The first line of your novel is the doorway into your fictional world and the key to making your reader want more. Some first lines are so famous, they have become iconic, such as:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. " (A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)
"Call me Ishmael." (Moby Dick by Herman Melville)
"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 by Jane Austen)
And the every popular:
'It was a dark and stormy night." (A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle, among others)
Making our first line a grabber can project us into a more energetic and engaging first chapter that will turn our readers into loyal fans. (That's a big responsibility for a few words clustered around a subject and a predicate!)
So, what is your first line? And, do you have any advice for the rest of us as we try to come up with our own?
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Okt 11, 2008 - 12 35
I believe the originator of "It was a dark and stormy night" was Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford began with the following sentence:
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As for my own, I can't claim to have particularly bettered Bulwer-Lytton with any of these, but:
2005
2006 (continuing last year's)
Now, I made a deliberate choice to have the second one echo the first, but I think they are a bit too similar. Still, when I get round to redrafting the combined novel, I'm losing the first few chapters anyway...
2007 I failed very early on (something to do with my firstborn arriving on November 7th), and it looks like I deleted the little I had written. I shall be having another bash at the same novel this year, but of course I haven't writtem the first line yet...
61,016 / 50,000
Okt 11, 2008 - 12 45
Thanks for the citation. I knew it had been used many times, but did not know of its origin.
BTW, many sources tell us that it is a bad idea to start with a description of the weather (dark, stormy, or otherwise), a dream, or dialogue. But, we are advised to start with action. So many rules for one sentence!
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Okt 11, 2008 - 13 02
My first line in 2006 was:
"His scream startled the forest birds from their roosts as he fell over the precipice."
I didn't get very far in '07. I am hoping for a better showing in '08.
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Okt 11, 2008 - 13 34
How can you forget the truly insane but still ever-famous:
And I dunno. I'm just gonna go with the flow, y'know? Whatever seems to get the words flowing best.
61,016 / 50,000
Okt 11, 2008 - 14 12
Thanks for the reminder! So sorry to have failed to mention The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka! What a way to start a story!
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Okt 11, 2008 - 14 36
I don't have a first line yet, but my favorite literary first line ever comes from Vladimir Nabokov:
"Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul, Lolita."
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Okt 11, 2008 - 14 52
One of my own which readers have deemed as very eye catching -
"Year 1343. Month of the Moon. Winter. Fuckin' winter, like Malcolm used to say. Damn fuckin' winter." I realize it's not exactly one line, but still...
Another "A tall noble figure stood before the boy, looking down on him."
"It was a damn hot night at Ezo V."
"There are many ways known to me how to begin a tale."
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Okt 11, 2008 - 15 16
My first line from last years Nano:
Callie Cooper woke up grasping something that belonged to someone who was murdered twenty years before.
This wasa time travel murder mystery.
This came to me a few weeks before Nano and it was torture waiting to write the story that came from this.
Happy Noveling!
61,016 / 50,000
Okt 12, 2008 - 00 26
Those are some great first lines, everyone.
Another recommendation for first lines is that they raise a story question that will drive the reader further into the chapter in search of an answer. Many of you seem already to know that!
Keep them coming!
1,772 / 50,000
Okt 12, 2008 - 04 16
I think the right first line is something you add pretty late in editing. I've been told that the first line should have something twisty about it, raising a question - something ordinary done in a strange way, or something that doesn't seem to follow.
Current first line from last year's is something like
"The train slowed down, and on the moors above, something woke." Only not that. it will change when I get round to doing more editing.
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Okt 12, 2008 - 04 47
A favorite:
"In M ---, an important town in northern Italy, the widowed Marquise of O---, a lady of unblemished reputation and the mother of several well-brought-up children, inserted the following announcement in the newpapers: that she had, without knowledge of the cause, come to find herself in a certain condition; that she would like the father of the child she was expecting to disclose his identity to her; and that she was resolved, out of consideration for her family, to marry him."
The Marquise of O----. By Heinrich von Kleist
First lines I wrote:
Jennifer Rusk did not understand how her husband could have frozen to death.
My brother, David, is a creep.
When Marta was fifteen, she learned to hate her father.
Jerry's loud pants were simply too much to bear. (Writing prompt in which the first and last lines must be identical. A story of awful fashion sense leading to murder.)
First kill a pig.
Penn Station's Maintenance and Service Department filled the basement of the Overland Building, a massive pile of cut stone and steel almost a hundred years old.
In the summer of 2010, Chief of Police Myrna Jensen was still certain she could protect her daughter, Sarah, from the world. (NaNo 2006)
Umberto Poggio, head chef at Ristorante Frascati, possessed many dreams. (NaNo 2007)
Nobu pulled his chair away from the kitchen table.
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Okt 12, 2008 - 20 53
Since this isn't a Writing 101 sort of question, I'm going to refer you over to the topic of the same title in This is Going Better Than I Hoped