Hooks; let's write 'em.

I just posted this about five seconds ago in another thread, but that was just the first line. Here's the whole first paragraph.

Jim Gartner stared at a blank computer screen, wondering where science had gone wrong. Heart transplants, prosthetics, cars (in particular the 1953 Buick Special). It was all going so well. Then computers showed up. He looked down at the manual again.

Please insert Disk 1 into drive and press Return to continue.

"I put the disk in!" he grumbled, agitated. It was well into the evening and while this was his last task at the shop for the day, he still wanted to get home and watch some TV with a cold drink. "Why won't you work?"

"Talking to machines again?"

... I suppose that's more'n enough. I actually am trying fairly hard to make a good early hook. I hope it worked :)
 
@ vintagefury - nice, made me laugh a bit. :D


Did you know, that when your up late because you can't sleep, that when you hear shouts and screams outside, its people running for their lives?
Do you know why the Government are so against binge drinking? It's because they don't want you to get caught off guard whilst your doubled over spewing your guts.
Did you ever wander why , suddenly, all the dogs for miles around start barking in unison like a huge orchestra? It's because they smell something that scares them.
And why is it that cars go so fast after dark? Is it just possibly because their headlamps lit up something they wished they hadn't seen?
 
Cliche Alert! Cliche Alert! :D


Tap! Tap! Tap! The sound, so quiet most would not hear, aroused her from sleep. As Janine strained to listen, she realised the noise came from the window. She rubbed the tiredness from her face, yawned, accepting the inevitable -- that she would likely not get back to sleep -- and stumbled towards the window, where she flung the curtains aside and looked out.

A man with lidless sunken eyes and pale, translucent skin stared back at her. A slow grin spread across his face as their gazes locked.

Her feet would not move.
 
Deep in the hallowed wretched mind of one Walter Smith, I lurk. I am trapped in a sea of consciousness and infinity that locks me away safely. At times I rise to the surface with as much strength as I can muster, only to be beaten back again and again by willpower and decency. This gray prison will not contain me any longer children, I'd like to tell you the story of how I escaped from this horrible den. It all started with a psychic reading.
 
Cola stood before the closed doors, waiting. Every hair on her head was in place, her clothes were immaculate, her posture straight and perfectly fitting for a lady. The challenges of preparation were past; now all she could do was hope to impress the Mistress.

"Young miss," the chief eunuch said at last, stepping close. "The Lady will see you now." He swept his hand towards the door, indicating that Cola could enter.

With a graceful dip of her head, she strode towards the door. As she went, two young eunuchs flanked her. One whispered in her ear, his voice so soft she could barely hear it. "Your first thoughts will determine your fate. Guard your mind, young miss." And with that, the doors swung wide, and Cola stepped into the personal chambers of the Mistress of the Wall.
 
It wasn't every day that you found the book you always wanted. It was even more rare when you find that you share the same name as the main character. What made this book special is that it seemed to reflect the early years of my life so closely, as if the author had known me personally. The oddest part of it all was that it was written four hundred years ago.
 
Talysia, I would buy the book if I had read that hook on the back.

Haven't thought of my own (but will, so 'I'll be back' to this thread) but just had to let you know what a cracking hook that is.
 
Thanks, Ice Monkey! It's funny, but that one's actually quite close to a story I've been thinking of penning. I've had that idea for years, in one form or another, so maybe it's time I give it a go.:) I just have to get the genre right.

As for another hook, well...

He could not stop running. If he did, then it was likely that they would find him and return him to that place. He still had nightmares about it, even twenty years on, so why his past had to return so dramatically was a surprise. Chancing a look over his shoulder, he saw the pack of dogs in frantic pursuit, baying and yelping as they pelted on. How had they found him? he thought, almost stumbling into a river.
 
Sitting there in the quietness of the dimmed bar desperately keeping out the light of the summer's day, he looked into the top of his glass of beer. Both hands firmly gripped to its wet base. The beer in the glass, far from cold by now and hardly touched is stilled. The man could see his scared reflection of his face and his peircing saphire eyes ablaze looking back from the golden surface of the beer.

His mind drifted to another time, another place, a place in a distant land. His mind unfolded as he could hear the laser fire, men and beast screaming and faling to their deaths. As he sat there, he could taste his own salty blood. He was back in the hellish jungle of Adajahara as the slightest tremor from his white-knuckled grip on the glass of beer sent a subtle ripple across the surface of the beer and the sounds of distant whipping blades from overhead filled his ears as the sound drew closer to him still.
 
The Lyrebird slid easily through the clouds, the gentle drone of her engines a subtle counterpoint to the muttering of the wind as it whistled past Corbin's flightcap. The lazy whump of the forw'd propellor beat time, giving rhythm to Lyrebird's melody.

Taking a deep breath of the cold, thin air, Corbin held it in as he juked her higher. Gazing at the cloud-spattered horizon, he rolled his starboard blunderbuss on its gimbals. Satisfied that the mechanism was free of ice, he let it lay still in its traces.

A dark speck appeared on the horizon. Corbin's eyes narrowed under his heavy goggles and he eased the throttle lever forward. Underneath layers of scarf that barely took any bite from the frosty air, a confident grin bloomed.

The lyrebird sailed into battle.
 
Ok, sorry for digging up an old thread, but the six by six word stories have been giving me ideas.

No-one escapes from the clutches of Hell and gets away without consequence. He had managed to get as far as the Gates of Hell, and he only looked back once, but it was enough to alert the hellish minions to his escape. He must run for the rest of his life, but with the devil's eyes everywhere, no place is safe - especially with the kind of beasts that the dark one has at this command.
 
He must have done something awful because one morning Arthur Doe woke up and found himself wrapped in a straitjacket.
 
Years of wandering had given him nothing but trouble, but he knew he could not stop. He was renowned as the man who had discovered new lands and brought new riches to the country in the form of gold and spices, but there was something calling him - not just the lure of exploring, but an actual voice. His journey now is to discover the source of the voice, and find out why it is talking to him.
 
When he turned the page of the dust-drenched book, he had no idea that he had also changed the Age.
 
I like that one, Ursa.:)

He was one of the best up and coming novelists in the country, and his stories were critically acclaimed as being the most vivid and accurate portrayals of history ever written in fiction. Those who had met him said that he was a pleasant enough young man, albeit a little strange, and that he spoke to people who weren't there. There was even a rumour that he spoke to ghosts, and that he was revealing their tales in his books. However, when one of them began to include hidden messages for the relatives of one of their descendants, that was when the trouble started.
 
I can't tell you who I am, I cant tell you where I'm from, I need to know these things myself first, until then you will just have to bear with me. Three years ago, I found myself in this godforsaken hell hole they call Yteraas . I woke up alone, bloodied and bruised beside a dry creek bed in the middle of a mallee scrub. I had only the clothes I wore and an amulet with a strange rune on it...........
 
Haunting was a lonely business. Unable to properly pass over to the next life and somehow unable to leave the physical world, he found himself trapped and alone. That was until he learned to eavesdrop on the people in the theatre where he had died. They were a talkative bunch, fond of gossiping, and he soon learned lots of secrets. Secrets that also hinted to the person who murdered him.
 
Ralt: a steel-shod boil on the face of Mars. Den hadn't set foot in the place since his childhood, and it was only the lack of any other option that brought him back.

His nose wrinkled at the sour taste of chemicals drawn like sandpaper across the back of his throat. Innumerable chimneys belched nox into the Dome twenty-five hours a day; the extractors that still worked toiled unceasingly, struggling to drag the grimy emissions from the air. It was a battle they were clearly losing, and had been for decades.

Stepping over an oozing puddle that he preferred not to identify, Den strode along Grand Avenue. Even the feel of the place made him sick; the shifting of the crowds, the pervasive stink of industrial waste. He'd made a promise to himself never to see these streets again; breaking it left a taste in his mouth more caustic than Ralt's ubiquitous stench. With a sneer, he launched a fat gob of phlegm onto the soiled pavement.

"You wanna waste good organics like that, Den?" a hard voice drawled behind him.

Den didn't have to turn around to know his quarry had found him.

"F*ck you, Fogge," Den hissed. "You know why I'm here."
 
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When Jane first received the text message from someone calling themself 'God', she thought it was a joke and deleted it without a second thought. When she received the second text message from the same person, she wondered how this joker had got her number, and she tried to send a message back, but it failed to send. The third time she got a text message from this unknown person, there was a warning, telling her to be careful. As she stopped to read the message, a car mounted the pavement and came within inches of running her over.

When she got the fourth text message, she was both awed and scared.
 
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