 Horror/Scary: February 22, 2017 Issue [#8137] |
  Horror/Scary
This week: The Opening Sentence Edited by: W.D.Wilcox  
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LIKE CHESS, IT'S ALL ABOUT HOW YOU OPEN
The prolific author, Stephen King, reflected on the magnitude of a novel’s introductory sentence. “An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story,” he said. “It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” The first sentence sets the stage—however long or short the text—and hints at the “narrative vehicle” by which the writer will propel the book forward.
King continued:
Context is important, and so is style. But for me, a good opening sentence really begins with voice. You hear people talk about “voice” a lot, when I think they really just mean “style.” Voice is more than that. People come to books looking for something. But they don’t come for the story, or even for the characters. They certainly don’t come for the genre. I think readers come for the voice... An appealing voice achieves an intimate connection — a bond much stronger than the kind forged, intellectually, through crafted writing.
There are thousands of classic opening lines in fiction—A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison come to mind—but often the most well-known are not always the best. First sentences, of course, have different functions—to amuse, to frighten, to mystify—and the mechanics a writer uses to achieve this connection vary from genre to genre. When writing the best opening lines, we are inviting the reader into the story These are the sentences that say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.
“The time has come.”
—Dr. Seuss, Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!
“They shoot the white girl first.”
—Toni Morrison, Paradise
“Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.”
—Lynda Barry, Cruddy
“Don’t look for dignity in public bathrooms.”
—Victor LaValle, Big Machine
“The magician’s underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami.”
—Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction
“You better not never tell nobody but God.”
—Alice Walker, The Color Purple
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”
—Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.”
—Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.”
—Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
“I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I’m old, and you said, I don’t think you’re old.”
—Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
“A screaming comes across the sky.”
—Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
“Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon, with an 8-ball of coke in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat.”
—Dennis Lehane, “Until Gwen”
“Since it’s Sunday and it’s stopped raining, I think I’ll take a bouquet of roses to my grave.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “Someone Has Been Disarranging These Roses”
"The man in the midnight cloak had no thumbs."
--W.D.Wilcox, "Soul Drinkers"
There are so many good ones out there (and so many bad.) You know it's good if it makes you want to read on. To me, the opening sentence is more important than the ending. Because if your reader doesn't continue to read, they'll never get to the ending anyway.
Until next time,
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REALLY GOOD STORIES...REALLY
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|  | The Building (13+)
Curiosity gets the better of me as I noticed a strange building in downtown Seattle.
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DEAD LETTERS
LJPC - the tortoise 
Great story and I love that ending. Spooky! 
~ Laura
"Freak"
When she took off her makeup her true features emerged jagged with deep slashes, her mouth like a scar—her eyes like open wounds. She gripped the mirror as if it were a portal where some madwoman stood peering out with a lunatic grin—like a person locked outside of her house but can still look in through the windows and pound on the door. “Where are you, Raheesha? Where have you gone?”
Something scuttled across her face and she casually reached for it with a claw of a hand and snatched the cockroach from her cheek as it attempted to crawl into her mouth. “Not yet, my dear…not yet.”
Crushing the bug between her fingers, she turned from the mirror, and slowly melted back into her chair like a wax candle shaped into a semblance of lumpish human form. The rotting stench of her body filled the small carnival wagon that now served as her home.
Three years ago the doctors had diagnosed her with necrotizing fasciitis—‘flesh-eating’ disease. By all rights, she should have died within the first few months, but for some inexplicable reason she survived; her black skin deteriorating, the insurmountable pain never-ending. Even after all the countless skin grafts had failed and the insurance money had run out, she continued on—a sideshow attraction—a carnival freak.
Pouring another brandy, she shrank back into herself with a deep sigh that was something akin to grief. She stared at all the brightly colored billboards and posters that lined the walls of her wagon like a fading movie star; each a different caricature of a grotesque woman walking through the jungle with arms outstretched, rats scurrying beneath her feet. She smiled as she read the caption, 'Raheesha: Zombie Girl from Darkest Africa'.
"Africa,” she scoffed, “I’ve never been to Africa in my life.”
Outside, a storm approached, and she heard the trees and shrubs shiver as the rain whispered through the foliage. She stood stiffly, parts of her rotting skin still clinging to the chair, and ambled toward the door. Throwing it open, she took in a deep breath of freshly washed air. The rain rattled upon the roof of the wagon and clicked against the windows. As the wind blew, the trees shook like the manes of lions, and in her mind, she could almost hear them roaring, and see them gathering for the hunt.
As she watched, they crept forward, skulking beneath the undergrowth and moving toward her. She stepped back inside, her heart knocking as hard as a fist on a door. “I must be losing my mind,” she said, and sat down in front of the mirror.
The door hung open, and she thought she could hear the sound of tribal drums somewhere in the distance, and then the scratching of claws against the small wooden steps that led into her wagon. Through the mirror, she saw the yellow eyes of the first lion as it entered.
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