Movie trailers are hooks to promote movies. A trailer contains a series of snippets from a film which, its promoters hope, will lead you to view the film. Trailers contain the most exciting, dramatic, scary, or humorous parts of a film, the parts most likely to lure you to see the whole film.
Usually, information in trailers is not presented in the same order as it is presented in the film. Dramatic camera angles add edginess and energy. The non-linear structure of trailers keeps the audience from guessing at the story line and ending. You have to watch the film to find out. Music provides atmosphere. Voice-overs offer brief story lines.
Trailers shown on TV are usually 20 to 30 seconds long. Trailers shown in movie theaters before a featured film is shown are longer, up to two-and-a-half minutes long.
Beginning in the 1970s, movie trailers were produced to be shown on prime-time TV at first, and then almost nonstop in the days before a movie’s release. “Red band” trailers warn audiences of content not appropriate for some audiences, such as children. Nowadays, many movie trailers are being custom made for various Internet sites and their audiences.
What can writers learn from trailers to improve their hooks? 
Some trailers begin by panning over scenery to set a mood or to identify a location. Gentle farmland, fierce ocean waves breaking below cliffs, and a bird’s-eye view of New York’s skyscrapers identify vastly different locations and moods. Farmland might suggest a rural, 19th century satire, or conversely, the site of the Battle of Hastings. Crashing ocean waves might suggest a dangerous war invasion or a passionate romance. And skyscrapers’ roofs might suggest a sophisticated comedy or a terrorist plan unfolding. Writers can think of their eyes as cameras. What scenery would cameras focus on to support the location and themes of a story, or to offer an ironical twist?
Trailers sometimes use repetitive sounds to entice an audience. Music which sounds like car horns. The chirping of birds. The clicking of typewriter keys. The cries of an unattended baby. These instantly provide mood. Writers can simulate sounds with words to hook readers.
A narrator’s voice can lure readers. Though an audience can’t hear the voice, an audience can imagine how it sounds with good enough text description. Writers can duplicate a voice’s tempo, its breathlessness, its harshness of tone, its childlike vocabulary or reasoning.
The next time a trailer comes across your screen, analyze how it hooks. What techniques does the filmmaker use that you can use to hook readers?
English Writing Teacher 