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What makes a great opening line?

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Re: What makes a great opening line?

#181

Post by bluejay2 »

"Desde la puerta de La Crónica Santiago mira la avenida Tacna, sin amor: automóviles, edificios desiguales y descoloridos, esqueletos de avisos luminosos flotando en la neblina, el mediodía gris. ¿En qué momento se habia jodido el Perú?"

"From the doorway of La Crónica Santiago looks at the Avenida Tacna without love: cars, uneven and faded buildings, the gaudy skeletons of posters floating in the mist, the gray midday. At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?"

La conversación en la catedral, Mario Vargas Llosa

Re: What makes a great opening line?

#183

Post by diegoperini »

Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008 ps3 game) has this opening cutscene:

“War has changed.

It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines.

War--and it's consumption of life--has become a well-oiled machine.

War has changed.

ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear. Nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities.

Genetic control, information control, emotion control, battlefield control…everything is monitored and kept under control.

War…has changed.

The age of deterrence has become the age of control, all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction, and he who controls the battlefield, controls history.

War…has changed.

When the battlefield is under total control, war becomes routine.”

This is a great opening because while Solid Snake speaks, you are presented with a 5 minute showcase of everything unchanged about the war.

Re: What makes a great opening line?

#184

Post by belter »

jamiek88 wrote: post #102
dmje wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cor yeh, requires some staying power but what an amazing, life changing read.

I used to think ‘life changing read’ was hyperbole or just plain bullshit until I read Crime and Punishment. That masterpiece took me a long time to digest and did indeed change me.

Ten years of exile in Siberia, is the requirement to write at that level.

Re: What makes a great opening line?

#185

Post by Anthony-G »

mattmanser wrote: post #163
dsr_ wrote: post #12

What makes a great opening line? A great rest-of-the-story. Nobody praises the opening line of a story that they otherwise think is rather boring.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed Stephen King has written about how the Dark Tower was written, and it came from the opening line. A great opening line is an inspiration for the rest of the story, it sets the scene.

I loved the first three books when I read them back in the early nineties but The Gunslinger is my favourite of the series. It had a certain poetic beauty and mysterious quality to it that was unlike any other Stephen King book that I had read before – or since.

Re: What makes a great opening line?

#186

Post by helloworld11 »

soperj wrote: post #29

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

All of Catch-22 is full of brilliant lines like this, and littered with absurdist comedy gems. Curious how it turns into such a horribly depressing story by the end.

Re: What makes a great opening line?

#187

Post by ilove196884 »

theWreckluse wrote: post #155
novosel wrote: post #55

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

This is poetic and all, but I fail to see why it’s so great. I’m am curious.

Lol that is from lolita. Read the book aloud in a library.

Re: What makes a great opening line?

#188

Post by kkoncevicius »

I've found a lot of good opening lines in short free-form essays. Here are some examples:

"This single stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I once knew in a flourishing state in a forest." - A Meditation Upon a Broom-Stick, Jonathan Swift, 1701.

"'What is Truth?' said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." - Of Truth, Francis Bacon, 1625

"The devil is a citizen of every country, but only in our own are we in constant peril of an introduction to him." - Disintroductions, Ambrose Bierce, 1902

"Human being are curious creatures, and in nothing more curious than in the forms of diversion which they devise for themselves." - Evening Parties, Rose Macaulay, 1926

"The effort which people put up to avoid thinking might almost enable them to think and to have some new ideas." - Symmetry and Repetition, Lewis Namier, 1941

"The other day a cousin of mine was married; thought what God or myself had to do with it I do not know, but I was obliged to go to church." - The Sterner Sex, Rebecca West, 1913

"Sometimes it is so hard to criticize, one wants only to chronicle.", Bad Poets, Randall Jarrell, 1953

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