# That All-Important First Line



## lvcabbie (Mar 11, 2016)

[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]_[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]This Literary agent provides this for us writers:[/FONT]_[/FONT]


 [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]_[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]There’s no formula for a first line. It should elicit interest, pique something in the reader, speak to their heart or their intellect or their funny bone. It just has to work. Some of the best opening lines stand remarkably well on their own, having enough meat to allow you to chew on it awhile.[/FONT]_[/FONT]


 [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]_[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]She then provides a series of first lines she considers the ones to draw her into the books. And asks what our favorite first lines are. [/FONT]__[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Here is one from a favorite series of mine, [/FONT]__[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]Horatio Hornblower[/FONT]__[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]:[/FONT]_[/FONT]


 [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]_[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]A January gale was roaring up the Channel, blustering loudly, and bearing in its bosom rain squalls whose big drops rattled loudly on the tarpaulin clothing of those among the officers and men whose duties kept them on deck.[/FONT]_[/FONT]


 [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]_[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]This is of course a historical novel based upon the English navy so it fits perfectly with the genre, time, and setting.[/FONT]_[/FONT]


 [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]_[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]That is what, to me, makes the perfect opening line. Firming the story you expect to read from the author, series, and genre.[/FONT]_[/FONT]


 [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]_[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]What is your favorite? And why?[/FONT]_[/FONT]


 [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]_[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]To read the full article, go to http://www.rachellegardner.com/that-all-important-first-line/[/FONT]_[/FONT]


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## Patrick (Mar 11, 2016)

There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
~ C. S. Lewis, _The Voyage of the Dawn Treader_

That is by far the best first sentence among her favourites. Still chortling.


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## H.Brown (Mar 11, 2016)

The wheel of time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become Legends. - Robert Jordan, Eye of the world.

Because it sets up his story nicely while drawing the reader in. I also think it gives the book a historical feeling, as though we are reading those memories that have become legend.


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## Riis Marshall (Mar 12, 2016)

Hello Folks

Here are four of my favourites:

_The Shepherd of the Hills_, Harold Bell Wright: 'This, my story, is a very old story. In the hills of life there are two trails.'

_All the King's Men_, Robert Penn Warren: 'You follow Highway 58, going north-east out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it.'

_A Christmas Carol_, Charles Dickens: 'Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.'

_Injured or Seriously Killed_, Riis Marshall: 'Assassin! It rolls off the tongue—more evocative than contract killer, hit man, hired gun or even cutthroat.' (Sorry to toot my own horn, but I worked on this one for many hours and I'm rather proud of it.)

@LV: You're absolutely right: beginnings are important. Properly done, that first paragraph can present you with a metaphor that capture the entire story, as with Warren's masterpiece.

All the best with your writing.

Warmest regards
Riis


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## Sam (Mar 12, 2016)

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin" ~ Franz Kafka,_ The Metamorphosis._ 

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new" ~ Samuel Beckett, _Murphy. _

"It was the day my grandmother exploded" ~ Iain Banks, _The Crow Road. _

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun" ~ Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. _

"You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings" ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, _Frankenstein. _

"'What's it going to be then, eh?'" ~ Anthony Burgess, _A Clockwork Orange. _

"This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast" ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr., _Breakfast of Champions. _

"The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand" ~ H.G. Wells, _The Invisible Man. 

_"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills" ~ Raymond Chandler, _The Big Sleep. _

"On those cloudy days, Robert Neville was never sure when sunset came, and sometimes they were in the streets before he could get back" ~ Richard Matheson, _I am Legend.

_"Everything about Norman Niblock House was measured: as measured as a foot-rule, as measured as time. _Item_ the degree to which he allowed himself to lighten his skin and straighten the kinks in his hair and beard, so that he could exploit the guilt-reaction of his colleagues while still managing to get next to the shiggies who did most for his cod" ~ John Brunner, _Stand on Zanzibar. _

"Once there was a man who repaired trash compactors because that was what he loved doing more than anything else in the world" ~ Philip K. Dick, _Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  _


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## Riis Marshall (Mar 12, 2016)

Hello Folks

And then there is: 'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' George Orwell, _1984_.

All the best with your writing.

Warmest regards
Riis


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## Patrick (Mar 12, 2016)

My own favourite is that old and not-particularly-trendy one:

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

 The great first sentence of _the _great narrative. Though it appears simple, people used to believe the Universe was eternal and that the Earth rode on the back of a turtle.

All novels are about time.


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## Jack of all trades (Mar 12, 2016)

Patrick said:


> My own favourite is that old and not-particularly-trendy one:
> 
> "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."
> 
> ...



When compared to human existence, the universe is eternal, or the closest thing we have to eternal. And the turtle thing? I always wonder if people really believed those things, or if they were analogies.


Getting back to the OP, I don't have a favorite opening line. It's the overall picture that matters most to me.


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## escorial (Mar 12, 2016)

i myself could not repeat you the first line of any book i've enjoyed...


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## Gavrushka (Mar 13, 2016)

"Man," said Terl, "is an endangered species."

From one of the best books I read in my youth, and one of the worst films I ever saw in my later years. - It's from 'Battlefield Earth' by L Ron Hubbard. Over thirty years on from first reading it, I can still remember the impact those few words had on me.

I don't know how a writer can come up with such magic, but I imagine many are just following creative impulses rather than sweating for hours to distil literary excellence into that one opening line.


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## Gamer_2k4 (Mar 17, 2016)

escorial said:


> i myself could not repeat you the first line of any book i've enjoyed...



I'm right there with you.  I feel the importance of the first line is far overstated; after all, how fickle do you have to be to let a single sentence determine whether to keep reading or not?

That said, if someone began their book with, "If you're going to read this, don't bother." (as one author has), I would happily say, "You're the boss," and be done with it right there.


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## ppsage (Mar 17, 2016)

Frank Herbert. _Dune.

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.
_


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## Terry D (Mar 17, 2016)

I'm pretty much fucked.

_The Martian_, Andy Weir


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## Sam (Mar 17, 2016)

Gamer_2k4 said:


> I'm right there with you.  I feel the importance of the first line is far overstated; after all, how fickle do you have to be to let a single sentence determine whether to keep reading or not?



You can judge a lot by one line. 

Employers do it with CVs, publishers do it with novels and query letters, and readers do it with newspapers and magazines (they also do it with books, but how often have you read a newspaper and been drawn in by a quirky title/heading?). 

A great first line hooks a reader instantly. It grabs them and says, "Don't even think about putting this down." 

Most readers will read on the next line, and beyond, but if you can hook them on the first line, why wait?


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## Dave Watson (Mar 17, 2016)

Terry D said:


> I'm pretty much fucked.
> 
> _The Martian_, Andy Weir



Great book, and happy to see the film did it justice. 

Personal favourite has to be...

_The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed._  Stephen King, The Gunslinger, The Dark Tower book 1. 

A friend of mine has that tattooed on his arm. As King himself said, that line is _tight_. To me, it has everything. Two distinct characters, a setting, a conflict, a tone. And it also sounds cool as fu*k.


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## bdcharles (Mar 18, 2016)

"Lyra and her daemon..."


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## Lyra Laurant (Mar 19, 2016)

bdcharles said:


> "Lyra and her daemon..."



Me and my wut? XD

My favorite first line isn't the first line, but the dedicatory. Who else begins the story right on the dedicatory?!

"To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs" Machado de Assis, Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas.


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## J Anfinson (Mar 19, 2016)

"Daresay you've never, in your life, read a story written by a vegetable." ~ Now You See It - Richard Matheson.


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## Frankyette (Apr 17, 2016)

No one's said Moby Dick yet? Okay, I'll be the obligatory one: 

It depends on whom you ask, either:

"Call me Ishmael,"
or
"The pale Usher -- threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now." (x)

Both are lovely in my opinion


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## JustRob (Apr 18, 2016)

"She was naked, riding without saddle. In the cold moonlight her green hair was black, her slender corpus as pliant as a rod of white plastisteel." (_The Tomorrow File, _Lawrence Sanders)

The opening lines of a story should not be a false lure but a promise of things to come. This book fulfils its promise, so the opening line is both good and honest. The opening should be no better than the rest of the story in my opinion, so let's not place too much emphasis on its importance. Every line is important.


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