don’t see Luke Skywalker until the 17 minute mark. In lieu of the protagonist in the first ten pages, we have the villain introduction in the first scene, followed by setting up the world, (worlds in this case), the space opera genre aesthetic, the stakes, and a slew of colorful side characters that are alien to the viewer in multiple senses of the word. If you’re going to break one of the staples of a hook, have a good reason for it.
World building and genre signalling often go hand-in-hand. They help readers set expectations for the stories that follow. Either the story will follow trends or break them, and the reader knows that, hence the expectations. Some producers will be looking for stories that adhere to a very specific template because they have a demographic in mind that eats that template up. Other producers will be looking for something fresh and unique. The world building and genre signals help with each approach. La La Land (2016), opens on a traffic jam on the 101. The drivers break out into a musical number–everyone gets out of their cars to sing and dance about their dream. The world is set up in this first number–everyone in that traffic jam is chasing their dream, revealing one of the themes of the love story about to unfold. What does a dream cost? The tone is shown to be both whimsical with a core that knows deep down how hard chasing the dream can be. Everyone in that traffic jam wants to sing and dance, but they’re all stuck in that traffic jam, in a standstill, waiting.
The central question is what makes the reader care about what’s going to happen to the characters. Spectacle without characters to care about can be alluring. Fireworks, can be very pretty and can compel you to take a video of them with your phone, but are you ever going to actually watch that video again? The Substance (2024) pummels its protagonist in the first 12 pages. A timelapse shows Elisabeth Sparkle’s walk of fame star literally fading over the decades. At present day, Elisabeth is still performing her show, desperately holding on to relevancy. That is until the producer pulls the plug demanding someone younger. Her agency drops her as a result, and she gets into a car accident on the way home. An absolute pummeling. At the ER, someone hands her information on The Substance with a number to call. The question the hook asks multiple times over is, “What will Elisabeth do to remain relevant in an industry that scorns women aging?”
Rian Johnson’sKnives Out (2019), showcases all four staples as well as the hook within the hook. The last line of page one reads, “Throat Slit. Drenched in Blood. Very Much Dead.” The pages that follow lean into genre signals and tone. A gothic mansion, a body (our central question), an array of suspects delivering quippy dialogue while drip-feeding the introduction of the main character, Benoit Blanc, over 8 pages. “...A slight man in a linen suit” is first mentioned on page 5, while troopers cross-examine the suspects. He’s mentioned again, guiding the questioning from the shadows on pages 7,9, and 12, before finally being revealed on page 13 after one of the family members has had enough of the mystery. From the genre signalling, we know a mystery has a detective, and Knives Out knows we know that, so it relishes the introduction.
Common mistakes include mistaking noise for the hook. If there’s no character to care about, does the explosion matter? Inundating the reader with overwriting excessive backstory or world description. Some established writers can get away with writing a tome, but a newcomer doesn’t have any slack on the rope to give. Slow burns can be tricky. If it’s just slow, with no questions being raised for the reader to simmer on, it’ll feel like a slog right off the rip.
Keeping these film examples and mistake examples in mind, turn the central question back toward your own script. After reading the first ten pages of the script, what question should the reader be asking? Should they want to know the answer to? If these can’t be easily answered, that’s the first fix to make.
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