Opening Lines

The first line. The 'hook', as it were. Sometimes it's a joke. Sometimes it's sculpted from foreshadowing. Sometimes, it happened on a dark and stormy night...

What are some good openers you've come across recently? What are your favourites that you've written? Include the opening paragraph if it makes it that much more made of win. Hell, feel free to ask for critiques too. Go wild. I'll start:

• Mountains shouldn't scream, but this one did. — From Chris Evans's The Iron Elves.
• A whimper echoed through the empty streets and slithered to the ears of anyone who cared to listen. — Mine
• "Hey kid. See something you like?" The man all but leered, eyes glinting in dark expectation. — Mine again

I like your first (well, the second on your list), and you're right, Evans' is just awesome.

• "The sky above the port was the color of television, turned to a dead channel." Wiliam Gibson's Neuromancer
• "Abandon all hope ye who enter here is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the wirds a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Misérables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so." Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, mostly because it's so darn long.
• "The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the effort." Terry Pratchett's The Light Fantastic
• "There was a roar." My own.

Those of others:

• "Slowly the sun had climbed up the hard white downs, till it broke with little of the mysterious ritual of dawn upon a sparkling world of snow." - On the Brighton Road, Richard Middleton
• "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. - 'A Scandal in Bohemia' (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), Arthur Conan Doyle
• "IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." - Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen
• "Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?' " - Alices Adventuresin Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
• "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." - The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

Mine:

• "The stars were out: they had been that way for five hours." - The Midnight Hour, short story
• "It was a moonless night in Relona, an act that gave the sky a seemingly endless look; one that could hide anything." - Seelie
• "A full moon shone on the Thuring Mountains in western Relona as a faint wind caused the trees to sway peacefully side to side, letting light pass selectively." - Souls
• "I suppose you are wondering what this book is doing in your hands: after all who would write an entire tome dedicated to a dictator?" - The Arcane, prequal 'by' Malakiel.

As a matter of fact yes, all of my opening chapters start at night and I am preoccupied with the positions of the moon and the stars. Advice is welcome.

"Jack Ryan almost died twice in one hour." - Patriot Games, Tom Clancy

I like the ones that start with dialogue. It's probably just me, but I usually dislike the ones that ramble about setting. I want to see the character/conflict as quickly as possible, setting can be dropped in throughout the story. I suppose a person who likes reading about settings would have a different opinion.

Call me Ishmael.

Simple and to the point.

Unlike the rest of the story.

"The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault." -Blood Rites, Jim Butcher

"It was a pleasure to burn." - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." - Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." — Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair." — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"I am an invisible man." — Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

"It was the day my grandmother exploded." — Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York." — Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know.

Guess.

edited 23rd Jan '11 7:09:45 PM by juancarlos11

The Stranger.

Anyway.

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air." - Ulysses

I can't offer any of my own because I'm terrible at opening lines.

Well, let's see what I can contribute (do fanfics count?).

• Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the riverbank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book', thought Alice, 'without pictures or conversation?' - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

• One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it: — it was the black kitten's fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it couldn't have had any hand in the mischief - Through the Looking Glass

• Marley was dead, to begin with - A Christmas Carol

• Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

• Harry Potter was a very unusual boy in many ways - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

• In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit - The Hobbit

• "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug - Little Women

• When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton - The Lord of the Rings

• A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green - Of Mice and Men

• The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home - The Wind in the Willows

• Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

And here's one that's my own work:

• It all started at my cousin Eddie's bar mitzvah.

Unfortunately, this is the only line I have. I know this isn't really the place to ask, but - does anyone have any ideas as to what should happen next? And is it a good opening line?

edited 3rd Jan '13 3:28:05 PM by fruitstripegum

From Catch-22 "It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain, he fell madly in love with him..."

It's no co-incidence 'Leaving Scars' will start "It wasn't love at first sight. It wasn't even, Jack was surprised to realise, lust at first sight; .... Je ne sais quoi at first sight, perhaps."

Something I started writing a few paragraphs as a spoof (a biblical noir, about the man who arrests Jesus), and as an idea evolved, so is waiting to be researched,
"You cultists, you always ask the same question. Was I there? If you mean when he died, then no, I wasn’t there. But I saw the rest of it."

We don't even know what your story's about.

If you're talking to me, I'm afraid I don't know what it's gonna be about. I'm good at planning the middle of stories, but when it comes to starting them...forget it.

I do have a better idea of what should happen next, though. Here's the revised opening line:

It all started at my cousin Eddie's bar mitzvah. Not that I wanted to attend his bar mitzvah, of course. It wasn't that I had anything against Eddie himself - he's ok as far as cousins go, I guess, even if he does have a habit of talking in his sleep (and I know this first hand, having been forced to share a room with him for 5 years of my life) - I'm just not a social person.

I'll let you decide whether or not it's any good (I hope it is).

edited 4th Jan '13 2:40:08 PM by fruitstripegum

"Jesus fuck." - Quite Ugly One Morning - Christopher Brookmyre

I have always been a liar. - The Whyte Harte - P.C. Doherty

As I left the Kenya Beanstalk capsule he was right on my heels. He followed me through the door leading to Customs, Health and Immigration. As the door contracted behind him I killed him. - Friday - Robert A. Heinlein

My own:

If human misery truly could be distilled and refined, as literary convention would have us believe, then the city of Hamilton was New Zealand's Number Two processing plant. - Black Knight Security

One of the traits of our kind is that we do not show our true age or our hardships. - as yet untitled Fantasy Kitchen Sink / Alternate History story

edited 5th Jan '13 3:36:02 AM by Wolf1066

It's been 20+ years since I read it, so I'm doing this from memory (I don't have the book), but it gives you some idea of how good an opening I find it.

"If you really want to know how I ended up on a ship in the middle of the Irish Sea with a princess, I'll tell you. But what happened next is far more interesting." I think the book is called 'All the gold in Ireland'

"I always get the shakes before a drop. I've had the injections, of course, and the hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason I can't really be afraid. The ship's psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn't fear, it isn't anything important - it's just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate." - Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein. (You might note that that the recent Invasion movie used a variation on these.)