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How to Write an Opening Sentence

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Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#51

Post by to3m »

philh wrote: post #48
jonnathanson wrote: post #36

Most people stop reading something after the first few sentences. In that crucial 10 to 15 seconds, a book (or essay, or article, or blog post) has to make, and win, a subconscious appeal to your attention. Your reader's attention span is like a snotty doorman at a hot club. Your opening sentence needs to grab his interest and sneak the rest of the piece into the door. Consider the following examples from fiction: "I…

> "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984 I think I've frequently heard this called a great opening line, and I've never worked out why. It doesn't tell me anything that I care about, it doesn't seem especially clever, and I don't notice myself having any other discernible emotional reaction to it. Can someone explain?

Clocks don't generally strike thirteen. So, if nothing else, you might read on to find out what's going on.

(This style of opening might have been a bit more cutting-edge in 1948, perhaps.)

Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#52

Post by nagrom »

philh wrote: post #48
jonnathanson wrote: post #36

Most people stop reading something after the first few sentences. In that crucial 10 to 15 seconds, a book (or essay, or article, or blog post) has to make, and win, a subconscious appeal to your attention. Your reader's attention span is like a snotty doorman at a hot club. Your opening sentence needs to grab his interest and sneak the rest of the piece into the door. Consider the following examples from fiction: "I…

> "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984 I think I've frequently heard this called a great opening line, and I've never worked out why. It doesn't tell me anything that I care about, it doesn't seem especially clever, and I don't notice myself having any other discernible emotional reaction to it. Can someone explain?

It sets the scene really well: "A bright, cold day in April" is evocative of exactly that. It's not pretentious and it immediately puts a setting in the readers mind.

"and the clocks were striking thirteen." is an immediate juxtaposition of something non-intuitive. The first reaction is "Clocks don't strike thirteen! They strike a maximum of twelve!". It's just nonintuitive enough without necessarily being obviously nonsense. And so the reader is engaged to read the next sentence to find out what he means by thirteen. Get the reader to read the next sentence enough, and you've tricked them into reading the book ;-)

Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#53

Post by j_baker »

philh wrote: post #48
jonnathanson wrote: post #36

Most people stop reading something after the first few sentences. In that crucial 10 to 15 seconds, a book (or essay, or article, or blog post) has to make, and win, a subconscious appeal to your attention. Your reader's attention span is like a snotty doorman at a hot club. Your opening sentence needs to grab his interest and sneak the rest of the piece into the door. Consider the following examples from fiction: "I…

> "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984 I think I've frequently heard this called a great opening line, and I've never worked out why. It doesn't tell me anything that I care about, it doesn't seem especially clever, and I don't notice myself having any other discernible emotional reaction to it. Can someone explain?

I think the point of the first line isn't to say anything, be clever, or to give you an emotional reaction. It's to prompt questions that make you want to read further. Questions like:

* Why is it a cold day in spite of the fact that it's spring, and bright out?

* Why are the clocks striking thirteen? Did the earth's rotation become slower? Or did some bureaucrat change the system of time to match his whims?

In my mind, it alludes to the fact that this is a world that is ok with blatantly inconsistencies, but forces you to verify that allusion by reading further.

Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#54

Post by nagrom »

notahacker wrote: post #50
koralatov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though I'm not a great fan of his work, Banks did write one of the most memorable opening lines ever in The Crow Road . Two other great examples: William Gibson's Neuromancer : "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Herman Melville's Moby Dick : "Call me Ishmael." Neither strictly tells the reader what the books are about, but they're great hooks.

For sheer flippancy, it's hard to beat Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse Five "All of this happened, more or less." [edit: originally I put Catch-22, which the user below correctly points out was not Vonnegut and had a different opening line]

Joseph Heller

Kurt Vonnegut's writing is superior to my mind, but a lot of people may disagree.

Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#55

Post by summerdown2 »

philh wrote: post #48
jonnathanson wrote: post #36

Most people stop reading something after the first few sentences. In that crucial 10 to 15 seconds, a book (or essay, or article, or blog post) has to make, and win, a subconscious appeal to your attention. Your reader's attention span is like a snotty doorman at a hot club. Your opening sentence needs to grab his interest and sneak the rest of the piece into the door. Consider the following examples from fiction: "I…

> "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984 I think I've frequently heard this called a great opening line, and I've never worked out why. It doesn't tell me anything that I care about, it doesn't seem especially clever, and I don't notice myself having any other discernible emotional reaction to it. Can someone explain?

We know what the weather is.

The word 'April' tells us it's a time and place similar to today.

Clocks striking thirteen tells us it's somewhere different.

Thirteen is a traditionally unlucky number.

It's a classic science fiction method of establishing setting. We're someplace similar to today but a little different, all transmitted in very few words. The effect is a tiny bit unsettling... if they changed the clocks to chime on thirteen, what else is wrong?

It's similar to Heinlein's famous way of indicating we're in the future in a single line: "The door dilated."

More here:

http://fritzfreiheit.com/wiki/About_Five_Thousand_Seven_Hund...

Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#56

Post by mcguire »

koralatov wrote: post #8
arethuza wrote: post #2

Iain Banks manages to provide both one of the most memorable opening sentences: "It was the day my grandmother exploded." and my favourite opening paragraph (or two): "Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let th…

Even though I'm not a great fan of his work, Banks did write one of the most memorable opening lines ever in The Crow Road . Two other great examples: William Gibson's Neuromancer : "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Herman Melville's Moby Dick : "Call me Ishmael." Neither strictly tells the reader what the books are about, but they're great hooks.

"William Gibson's Neuromancer: 'The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.'"

That is one of my favorite openers, too, but it has seemed weirdly anachronistic for a while. Does anyone under the age of 30 remember television static? Will anyone in Gibson's future?

Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#57

Post by bhaak »

mcguire wrote: post #56
koralatov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though I'm not a great fan of his work, Banks did write one of the most memorable opening lines ever in The Crow Road . Two other great examples: William Gibson's Neuromancer : "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." Herman Melville's Moby Dick : "Call me Ishmael." Neither strictly tells the reader what the books are about, but they're great hooks.

" William Gibson's Neuromancer: 'The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.' " That is one of my favorite openers, too, but it has seemed weirdly anachronistic for a while. Does anyone under the age of 30 remember television static? Will anyone in Gibson's future?

Youtube shows static when there's been some kind of error.

Which is kind a funny, considering nobody will understand that. :)

Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#58

Post by Florin_Andrei »

bhaak wrote: post #57
mcguire wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" William Gibson's Neuromancer: 'The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.' " That is one of my favorite openers, too, but it has seemed weirdly anachronistic for a while. Does anyone under the age of 30 remember television static? Will anyone in Gibson's future?

Youtube shows static when there's been some kind of error. Which is kind a funny, considering nobody will understand that. :)

If it becomes common enough (i.e. a "meme") then suddenly everybody will "understand" it.

Re: How to Write an Opening Sentence

#59

Post by psykotic »

jonnathanson wrote: post #36

Most people stop reading something after the first few sentences. In that crucial 10 to 15 seconds, a book (or essay, or article, or blog post) has to make, and win, a subconscious appeal to your attention. Your reader's attention span is like a snotty doorman at a hot club. Your opening sentence needs to grab his interest and sneak the rest of the piece into the door. Consider the following examples from fiction: "I…

Those opening sentences have a particular kind of urgency. By contrast, the equally memorable openings of Lolita and Moby Dick could never be called urgent, but they do instantly establish an unusual first-person narrator. What they all share is density. If instead you want to fill up the page with ink while wasting the time of your readers, you start your book like Dickens did in A Tale of Two Cities.
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