The only one I can immediately recall:
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" - Stephen King's The Gunslinger
How to Start a Novel
41–50 of 89 posts
Re: How to Start a Novel
#42My extended family owns an old country house with loads of fiction books, a fair bit of it genre fiction from the 50s and 60s.
We have a great game that we play when we go up there with friends, a bit like the Dictionary game/Balderdash. Everyone peruses the shelves a picks out a promising book. Then, one round at a time, someone gives the title of their book, reads the back, and maybe reads a few choice paragraphs from the middle or end, giving everyone a sense of the book.
Then everyone writes down an opening line on a slip of paper. The book-holder writes down the real first line. The slips are shuffled and the book-holder reads each of them, preferably dramatically. Everyone votes on the real one.
Writing first sentences is such a delightful exercise. And of course with genre fiction everyone has the license to go completely over the top. With the right group of people it's utterly hilarious, and it's amazing how frequently someone writes a sentence that seems better than the original.
(A random one I recall: a pot-boiled detective noir novel, involving a murder victim named Sunday: "If Sunday had known on Monday that on Tuesday she'd be dead, she would have made several different choices.")
Re: How to Start a Novel
#43“This is the forest primeval.” Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Re: How to Start a Novel
#44Trying to think of a catchy or clever novel opener can be a major discouragement from just getting the pen to the paper and formulating that first paragraph. It can be much easier to start your writing a bit further in, where you have a rough idea of a scene, and letting the characters and the action work themselves. In fact, this is a good way to create bridges through tricky parts, where you know the current scene,…
The idea that an author would just sit down and write a novel starting from the first line seems alien. Like a film not getting made because the director obsesses over the opening shot. Seems like a detail that should fall into place only once much of the groundwork has been laid.
Serial fiction has always been a thing. Most novels 150 years ago were written for magazines. Only in the past century did the write a novel as a complete book really take off. Even then though, authors often wrote trilogies where you wrote a third at a time. (publishers like this because people hooked on the first book at the library or discount store would buy the second and third at full price when it came out). Now in the web world a lot of great authors have figured out that patron and doing a chapter a week (or some schedule) is the most profitable way to write.
Re: How to Start a Novel
#45Do people really read the first sentence and then stop? If I'm going through the effort of opening the book, then I'll read at least a little more than the first line.
I tend to read a few pages before deciding if I want to keep reading the book.
Re: How to Start a Novel
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's kinda amusing that this particular opening line is considered terrible in English literary tradition. I would argue that it's the rest of the sentence that makes it a terrible opening — it keeps going on about the weather while most people presumably would rather start reading about the main character and his actions at this point already, — but the line as quoted is perfectly fine on its own.
Well, I don't know many stormy nights that are not dark... I am not a writer but usually, the idea is to limit repetition, especially in the opening line.
I have seen several storms during the daytime which were not dark. Living in the north I've also seen nights that were not dark at all.
Re: How to Start a Novel
#47I think the author over blows the significance of the first sentence in a novel. It never happened to me to abandon a book because I didn't like first sentence. Having said that, surprising opening is a thing. For instance the greatest Polish patriotic epic poem starts with: "O Lithuania, my country, thou Art like good health;". Which nowadays is kind of unexpected...
I agree, I find the first page is about the right length to get right. (first page is generally half a page). The first sentence needs to set a scene, and so it can't give enough information about the future action or if I will even care about the people. If you are a bad author I'll know in the first few paragraphs, but never after one sentence.
Re: How to Start a Novel
#48Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice Gabriel Garcia Marquez's opening line from One Hundred years of Solitude was enough for me to pick up the book. Personally, I feel that this is one of the best openings of any book I've read.
Maybe it is from all the years I have spent trying to trim my overly verbose writing, but "was to remember" grates on me as a needlessly inflated way of saying "remembered."
It seems to escape English writers (at least at college level) that different ways of writing have different meanings and connotations, which may be necessary in some situations. Another example is the passive voice that is derided in college circles as if there was no good way to use it (yes, there are many).
Re: How to Start a Novel
#49To me, Joseph Conrad will always be the best writer of openings. At times, they can be a bit too descriptive, but if you take your time, the atmosphere-building is worth it. He also frequently uses a layering technique, where the narrator reports someone or something else that contains the actual story. Heart of Darkness famously does this. I'll take this approach over an attention-grabbing line any day. Here's one o…
If you’re a fan of Conrad’s, and of audiobooks, I certainly hope you’ve listened to Kenneth Brannagh’s reading of Heart of Darkenss. It is excellent.
Re: How to Start a Novel
#50In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Mindblowing.
How about „When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton”?
Arguably less mindblowing. The first sentence test is useful, but there are type-2 errors.