Let's break down what makes a good hook. What are some of the best hooks you've read?
You could bite Todd's nose off.
That's the thought at the back of my head. That's the thought I ignore. I squelch the sinister sentiment and refocus on my friend.
—"Saturn's Game" from Angel Dust Apocalypse by Jeremy Robert Johnson.
So this got me because, right off the bat, it grabs you by the throat with something unsual, something you can't dismiss. Have you ever realized something so bizarre in the midst of your daily goings-on? How nothing stops you from deciding to jump off a roof, or rip someone's throat out.
The best sentence is one that makes the reader want to read the next sentence.
Agreed. What are some of your favorites?
But after all, can you imagine? Everybody may really go mad because they can't decide which of the two is the crazy one, that Mrs. Frola or that Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law.
Luigi Pirandello's "Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-In-Law"
I couldn't put this one down when I started it. It's the weirdest story and it just gets weirder as it goes on. It's like the literary version of one of those Gestalt switch pictures, where the image could be a duck or a rabbit.
William Gibson's 'The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.' It actually means something totally different to him than what a lot of his fans of Neuromancer thought.
Those are both great hooks!
Beth, is that dialogue, the first line? Or narration? I love how it starts with But, like we're mid-beat.
That's the narrator in the first line. It's the oddest little short story. There's no real resolution and no reason to believe one interpretation more than the other (either that the mother in law is crazy, or the son in law is crazy). By the end, you are as unsure as when you started, so beginning as though it's mid-beat was definitely appropriate.
I am not my own food.
From Tony Burgess' THE n-BODY PROBLEM. The line intrigues and knocks the reader off-balance before the ensuing mindfuckery.