Blogocentric Formulations

Opening Lines

"Blog Harbor from The Talent Pond"  PROMPT (DAY 28): Opening lines/paragraphs are usually the very first hook to a book when you start reading. If you are a novelist, and if you handle your work with such care, you'll probably want to start your novel with something that readers will capture at first, something that will tickle their mind or give that sensational feeling of curiosity for everything you'll go through by the time you finish the reading. How often do you notice opening lines and how often you memorize those? Are they important to you as they are important to me? Do you have favorite opening lines and if so tell me what are those?


I generally don't pay much attention to the opening lines of a novel. Sure, I can appreciate a good one, but since novels are longform writing, I'm much more concerned about the character and story development in the first 20% of the book than I am the specific construction of any one particular sentence. When I write my own books I do put a lot of thought into the first line just as a general challenge to myself, but I don't agonize over it unnecessarily.

Opening lines are much more important to my short fiction. With so few words to work with, every one counts and especially when you're first trying to hook a reader. I try to pay really close attention to the opening lines of my short stories and those that I review from others; when you've only got a few thousand or maybe even a few hundred words to work with, making a good impression with a strong first line is critical.

One of my favorite opening paragraphs is from Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind: "It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts." It instantly makes you want to keep reading because you're automatically filled with a bunch of questions. How can a silence have multiple parts? What are the three parts? Mystery abounds!

Some other book openings that really piqued my interest right away:

"I'm pretty much fucked.
That's my considered opinion.
Fucked.
Six days into what should be the greatest two months of my life, and it's turned into a nightmare.
I don't even know who'll read this. I guess someone will find it eventually. Maybe a hundred years from now."
From The Martian by Andy Weir


"The galaxy is a dumpster fire.
That's not the way the Senate and House of Reason want you to hear it. They want me - or one of my brothers - to remove my helmet and stand in front of a holocam, all smiles. They want you to see me without my N-4 rifle (I'm never without my N-4) holding a unit of water while a bunch of raggedy kids from Morobii or Grevulo, you can pick whatever ass-backward planet garners the most sympathy this week, dance around me smiling right back. They want me to give a thumbs-up and say, "At the edge of the galaxy, the Republic is making a difference!
But the galaxy is a dumpster fire. A hot, stinking dumpster fire. And most days I don't know if the legionnaires are putting out the flames, or fanning them into an inferno."
From Legionnaire (Galaxy's Edge Book 1) by Jason Anspach & Nick Cole


"Tommy Wiseau has always been an eccentric dresser, but on a late-summer night in 2002 he was turning the heads of every model, weirdo, transvestite, and face-lift artist in and around Hollywood's Palm Restaurant."
From The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero


"Nate Tucker found out about the apartment as people often learn about the things which change their life forever - by sheer luck."
From 14 by Peter Clines


"The circus arrives without warning.
No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local papers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not."
From The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern