In the last blog, we discussed what first lines of stories need to include. Now we’ll look at ways you can improve your opening lines.
Here are a few ways to boost your first sentence:
Keep It Simple
Some of the best first lines are straight-forward declarations:
“We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.”
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
“All children, except one, grow up.”
J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
“Mother died today.”
Albert Camus, The Stranger
“They shoot the white girl first.”
Toni Morrison, Paradise
Don’t be afraid to start simply if a matter-of-fact approach works for your story. If the rest of your novel sounds more like Faulkner than Hemingway, this may not be the best approach for you. But give it a try. Simplify your introduction as much as possible without losing your hook or tone.
Start in the Middle or the End (of life as it was)
Don’t try to go back too far in your story to set it up. There’s no need. If your reader needs to know what happened in the past, you can sprinkle that information in as backstory later in the story. Don’t resort to an info-dump in the beginning. This is a sure way to turn off readers and agents alike.
“All this happened, more or less.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.”
Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
“We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.”
Louise Erdrich, Tracks
All of these lines start at the end of the story. They are commentary on what has happened. That is the hook.
Go Small
There is no need to put your entire plot in the first paragraph. All you need is a hint—a hook that will grab attention. This can be done with a small line that produces questions. The idea is to leave breadcrumbs for your readers to follow, not dump the entire bag and hope they keep walking to find more. Why would they? They’ve taken their fill from the start and are done now.
“It was a pleasure to burn.”
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“You better not never tell nobody but God.”
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Each of these include a tiny detail that intrigues. That is all that is needed. Who wouldn’t want to keep reading to find out what is burning and why the narrator likes it that way? Or what should never be told to anyone but God? Or why the narrator is writing while sitting in a sink?
Go Big
If small doesn’t feel right for your story, consider going big and zooming in afterward. This allows you to establish your setting and context before zooming in on your characters. This is a more cinematic way of opening your novel, but it can work well.
“The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.”
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
“A screaming comes across the sky.”
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
William Gibson, Neuromancer
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”
Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Circle Back
Some of the best lines are those that make perfect sense at the end. They circle around from the beginning to the end and tie up the story in a perfect symmetry of logic and emotion. Circular construction is often used in joke-telling. Comedians set up the joke with one idea and then stray from that point, only to end by returning to what started the thread. This leaves readers feeling complete. There is a certain closure that happens when the start is reflected in the end.
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The first line of The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
The last line is: ”It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
Both lines talk about not telling, but from two different perspectives. In one, it comes off as bluster and dismissive. In the end, it is a realization that telling engages the heart.
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The first line of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is: “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.”
The last line is: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
Both opening and ending lines have the same rhythm. He uses repetition of phrasing to echo the beginning.
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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum begins with: “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.”
And ends with: “‘From the Land of Oz,’ said Dorothy gravely. ‘And here is Toto, too. And oh, Aunt Em! I’m so glad to be at home again!'”
It starts with Aunt Em and ends with her too. She represents home to Dorothy, which is the theme of the book.
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The first line from The Book Thief by Mark Zusak is: “Here is a small fact: You are going to die. I am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please trust me.”
The last line is: “A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR. I am haunted by humans.”
In the opening line, the narrator speaks about death and how all humans die. In the ending line, the narrator (Death) shares that humans haunt him. There is a direct link between the two.
Be Concise
You don’t need to overwrite. There is time to lay out your story and reveal your characters. It’s a human tendency to ramble when nervous. There is not much that induces anxiety more than starting a story. It’s that blank page with no words on it that can inspire word dumps. Pare down. Start slowly. Build over time. Pull your reader along with you. When you go too fast, you lose them because they can’t keep up with your racing thoughts. Take a breath and let them follow your narrator as the story unfolds.
“It was love at first sight”
Joseph Heller, Catch-22
“In the town they tell the story of the great pearl—how it was found and how it was lost again.”
John Steinbeck, The Pearl
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
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Work on your opening lines until they read as seamlessly as the last. These two lines will be the most difficult and more important in the book.