The American Book Review has a list of their top 100 best first lines of a novel. My personal pick is #4 from one of my favorite reads, 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriele Garcia Marquez: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Let's pretend that we are setting out to write a novel and come up with our own first lines. Unlike the authors on the list you don't need to worry about coming up with what follows. How about it? Let's see some first lines.....
To set the bar low, here is mine:
Trapped beneath the tractor she tried to whistle; no sound would come.
I'd like to come up with some more. I think this could be a lot of fun. Shout-outs to those in the #storyclub but by all means everyone join in:
kleinbl00, maynard,_refugee_, onehunna, Becoming_Betty, humanodon, lil, Floatbox, cW or theadvancedapes, mk, insomniasexx, steve, thenewgreen AshShields, delta, dead5
Immediately after, Maynard Justice Blaine knew in his gut that getting his revenge was more than the emotion driven daydreams of a guy in a car wash. With his gambling problems now in check, he really could even the score with Slobodan. Being "just a guy in a car wash", he now realized, made the whole thing possible. That is, if had the stomach for it.
It initially started with That little witch was back again but then I wrote a prologue so now it starts with Put it away, dumbass.
Dunno. I see nothing on that list that compares with William Gibson's Neuromancer:
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
1) Sometimes it comes on real slow: you don’t know it, but before too long you realize that you've caught fire from the inside out and that no amount of dancing, shouting or fucking is gonna put it out; so you put a pen to paper and write that fire out word by word until you've drowned.
2) Of course, the aliens came to visit when I was lost in the 468th day of a coma.
3) In all the before or since that is human history, no month of June was ever like the one that held the events of this story.
4) No one knew why, but everyone knew that magic returned to the world at the precise moment the little girls from Mrs. Evans’ class were singing their double-dutch rhymes during that fateful afternoon recess in the spring of 2047.
5) “It’s not you, it’s me,” I said, though we both knew that by, “it’s me” I meant, “it’s you” and that all the bullshit in the world wouldn't ever erase the enormity of what had passed between us as I watched you enter the stinging darkness of that night we were stuck dreaming in.
I'll see your five:
1) What's inertia if not an invitation to kill?
2) They say a man can't survive for more than ten days without water; Charlie had proven them wrong on more than one occasion.
3) "I'll buy you a beer if you tell me about your sister."
4) Here's something Aldrin and Armstrong never told us, the moon isn't made of cheese; it's made of rock, silt and vaseline.
5) Their forwarding address read, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
- 2) Of course, the aliens came to visit when I was lost in the 468th day of a coma
While we're at it, would it be an idea to vote for one of these to be a prompt for lil to offer as #todayswritingprompt?
Hi Complexity, that's a great idea - but things move so quickly around here. In the blink of an eye we're following some new thread.
by the way: Note: anyone can use the #todayswritingprompt
If you do, give me a shoutout.
So it's five, now, is it? Some of them are from extant projects, some for this prompt.
#
One
After her third successful suicide, Abigail began to despair.
Too
No moon should have been that colour, nor made that sound.
Free
Omar and I met whilst working as dustbin men. He explained that he was a latter day Platonic philosopher-king, travelling the world incognito to expand his character, and working in refuse to understand the biological process of waste. Myself, I needed the money.
For?
When Ern woke, face down at the surf-line, washed up like a bit of driftwood, the sun was high in the sky and already he felt the beginnings of a vicious burn around his neck and along the backs of his legs. Long ago, before his hangover, there had been a ship.
5
I was and still am.
#
I remember a great article about writing opening lines for short SF stories which treated of grabbing the reader's attention with an seemingly impossible or incongruent assertion which would, particularly for science fiction fans, inspire curiosity and keep them reading. Amongst others, it cited Orwell's great opening to 1984 (cited in the linked top 100).
- It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
There seemed to develop at a point in the 80's/90's a selective pressure on SF short stories to grab an editor immediately and to stand out from the other submissions which led to a lot of them having a particularly cryptic opening line that provoked questions requiring the reader to continue.
A few of those lines included in the 'Top 100' seem truly great. Many feel like they should be titled 'First Lines From Great Novels' rather than 'Great First Lines'.
Edit: on rereading it, rather than 'great' the list is titled 100 'Best' First Lines which is sufficiently vague an adjective to both invalidate and justify my last paragraph. I stand unmoved.
Cool idea, I thought I'd do five too:
1. He let the remark hang feverishly in the air.
2. Joseph had never considered what it was to truly beg for his life.
3. It struck her that the ebbing light from the star could be of spent existence, living on in an alternative perspective.
4. "And you're quite sure about that?"
5. Daniel gazed into the mirrored eyes, searching for confirmation; it seemed so lifelike.
Never really tried to write a novel before but I have written screenplays and scripts, so fuck it, let's try some out:
1. The only person to speak on the entire drive home was the reporter on the radio, who was manically describing what they had just done.
2. Matthew was born on the 3rd of November 1993 and he died exactly 25 years later, at the same time and the same place.
3. The breeze was cool and refreshing, but it carried with it the smell of a hundred corpses.
1) The lone astronaught tried to ignore the fly buzzing around his ear making that annoying sound till he wanted to rip off his helmet and enjoy the cold silence of space.
2) In retrospect, Qentin probably shouldn't have taken the clamshell with him when he left the beach.
As I lay there getting my dick sucked, I became more fixated on my Starry Night poster; staring at the strokes and the texture and the layering and the choice of colors and then I thought to myself: I don't think I'm in love anymore.
This may work even better without the first line. Later in the story you could reveal what it was the son said, or better yet never reveal it. Sometimes letting the reader postulate is more powerful.
'There is an art to it' the man said, 'really' Martin replied his voice distant as if he was far away, 'oh yes, not just any rope will do, and the knot has to be just right' said the man, 'get on with it' Martin replied.
-She screamed into the darkness and the darkness screamed back.
-Never has a body taken so long to fall over, never has an action been regretted so fast.
A few humble attempts:
"Defiant, arrogant, bemused, quiet: such is the face of a man staring into the eyes of his executioner".
"Winds from the south gushed through the fields, a parched ocean of waves lazily yielding across the barley heads."
"Sophie. 26. Neurotic. Nymphomaniac. Ivy League. Pious and devout Catholic."
I've got 4:
1. "This is your third nervous breakdown this month, Mara," Dr. Bronn sighed from behind those stupid, tortoiseshell, look-at-me-I'm-a-psychiatrist glasses. "I can't keep filling your prescriptions if you're going to be so unreasonable."
2. On my 12th birthday, my mother splurged on a pinata. There was nothing inside, but I was just happy to break something.
3. "The Northern Lights have been canceled until further notice due to budget constraints," Andrew read from a hastily printed sign. "Please direct all inquiries to the Bureau of Environmental Maintenance and Simulation."
"Fuck man, they suck us dry with all those taxes and they can't even keeping the fucking lights going? First the sunrise, now this. It's bullshit. I'm moving to Canada."
He laughed dryly. "I'm right behind you."
4. What they don't tell you is that a dying man smells far worse than a dead one.
I heard that G R R Martin's inspiration for the entire series (edit: A Song of Ice and Fire) came when he envisioned a little boy around the age of 10 watching his father perform an execution because he was to be lord one day and little lords had to learn of these things. Not the first line to a story, but an alluring idea.
Now my attempt --
Try as hard as he might, Maksy couldn't lie.
I already have the first line of the book I'm writing.
"Icarus knew what he was doing."
What do you think?
One of my favorites. Not sure if there is one person to credit for it.
"I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather.. Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car."
I used to reference it when helping fifth graders with creative writing.
"If I could tell the difference between these immigrants, we wouldn't be sitting here - you eyeing the doorway and me being chewed out again by my corkscrew of a boss."