Once I have a hook I think has potential - enough to spin out more than a hundred thousand words, then I start turning my attention to characters. Who are these people? Why did this thing happen to them? But the hook always comes first.
“I always looked up there, because I remember a time when the only things on the walls in Fenway were the Jimmy Fund sign and the retired numbers. Never in a million years did you think you'd ever be up there with those guys.”