Query Letters and "The Hook"

The Hook is a concise, one-sentence tagline for your book. It is meant to hook your reader’s interest, and reel them in.

One formula: When such and such event happens, your main character—descriptive adjective, age, professional occupation—must confront further conflict and triumph in his or her own special way.

Sample fiction hooks: (See if you can guess the title of this published manuscript!)
- An epic tale of fathers and sons, of friendship and betrayal, that takes us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the atrocities of the present

- A murder in the silent after-hour halls of the Louvre museum reveals a sinister plot to uncover a secret that has been protected by a clandestine society since the days of Christ.

- With only a yellowing photograph in hand, Jonathan Safran Foer—both author and meta fictional protagonist—sets out to find the woman who might or might not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis.

Here's one from a memoir:
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - The memoir of Dave Eggers, who at the age of 22, became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers, leaving Eggers the appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Christopher.

You might start your hook by:
1.) Giving an era and location
2.) Setting up your main character
3.) Outlining the conflict faced by your character