User:Tony1/The art of the hook

Lead in progress

Exercise A

Problem hook:

• ... that Stewart Mell scored Scarborough's first goal in the Football League?

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Hint 1

In isolation, this is of no particular interest to a reader. It's also unnecessarily vague about whether it was last year or a century ago. The hook is 73 characters long, whereas up to 200 characters are allowed.

Now locate the current hook in the article, and either search the text for a completely new hook idea that does work in isolation, or extract more information from the article that would improve the current hook.

Don't click on the next hint until you've searched and thought about it.

Hint 2

In the absence of much else in the article that's interesting or surprising in isolation, consider using the obvious: the dramatic fact in the rest of the sentence from which the current hook is drawn:

:"Mell scored Scarborough's first goal in the Football League, on the opening day of the 1987–88 season, a 2–2 draw at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers marred by £20,000-worth of damage to the ground, fighting on the terraces, 54 arrests, and a visiting supporter falling through the roof of a stand."

But how to reduce it to size? Can you express within 200 characters the core of the drama without all of the details, as tempting as they might be?

Possible solution

• ... that Stewart Mell scored Scarborough's first goal in the UK's 1987–88 Football League in a game marred by 54 arrests for riotous behaviour by the crowd?

  152 characters

  That's going to be interesting to anyone in isolation, and they might click through to the article.