Right...that's the surface. But what is the information that is being communicated? More specifically, what is the story hook that is being communicated?

Yeah, you've missed the point. Pretty much completely, in fact.

For one thing, this is a guide to the opening sentence, not the opening paragraph. More information to come in the opening paragraph can be assumed. The starters are simplistic and schoolish because this post is a lesson. They are to illustrate the mechanism.

To take your own paragraph, it honestly isn't very good. You've lost yourself in details, and twisted it into a knot in the process. So, starting with the concept, this is a ghost story. The environmental mood should be threatening and spooky. The sheets of rain and reduced visibility are certainly intense, but they aren't threatening unless your character has to go out and drive in it. Another problem is that rain has a symbolism of cleansing, rejuvenation, and rebirth - it's not spooky, and it certainly doesn't support the beginning of a ghost story (howling wind, thunder, and lightning, absolutely right - heavy rain, not so much). Then we come to the problems of sentences #2 and #4 - the first states that it's the sort of storm that hasn't been seen in ages, making it different. But then, having already established that the storm is different, in sentence #4 you add on a second "But this night was different," creating the knot. And only then do you get to the most important piece of information: there are ghosts.

It's true that a reader will often give you a full paragraph to hook them. But this doesn't make putting the actual story hook at the end of a paragraph a good idea. You get much better results if you use the opening sentence to hook the reader, and then the rest of the paragraph to draw them further in by adding details and information.

(As far as my own story goes, the dark tower isn't described in any detail in the opening sentence because it is almost completely irrelevant to the character and the story - it appears in the prologue and will never be seen again. The trope is invoked to inform the reader of a single thing: that The Destroyer is a dark lord in a fantasy story. What is important is the contradiction - this traditional, even cliched, dark lord is not acting like one. The rest of the prologue draws these contradictions out, adding details (such as descriptions of the tower, and the fact that he spends his days alone sitting on his throne) a bit at a time to build the picture. There are other reasons that it is left so vague and undeveloped, but you'll just have to read the story if you want to know more.)

Don't worry about the readers will think - worry about the impact it will have on them. If you were reading this sentence as a reader, would it hook you?

And if so, why or why not?

(And yes, if you haven't guessed, I teach writing in the fall term at my local university.)

The reader cannot read your intentions - only your words. Your words in this thread missed the point of what I was trying to teach, and provided an example that was convoluted, used inappropriate imagery (and thus undermined any emotional impact you were trying to create), and, worst of all, did not accomplish the illustration you were attempting to provide.

I've now been in front of a university classroom teaching writing for 5 years. Before that, I mentored my share of writers. When you are attempting to illustrate a mechanism, you have to use simple constructions to do so, in which the mechanism is stripped bare. There's only one time where I try to get clever, and that's when illustrating the dangers of trying to be too clever (quite literally, I tell my students that "Exploring the potential of three-dimensional space-time while efficiently exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide" sounds intelligent right up until you realize what it says is "Occupying space and breathing").

Look, if there's a writing technique that you've refined and want to expound upon, then this forum is the place to do so. But if you do, make sure your examples are straightforward and illustrate what you are trying to say with clarity, and don't EVER drop into somebody else's lesson and try to torpedo it. (Seriously, how the hell would you feel if somebody went and did that to you?)

That's because it's not intolerable conduct. Any teacher worth their salt is there to be a resource. Asking questions is just picking their brain.

Well, one is a question and one is a statement. A question is an inquiry about a thing - a statement is a declaration of a thing. There's a big difference. But if you want to know why I came down on him, it wasn't his initial challenge that set me off (although I did find it quite off-putting). You may note that in my first reply, I just explained why he was wrong. It was when he doubled down on it and started making flimsy and transparent excuses that I came down on him (and, I will admit, on a personal level, I can't stand that sort of garbage - if you get caught out in making a mistake, just own it, take responsibility for it, and move on for crying out loud!). That's when the kid gloves started coming off.

Let me ask you this: if instead of replying to your concern with a detailed explanation of where I was coming from and what my approach was, I had started making excuses and suggesting that your concerns were invalid due to missing the point, how different would your second reply have been, and what tone would you have taken with me?

You should have listened to that instinct. Now the kid gloves are coming all the way off.

No, it isn't. It's called "credentialism," ie. a statement that authority on a subject exists because of my credentials in that field. An appeal to authority is to an external source. An example would be a statement that a thing is true because Stephen King in his book On Writing states X, Y, and Z. If you're going to accuse me of something, at least use the right terminology.

If there's one thing I can't stand it's this type of crap. Yes, you did, and by saying "that isn't so simplistic," you just implied that here again. You came into a guide about how to properly put a story hook into opening sentences, and said that it was better to put the story hook somewhere else. Take responsibility for yourself.

Now, if you think I've got a problem with you, you are absolutely right. I do - but it's not because you waltzed into my guide on opening sentences and started offering alternatives. It's because I find you to be a sloppy writer who doesn't know what he's doing, and therefore has no business telling anybody else how to write. Shall we do a deep dive into the sins of your example opening paragraph?

1. Redundant description. "It was a dark and stormy night" is an old, established, and highly evocative sentence. It immediately creates a very specific and detailed image in the reader's mind of wind, lightning, and thunder. Once this image is created, no further environmental description is necessary. The problem is that it is so well established a sentence that it is a cliche, which causes unintended consequences in any paragraph it is used in. But, that's a discussion for another day.

2. Telling rather than showing. "One that hasn't been seen in ages by the local populace" is a sentence that tells the reader that the storm is geographically exceptional, but the problem is that it just flat-out tells the reader that the storm is geographically exceptional. A better sentence would be "The locals would later call it the 'storm of the century'." Now the reader is drawing the conclusion that the storm is geographically exceptional for him/herself.

3. Changing person in the middle of the paragraph. This paragraph is written in the third person. "It was the type of storm that came down in sheets, reducing visibility to no more than a few meters in front of you" now shifts it to a first person personal narration. It should have read "It was the type of storm that came down in sheets, reducing visibility to no more than a few meters ahead."

4. Incorrect imagery. This is the opening paragraph to a ghost story, as indicated by the final sentence. The imagery you have selected is that of rain, which is the traditional imagery of change, rebirth, or cleansing. The emotional impact it creates is of relief, when instead it should be of foreboding - which would have been the case if you'd left this sentence out in the first place.

5. "But this night was different." There is so much wrong with this sentence that it deserves its own list. It's redundant - you've already established the exceptionalism of the storm, and thus of the night it is taking place during. It raises unnecessary confusion in the reader's mind - so the storm is geographically exceptional, but it's even more so? Or is it talking about something different and unrelated, and if so, why is it being mentioned here with the storm? The only thing this sentence accomplishes is making the paragraph look bad - it should not be able to survive the most cursory of edits.

6. Poor grammar. Normally, in a post like this, I'd give this a pass, but the point I'm making here is in regards to sloppiness, so I won't. "This night, ghost were out" is wrong - it should be "This night, the ghosts were out."

This is what your sample paragraph could have looked like:

"It was a dark and stormy night, one that the locals would later call the 'storm of the century'. And this night, the ghosts were out."

Or, if you really felt like adding that extra environmental information, it could have looked like:

"It was a dark and stormy night. Deafening thunder crashed without end as lightning cast the streets into sharp, jagged relief. The locals would later call it the 'storm of the century'. And this night, as the wind howled, the ghosts were out."

If you can't construct a decent opening paragraph you have no business telling others how to do it.

Now, you're right - I've been teaching long enough that this is my default mode when I write a guide or the like. But it also means that as a teacher, I have a responsibility to not lead people astray. I take that responsibility very seriously (I literally tell my students every year that if it turns out something I told them in class ended up being wrong, to come back and tell me about it). And that means that when somebody comes into a guide I wrote offering bad advice, I feel a responsibility to answer it.

And if you don't like that, too bad. I'm not the one who came into this thread with pretenses of expertise backed by lousy writing - you did. All I'm doing is calling you out on it.