First Sentence

[Arab Nights (imported)]

A post some time ago got me thinking about first lines. I enjoy one that pulls you in. I have been listening and collecting some examples that I really like. My sources are Shakespeare and country and western music.

"Who's there?"

"I don't remember loving you"

"Well I Love Her, but I love to fish."

"I've got a cold beer in my right hand, in my left hand I got my wedding band."

"She met me at the door with the Good Book in her left hand and a rolling pin in her right."

Don't you just want to pay attention so you can find out now what happened rather than wait for Jerry Springer? Anyway, this is just a thought for authors to pay attention to the first line.

[transward (imported)]

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

"Call me, Ishmael."

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive.

"it was a dark and stormy night." (wait, scratch that last one)

Transward

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

Country music:" Take your tongue out of my mouth, I'm kissing you goodby". --FLO--

[Arab Nights (imported)]

How can I possibly be serially one-upped on both the classic and the country side in the same thread?

[transward (imported)]

How can I possibly be serially one-upped on both the classic and the country side in the same thread?

But Dahlng, it just means you're versatile.

Transward

[Cainanite (imported)]

For first lines of a book, my favorite author is Fantasy writer Terry Goodkind.

Some of my favorite first lines are;

"Rachel clutched her doll tighter and stared at the dark thing watching her from the bushes." first line from The Stone of Tears

"At the exact same instant, the six women suddenly awoke, the lingering sound of their screams echoing around the cramped officer's cabin." first line from The Blood of the Fold

"Let me kill him." first line from The Temple of the Winds. (Funny note: A variation of this same line starts the beginning of the next three chapters. "Just let me kill him." "Please let me kill him." and "Now, will you let me kill him?"

"I wonder what's bothering the chickens?" first line from The Soul of the Fire

"She didn't remember dying." first line from The Faith of the Fallen

Goodkind is one of those authors that really grabs you from the first line of his books. Sadly, his latest entries have been lacking to say the least. The last book of his I read, The Omen Machine was a paint by numbers book that feels more like it was written by a ghost writer than Goodkind himself. He's also lost those driving first lines that hook you and make you want to read more.

The first line of his latest book is,

"There is darkness," the boy said.

I wish I were kidding, but that sucks too much to be made up.

It's tough to write a memorable first line of a book, or of any story.

It is certainly a talent I wish I had.

Maybe one day.

[janekane (imported)]

The fact, if it be fact, that I have yet to write anything actually useful is not unambiguous proof that such writing will remain forever impossible.

I recognize an immense sociobiological truth within, "She didn't remember dying."

In some social/cultural traditions, there is the first death (the death of innocence) and there is the second death (the death of the corpus).

People who develop apparently absolute conscious amnesia for their lives and life experiences prior to completion of their infant-child transition are those who do not remember the dying of their innocence.

Such folks, as I have been able to observe, tend to exhibit a stunningly profound proclivity for becoming people who, for lack of control of their inner lives, seek to control the inner and outer lives of others "for their own good." Which I find to be akin to the epitome of bad.

For myself, I find that everyone (including myself) is actually absolutely and perfectly innocent, tens of thousands of years of deception notwithstanding.

What keeps us from living, here and now, in Nirvana? Only not remembering the dying of our innocence because of traumatic amnesia?

I never accepted the dying of my inborn innocence; I never went through the infant-child transition. I have never believed that anything that actually happened, having happened, could or should have happened differently. Thereupon, I find that not only is everyone actually innocent, I also find that guilt is also perfectly innocent, guilt being merely a deceptive delusion.

[Dave (imported)]

I have a number of short stories at my website and in print. I try to make the first sentence engaging and interesting. This is nearly a requisite for writers of short stories and novels.

If you open any novel (this also applies to short stories, bear with me while I make the point).. If you open any novel to the first page of the story, that is what most readers do to see if they want to buy and read a book. AT MOST, you get 250 words. MORE LIKELY you have 150 words or less to attract a reader.

The opening must engage the reader and make the reader want to continue. The stories in the archive will have audiences even if the writing is not up to professional standards. That's the nature of this market. Don't worry about creating Shakespeare or Milton or (more recently) Stephen King. Just make the first sentence engaging.

Think of these openings:

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again"

(do I have to tell anyone what novel that is?) REBECCA, Daphne De Maurier

You ask me if I can forgive myself? I can forgive myself for many things. For where I left him. For what I did. But I will not forgive myself for the year that I hated my daughter, when I believed her to have run away, perhaps to the city.

Which is the opening line to the story by Neil Gaiman I quote in my signature block.

Here's a writing tips for openings:

http://www.dailywritingtips.com/20-grea ... our-story/

And another one of 100 lines:

http://americanbookreview.org/100BestLines.asp

[gandalf (imported)]

"Call me, Ishmael."

Does this hark back to the Star Trek novel "Ishmael" where Spock is transported to 1869 Seattle and meets his human ancestors?

[Paolo]

I liked the one about the boy and the darkness...