Great first lines
Kevin Andrew Murphy September 11th, 2006
There’s been a lot of work over at the “first 13 lines” section over how to hook the reader with the first thirteen lines of a story, and while that’s well and good, I was thinking of the great novels where not only does the writer hook the reader with the first line, but it’s something that lodges in your memory.
 What prompted this thought for discussion wasn’t actually a great novel but some of the random filler text I got in my email spam this morning, where among the other unremarkable lines harvested from some (likely unpublished) novel, there was this:
They saw the waxen mandarin walk shakily three times up and down the road.
This hooked me immediately and I want to read the rest of the story. Now. I’m not certain whether it’s a geriatric Chinese noble who’s given his handlers the slip or an actual waxwork figure escaped from Madame Tussaud’s, but in either case, I’m hooked.
Of course, the rest of the story would have to hold up to the promise of this first line (which I may be running off with as found art…it’s just one sentence), but inspecting it, I can see a lot of reason for the intrigue.
Anyone else, or any other thoughts on great first lines?
- Craft , Storytelling , Style
The line “They saw the waxen mandarin walk shakily three times up and down the road” is from Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel. (I googled it–Wolfe is not an author I know well, though maybe I should.) It’s not the first line, but I agree it would be a great one.
The hook is ever more important, when editors are reading less and less before making their initial cut. But I wonder if going for a spectacular first line (”As Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself in his bed, transformed into a monstrous insect”) might not work against writers. The editor might say, “Really? Tell me more.” Or he/she might say, “Forget it. No one can live up to that. Anyway, this looks like fanfic about The Fly.” (Or he might say, “Too good!” and move on to the next manuscript.) Sneakier, more insinuating beginnings (”Call me Ishmael”) might work better than splashy ones.
Googling for the first line of “The Metamorphosis” led me to the sad item below: apparently Gregr Samsa has been denied Social Security disability payments:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2006/8/29standrews.html
How someone thought to associate the Social Security Administration with Kafka, I can’t say.
JE
Thomas Wolfe is one of my favorite authors. He’s amazing. One of his best short stories, in my humble opinion, is Child By Tiger.
However, here is the opening line for Look Homeward Angel:
However, this wasn’t originally the first line. When Maxwell Perkins got ahold of the manuscript he cut out the first 50 pages and started the novel here.
I’ve decided (after leafing through a dozen of my favorite books) that I must be either a cretin or an easy mark.
First lines don’t grab me. First paragraphs might. First pages perhaps, but first lines are never enough.
I think, perhaps, I’m a fish who prefers to be netted than hooked. I like to be swept up and hauled aboard. I don’t like a sharp spike in my cheek and hard tugs; I’ll fight the artifice of a line that’s too hook-y.
First lines from some of my favorites:
“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue would make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.” (Now, add the next line and you get an opening that frames the entire novel — a seemingly inconsequential set of words that perhaps offers too much detail until you realize that the entire book is about a young man searching to discover who he is. It’s sublime.)
“It may be that after all this time, and after all that has happened, I do not remember that first time as it really was.” (And do any of us remember the First Time as it really was?)
“1801 — I have just returned from a visit to my landlord — the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with.” (Yawn!)
“It was love at first sight.” (The first line to a most-definitely-not-a-romance novel.)
“You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.” (If this isn’t the quintessential “jinx” line, I don’t know what is — you just know that bad sh** is going to happen. And there’s no way that opening line woud get past an editor today. Too many big words.)
“Even in high summer, Tintagel was a haunted place; Igraine, Lady of Duke Gorlois, looked out over the sea from the headland.” (Yawn!)
“The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory.” (A classic WTF opening if ever there was one.)
“They don’t often invite me to Balmoral nowadays, which is a blessing; those damned tartan carpets always put me off my food, to say nothing of the endless pictures of Geman royalty and that unspeakable statue of the Prince Consort standing knock-kneed in a kilt.”
And you know, I’m really fond of: “It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
Yeah, cretin.
Great first lines, to work, have to be sneaky, or just so elegant that you’d read on for the sake of such elegance. But they are rare. I agree, first paragraphs are much more important, but usually I’ll settle for interesting/intriguing, which is often not splashy nor memorable.
But some of my favorites from SF (can you guess where the’re from?):
She gave up her heart quite willingly.
The ship didn’t even have a name.
She was fifteen and she flew.
Prime Predictor Tae Ran-Kaiel was long dead but he lived in the bellies of his aggressive progeny.
It was in that year when the fashion in cruelty demanded not only the crucifixion of peasant children, but a similar fate for their household animals, that I first met Lucifer and was transported into Hell; for the Prince of Darkness wished to strike a bargain with me.
He found the flying mountain by its shadow.
Just a few off the top of my head.
I am sure that the beginning of a novel absolutely has something to do with whether or not i continue with what it is that i read.
I don’t, however, remember the first lines like i remember the meat in the middle.
In the GREAT BOOK OF AMBER, by Roger Zelazney, the main character says ‘trust and be betrayed, don’t trust and betray yourself.’ Further on, i can’t remember exactly the page (479? last paragraph) he spouts philosophy without flowers that endeared him forever in my mind. I love this book and despite the twelve hundred plus pages, have reread it several times.
Paulo Coehlo didn’t exactly grab me off the bat, but by the end i was wrapped in wisdom. Although, i do have to say, the opening of one of his by the same title may be some of the most poignant words i’ve ever read.. “By the river Piedra I sat down and wept..”
Due to overworked editors, however, it would seem that i have a very small window in which to impress. It doesn’t matter that i’ve spent years refining a plot and ironing out wrinkles and developing characters who have souls of their own- because if i do not get it right from the beginning, the rest matters not.
Again, i am grateful to have found this site. Here i’ve spent my life dreaming and under the impression that because i finally approve of it, it would be instantly accepted as (if not a classic) a well written book.
And i thought i was my own worse critic.
I am a bit of a deep genre lurker, I love seeing the writing process and how stories and characters develop. I am a self confessed fantasy junkie, but my first love will always be Jane Austen. I think that the best opening line for a book ever is:
” It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”… it sets the scene for the novel and the tone. Irreverent and satirical! (Or perhaps sarcastic?) I am hooked by a book in the first page, and I find myself now re-reading the first 13 lines of my books to see what caught the editors eye! Thank-you to all for a wonderful site.
Here are a few first lines that hooked me:
“At lunch George started to tell an icky story.” (James Marshall, George and Martha One Fine Day)
“When animal droppings and gargage and spoiled straw are piled up in a great heap, the rotting and moiling give forth heat.”
(Karen Cushman, The Midwife’s Apprentice)
“It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and a doubt arose in some breast–Robert’s, I fancy–as to the quality of the fireworks laid in for the Guy Fawkes celebration.”
(E. Nesbit, The Phoenix and the Carpet)
I like a catchy first line, for a novel or short story, as well as the next person. However, I also feel that the importance of grabbing the reader with the first sentence is overstated. Unless you’re writing the sort of book meant to be bought in an airport bookstore by travelers who have to be caught by a brand name or a first line, I think you’ve got a paragraph to play with. Sometimes the first sentence isn’t what does it: it’s the second or the third, or the cumulative weight of the paragraph. And frankly, as a reader, I start getting a little worn out with stories whose first sentence is clearly designed to grab my attention, rather than to usher me into the tale.
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. isn’t particularly grabby. It’s the first line of Jane Eyre, and while the reader may not know it yet, it plunks us right down in the action (because it’s raining, the kids can’t go out for a walk, and therefore Jane is hiding, reading a book, avoiding her under-exercised and overly brutal cousins). But you need more to learn this; there’s nothing showy about the sentence.
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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. Nowadays a copyeditor would insert full stops promiscuously throughout, which would render the rhythm almost nagging in its sing-song insistence. People remember the opening salvo, but forget how long this sentence goes on. Does it set the scene–yeah, but by the end of the opening graph you still don’t know what that scene is. And yet, it’s compelling. You want to know what he’s talking about.
“‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,’ grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.” Right there you know a bunch of things that you aren’t really conscious of–that the speaker is probably young, living in a Christian environment, is well-off enough to consider Christmas presents an entitlement, and either modern enough–or unconventional enough–to be lying on the rug in what sounds like a middle class or upper class household. And of course, you want to know why the kid has no presents.
Sometimes, alas, if what I remember is the opening line, it may mean that the rest of the story didn’t hold up as well.
Editors will give a novel a couple of pages — one hopes 10 — to hook them, Heather. Don’t despair just yet.
When first lines grab me, they grab me. But in many books I love, they just don’t. I don’t see this as a problem. Anyway, I just had to comment re: Pride and Prejudice– I must be a huge English nerd, because I actually own the first paragraph on a beach towel.
Here’s one of my recent favorite first lines; it’s from Confederacy of Dunces.
That one sentence got me to read the paragraph, which got me to read the first chapter, which got me to read the next then the next chapters, etc. It’s a strange and great book.
“The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.”
This scans like poetry. Would it be as good without the “and”? No. Would it be as good broken into two sentences? No.
Now I desperately want a beach towel with the first para of P&P printed on it!
Sarah, where did you get it???
I just did a search. You can find it for sale on this site for only $20, plus I expect S/H.
I recently saw the Jane Austen action figure. I was sort of wanting one of those too.
Is there anything that Kevin can’t find online?
I happened across this article by linking from an article by linking from an email transcript by linking from a myspace message. Oi. Well, here goes:
I always found the most intriguing books were ones that started you in the center of the beginning of the book as the most captivating. Your reaction is along the lines of “wait… what?” and you are playing catch-up through the first third or so of the story (book, novel, whatever) and by then you are so completely hooked with emotional ties or action that you almost have no choice but to find out what happens through the rest of the piece. For this reason, my favorite author is William Gibson.
“I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you’re crude, go technical; if they think you’re technical, go crude.”
As you may infer from the first line of Johnny Mnemonic Gibson doesn’t like to use introductions- and there is no worry about catching someone on the first paragraph, page or line. When they read the first word they are already halfway through the story, and Gibson drops bones for his readers throughout the entire story to flesh out not only the characters, but the setting. If he absolutely must describe a scene it is in two scentences or less, and only sketches it out.
Of course I just had to go look up the first lines of my favorite books. I won’t write them here, but some were catchy and some were just average. What I realized was the the first line, to me, doesn’t matter as much as the first few lines. I can’t just read the first line, I have to keep going, even if it’s only through the first 3 lines. But that also means that the writer as a greater chance to catch me in the opening.
Go on