Writing that Hook

Writing that all too important hook. It has to be done in this business in order to make it. I go through this site reading stories and if the beginning doesn’t sink me then I'm out and on to the next. People are busy, too busy to waste their time reading a bad book or short. We have to make them want to read and not stop reading until it’s over and this has to be done at the beginning. All the greats have done it. Lovecraft, Koontz, King, Lehane.

Stephen King's It would have been impossible to put down. "The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years- if it did ever end- began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."

Or H. P. Lovecraft’s, Thing On the Doorstep "It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my best friend, and yet I hope to show by this statement that I am not his murderer."

How about Lorenzo Caracaterra's powerful and unforgettable opening line for his best seller, Sleepers? "I sat across the table from the man who had battered and tortured and brutalized me nearly thirty years ago."

And Dean Koontz, who is a master of the craft and of writing that single line, which would effortlessly snag his readers. The opener from Strangers, "Domimick Corvaisis went to sleep under a light wool blanket and a crisp white sheet, sprawled alone in the bed, but he woke elsewhere -in the darkness at the back of the large foyer closet, behind concealing coats and jackets."

So, I invite you to write the best Hook that you can. I'll start it off with my own effort. Feel free to rate anyone’s work, give tips on how to make it better. Tell them why you stopped reading it, or why you wanted more. Let’s help each other out here. That’s the purpose of this place.

And feel free to post some of your favorite hooks, from your favorite authors, we'll examine them and discuss what makes them so good.

My attempt:
From a work in progress.
Untitled.

The largest forest in the state and he was lost, he was sure of that now. He had passed that same tree twice. The big twisted oak with the trunk that came out of a horror movie: a bloated and uneven knot the size of a grown man in a fetal position. And come to think of it, it resembled that very thing, minus all the detail, but it was there all right, unmistakable.



(I relize that no one can post here. I dont have a membership that makes that possible. If anyone can help that would be great. I'm sorry.)