10 ms·

How to Start a Novel

132 points by see-also 5y ago

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
> If that opening sentence tries too hard, or holds no special friction, the book slips from its holder’s hands – back onto the table, or the shelf, ready to be replaced with a magazine, or a snack, or a screaming child. I’d love to know a first line amazing enough that one would ignore their own child?
- philtar 5y ago
  "Ignore this sentence and your child will die."
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > "Ignore this sentence and your child will die." The little-known proposal for a followup song from the Manic Street Preachers.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I think the writer may also be a little crazy, because a magazine or a snack can be considered as recreational activities that you can replace a book with, but it takes a special kind of person to consider a screaming child as recreational.
shantnutiwari 5y ago
A lot of writing advice focusses on writing the perfect first line/page/chapter, because that's all editors/agents will read. And so I find many books have great openings, but get boring in 2nd chapter. So if Im in a store, I always start browsing a book after the 1st chapter-- that gives me a better idea of what the book will be like. And this advice-- open a book with a "killer" opening isnt always true. When I was doing a writing course with Dean Smith, he had us analyse the openings of our favourite book. For me, at that time, was Jurassic Park. If you havent read the book, the first chapter is leisurely and slow, talking about a minor character who feels bored at her job as an island doctor. But that chapter is masterfully written, as the very last line hints that there is trouble in paradise, and sets up the main story. Compared with the movie, which starts in the middle of action, but the scene is dark and confusing, and I always skip it on repeat viewings.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  A parallel with software would be shareware games. Often the first free chapter was the best the game would ever get. John Romero advocated for "finishing the first level last", in order to make it best. Music also felt like this for me (in games), e.g.: the opening themes to Doom, Tyrian, Raptor are very memorable.
  - shantnutiwari 5y ago
    What I loved about Half-life demo-- it was a completely new level not in the original game--but it still had all the main things that made the game fun (aliens, marines, puzzles etc). For music -- I guess you do need a killer opening, as people will change the channel (or click away) (unless you are already very famous).
    - kibwen 5y ago
      This kind of demo that has "a little bit of everything" is known as a "vertical slice": https://www.whatgamesare.com/vertical-slice.html https://www.whatgamesare.com/vertical-slice.html
  - kibwen 5y ago
    Shigeru Miyamoto also confesses to making the first level last, in this interview with Dragon Quest's Yuji Horii from 1989: https://www.glitterberri.com/developer-interviews/miyamoto-horii-discussion/ https://www.glitterberri.com/developer-interviews/miyamoto-h...
piokoch 5y ago
I 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...
- bluGill 5y ago
  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.
V-2 5y ago
There was this character of an aspiring, wanna-be writer in "Plague" (by A. Camus), named Joseph Grand, who obsesses over the first sentence of his novel. He'd keep on rewriting it infinitely, never getting beyond it. "Perfection spells p-a-r-a-l-y-s-i-s", as the man said (Churchill, if I'm not mistaken). For what it's worth, I considered quoting Plague's first sentence here (if it were somehow fitting or interesting), and as I googled it up, I found an article devoted to this very subject: https://theconversation.com/first-sentences-establish-a-contract-with-the-reader-about-what-is-to-come-57984 https://theconversation.com/first-sentences-establish-a-cont... I didn't find Plague's opener to be particularly inspiring after all, but there are a few other examples.
- devindotcom 5y ago
  The Plague's opening is very prosaic, since that's sort of the voice and the point, that even extraordinary events are meaningless except in the importance we attach to them personally. The opening of The Stranger is much more grabby and also revealing for the narration. It has also presented something of a challenge for translators. I like Matthew Ward's "Maman died today." It's accurate, and neatly shows that infantile quality that Meursault's internal narration has.
surfingdino 5y ago
A more useful advice would be on how to finish the damn things.
- nxpnsv 5y ago
  You get that first sentence right, then you stop. Now you can publish your novel with twitter.
- omarhaneef 5y ago
  Perhaps you have trouble with endings? One way around this is to take the big, dramatic opening and make it your ending. Then work back from what happened before. Once you have worked your way to the beginning, you can write it.
Aerroon 5y ago
Do 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.
- sdevonoes 5y ago
  I tend to read a few pages before deciding if I want to keep reading the book.
teleforce 5y ago
I'm surprised that the author of the article did not include the classic "It was a dark and stormy night" [1]. Granted it's probably a bad way to start a novel, but it's a famous and a catchy way to start a novel to get the reader's attention. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night
- Joker_vD 5y ago
  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.
  - GuB-42 5y ago
    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.
    - wdb 5y ago
      Yes, but I think here they refer to not daylight. That's how I always read it :D
    - Joker_vD 5y ago
      Please notice that the line is not "It was a stormy and dark night". Or is "On a bright sunny morning, in downtown New York" also a bad opening?
    - bluGill 5y ago
      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.
    - bayouborne 5y ago
keiferski 5y ago
To 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 of my favorites, from Karain: A Memory: We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives; but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the lines of those short paragraphs—sunshine and the glitter of the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel. Edit: if you listen to the audiobook, you can really hear the beauty of his language. Especially the intro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp9GT76NPaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp9GT76NPaE
- ycombinete 5y ago
  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.
  - keiferski 5y ago
    I haven't, actually, thanks for the suggestion!
jeffwass 5y ago
Trying 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 scene after the next one but no idea how it got there. Instead of struggling with the blank page for too long, skip the unknown scene and keep writing. And later on you'll likely have a good plan for filling in the bridge. It's much easier to go back and fill in the gaps when you've figured out the 'voice' of your novel, and have a good understanding of the characters and their quirks. You may also realise you can cut so many of the gratuitous scenes that were useful in your mind for connecting A to B in terms of worldbuilding and plot progression, but are extraneous to the reader.
- huachimingo 5y ago
  Ray Bradbury did this with Farenheit 451. He did a small demo with all the key aspects and then made the novel. You can do a lot of these small "demos" or short stories and save them for a future novel. Or instead write them together and make an anthology, like the Poe stories. We need more anthologies.
  - flybrand 5y ago
    Vonnegut does this a lot too - toying with an idea over and over again until he feels it is fully explored.
  - austinl 5y ago
    Ironically, the first time I remember being struck by an opening line was from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury: "The seller of lightning-rods arrived just ahead of the storm." It's almost too forward — but I loved the visual. It's hard to not be hooked by the impending storm.
- Tycho 5y ago
  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.
myth2018 5y ago
Speaking of openings referring death, I particularly like the one on The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, from Machado de Assis: "To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs" PS: it's not exactly an opening line, it's a dedication. But I think it performs the same function in this case.
chrisan 5y ago
If anyone is interested in Fantasy/Sci Fi, Brandon Sanderson has some lectures at BYU on writing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6HOdHEeosc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6HOdHEeosc This guy not only has amazing stories and characters, but he is able to crank them out soooo fast.
FlyingSnake 5y ago
Many 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.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  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."
  - zikzak 5y ago
    I agree but the author might be implying that this was not the first thought and that creates dramatic tension. What triggered the memory? Was he recalling it on purpose to inform his next move? Was he forced to remember because the leader of the firing squad also figured in the memory but he didn't realize it at first?
  - playdead 5y ago
    I'm unsure if you've read this novel, but the translation "was to remember" actually works well here, and was probably a deliberate choice. The cycles of time are a major theme in the story.
  - bprieto 5y ago
    The Spanish original is "había de recordar", and "was to remember" is a good translation. It's meaning is different from just "remembered", as it implies a causality. It wasn't a random remembrance that just happened, it was some memory that was brought by the proximity of death.
    - wintermutestwin 5y ago
      Interesting - I didn't realize it was a translated work. I would have inferred causality with "remembered" due to the sentence structure. My comment was intended to decry the loss of my more literate and verbose pre-corporate self.
paulpauper 5y ago
good advice. now i need help with the rest of it
throwaway284534 5y ago
Semi-related, I don’t understand how authors can pour so much work into a book and let it be published with a mediocre cover and backmatter. The old saying is just the opposite. A bad and cliche cover is the real death sentence for a book. And the summary on the back, that’s almost more important than the first chapter! Do authors and publishers really believe that smattering reviews on the backside would somehow impress a reader? “I love this book” says New York Times. Okay…? What’s the pull? IMO the backside of the book should be written in the style of the novel rather than a marketing pitch. Let the reader get a glimpse of the story from the main character’s perspective in their own words.
- FemmeAndroid 5y ago
  Unless you're talking about self publishing, most authors don't get a strong say in how the book looks. That's up to the publishers. And it's my understanding that publishers really do believe those pull quotes really do affect sales.
- jeffwass 5y ago
  Traditionally-published authors usually have little say in the layout of their books. I’ve heard of cases where authors have absolutely hated the cover artwork chosen by the publishing houses but were unable to sway opinions. It’s part of the process of going with a traditional publisher. They do the marketing for you, as compared to self publishing, and therefore you have to accept their ‘marketing’ decisions, including cover design.
ainiriand 5y ago
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Mindblowing.
- nathell 5y ago
  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.
xbar 5y ago
It was a dark and stormy night.
zuzzytel 5y ago
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. And here is an advice from Anton Chekhov: “My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.”
uglygoblin 5y ago
The only one I can immediately recall: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" - Stephen King's The Gunslinger
SamBam 5y ago
My 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.")
- somewhatoff 5y ago
  This is a wonderful game! If you don't have access to a country house library, then there is a card-based version: https://oxfordgames.co.uk/shop/ex-libris/ https://oxfordgames.co.uk/shop/ex-libris/
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Neat game. I have a board game, whose name escapes me at the moment. Instead of books, players receive cards, and tell stories about the cards, the player whose turn it is tells a story about their card, and then others hand them a card that they think matches the story, and then everyone has to guess whose card is the player's. If everyone guesses, player gets no points and everyone else 2. If no-one guess, player gets no points either. But if at least 1 person guesses, players gets 2 points, and thoseguessed correctly and who produced cards that other people guessed can get points too.
  - fraXis 5y ago
    This sounds fun! Can you please reply with the name of the game?
julienchastang 5y ago
“This is the forest primeval.” Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
jjgreen 5y ago
“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.” ― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins
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plaidfuji 5y ago
Pulling some random books off my shelf that I think fit with this author’s idea of a “good” opener: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo > The trial was irretrievably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose. Slaughterhouse-five > All this happened, more or less. The House of God > Except for her sunglasses, Berry is naked. Everything is Illuminated: > It was March 18, 1971, when Trachim B’s double-axle wagon either did or did not pin him against the bottom of the Brod River.
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FredPret 5y ago
Step 1: ask yourself: "Do I hope to make money with this?" If yes, proceed to step 2: stop right there
tehnub 5y ago
Reminds me of a post [0] where someone shared potential novel opening lines that had been generated by GPT-2. So many of them are interesting and/or hilarious. A few of my favorites: I am forced to write to my neighbors about the beast. I was playing with my dog, Mark the brown labrador, and I had forgotten that I was also playing with a dead man. I wish someone would make a novel out of these! [0]: https://aiweirdness.com/post/189170306297/how-to-begin-a-novel https://aiweirdness.com/post/189170306297/how-to-begin-a-nov...
chmod775 5y ago
> the first line is frequently the only line a reader reads. Never have I done that. Most people will give it at least half a chapter. A typical reader will already have an idea of what they're getting themselves into - from being familiar with the author, reviews, or blurb. They're not going to put your book down just because your opening isn't something clever. You don't want readers to think about how clever you are anyways. You want them to be immersed in your story, if a story is what you're selling. The first chapter, like any other part of your story, should be interesting, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with starting it as you would chapter five.
tunesmith 5y ago
Had a great time recently, reading aloud the story that starts with this sentence: "It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter."
vlmutolo 5y ago
I've always been partial to clear prose that sets the stage. “The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.” A Wizard of Earthsea
vlmutolo 5y ago
This thread from r/fantasy is a treasure trove of great opening lines. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/lwf5m4/favorite_opening_lines/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/lwf5m4/favorite_op...
SkyMarshal 5y ago
I'm rather partial to the opening line of Michael Crighton's Congo: Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent. Then it launches into a modern high-tech version of Heart of Darkness.
com 5y ago
“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” A fabulous first line, from The Crow Road by Iain Banks. Doubly good for me since a friend asked me for a recommendation for an interesting read, and I later discovered that he had sent it, unread, to his grandmother for her birthday.

132 points by see-also 5y ago

> If that opening sentence tries too hard, or holds no special friction, the book slips from its holder’s hands – back onto the table, or the shelf, ready to be replaced with a magazine, or a snack, or a screaming child. I’d love to know a first line amazing enough that one would ignore their own child?

philtar 5y ago
"Ignore this sentence and your child will die."
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > "Ignore this sentence and your child will die." The little-known proposal for a followup song from the Manic Street Preachers.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I think the writer may also be a little crazy, because a magazine or a snack can be considered as recreational activities that you can replace a book with, but it takes a special kind of person to consider a screaming child as recreational.

shantnutiwari 5y ago

A lot of writing advice focusses on writing the perfect first line/page/chapter, because that's all editors/agents will read. And so I find many books have great openings, but get boring in 2nd chapter. So if Im in a store, I always start browsing a book after the 1st chapter-- that gives me a better idea of what the book will be like. And this advice-- open a book with a "killer" opening isnt always true. When I was doing a writing course with Dean Smith, he had us analyse the openings of our favourite book. For me, at that time, was Jurassic Park. If you havent read the book, the first chapter is leisurely and slow, talking about a minor character who feels bored at her job as an island doctor. But that chapter is masterfully written, as the very last line hints that there is trouble in paradise, and sets up the main story. Compared with the movie, which starts in the middle of action, but the scene is dark and confusing, and I always skip it on repeat viewings.

yoz-y 5y ago
A parallel with software would be shareware games. Often the first free chapter was the best the game would ever get. John Romero advocated for "finishing the first level last", in order to make it best. Music also felt like this for me (in games), e.g.: the opening themes to Doom, Tyrian, Raptor are very memorable.
- shantnutiwari 5y ago
  What I loved about Half-life demo-- it was a completely new level not in the original game--but it still had all the main things that made the game fun (aliens, marines, puzzles etc). For music -- I guess you do need a killer opening, as people will change the channel (or click away) (unless you are already very famous).
  - kibwen 5y ago
    This kind of demo that has "a little bit of everything" is known as a "vertical slice": https://www.whatgamesare.com/vertical-slice.html https://www.whatgamesare.com/vertical-slice.html
- kibwen 5y ago
  Shigeru Miyamoto also confesses to making the first level last, in this interview with Dragon Quest's Yuji Horii from 1989: https://www.glitterberri.com/developer-interviews/miyamoto-horii-discussion/ https://www.glitterberri.com/developer-interviews/miyamoto-h...

piokoch 5y ago

I 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...

bluGill 5y ago
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.

V-2 5y ago

There was this character of an aspiring, wanna-be writer in "Plague" (by A. Camus), named Joseph Grand, who obsesses over the first sentence of his novel. He'd keep on rewriting it infinitely, never getting beyond it. "Perfection spells p-a-r-a-l-y-s-i-s", as the man said (Churchill, if I'm not mistaken). For what it's worth, I considered quoting Plague's first sentence here (if it were somehow fitting or interesting), and as I googled it up, I found an article devoted to this very subject: https://theconversation.com/first-sentences-establish-a-contract-with-the-reader-about-what-is-to-come-57984 https://theconversation.com/first-sentences-establish-a-cont... I didn't find Plague's opener to be particularly inspiring after all, but there are a few other examples.

devindotcom 5y ago
The Plague's opening is very prosaic, since that's sort of the voice and the point, that even extraordinary events are meaningless except in the importance we attach to them personally. The opening of The Stranger is much more grabby and also revealing for the narration. It has also presented something of a challenge for translators. I like Matthew Ward's "Maman died today." It's accurate, and neatly shows that infantile quality that Meursault's internal narration has.

surfingdino 5y ago

A more useful advice would be on how to finish the damn things.

nxpnsv 5y ago
You get that first sentence right, then you stop. Now you can publish your novel with twitter.
omarhaneef 5y ago
Perhaps you have trouble with endings? One way around this is to take the big, dramatic opening and make it your ending. Then work back from what happened before. Once you have worked your way to the beginning, you can write it.

Aerroon 5y ago

Do 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.

sdevonoes 5y ago
I tend to read a few pages before deciding if I want to keep reading the book.

teleforce 5y ago

I'm surprised that the author of the article did not include the classic "It was a dark and stormy night" [1]. Granted it's probably a bad way to start a novel, but it's a famous and a catchy way to start a novel to get the reader's attention. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night

Joker_vD 5y ago
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.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  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.
  - wdb 5y ago
    Yes, but I think here they refer to not daylight. That's how I always read it :D
  - Joker_vD 5y ago
    Please notice that the line is not "It was a stormy and dark night". Or is "On a bright sunny morning, in downtown New York" also a bad opening?
  - bluGill 5y ago
    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.
  - bayouborne 5y ago

keiferski 5y ago

To 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 of my favorites, from Karain: A Memory: We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives; but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the lines of those short paragraphs—sunshine and the glitter of the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel. Edit: if you listen to the audiobook, you can really hear the beauty of his language. Especially the intro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp9GT76NPaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp9GT76NPaE

ycombinete 5y ago
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.
- keiferski 5y ago
  I haven't, actually, thanks for the suggestion!

jeffwass 5y ago

Trying 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 scene after the next one but no idea how it got there. Instead of struggling with the blank page for too long, skip the unknown scene and keep writing. And later on you'll likely have a good plan for filling in the bridge. It's much easier to go back and fill in the gaps when you've figured out the 'voice' of your novel, and have a good understanding of the characters and their quirks. You may also realise you can cut so many of the gratuitous scenes that were useful in your mind for connecting A to B in terms of worldbuilding and plot progression, but are extraneous to the reader.

huachimingo 5y ago
Ray Bradbury did this with Farenheit 451. He did a small demo with all the key aspects and then made the novel. You can do a lot of these small "demos" or short stories and save them for a future novel. Or instead write them together and make an anthology, like the Poe stories. We need more anthologies.
- flybrand 5y ago
  Vonnegut does this a lot too - toying with an idea over and over again until he feels it is fully explored.
- austinl 5y ago
  Ironically, the first time I remember being struck by an opening line was from Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury: "The seller of lightning-rods arrived just ahead of the storm." It's almost too forward — but I loved the visual. It's hard to not be hooked by the impending storm.
Tycho 5y ago
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.

myth2018 5y ago

Speaking of openings referring death, I particularly like the one on The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, from Machado de Assis: "To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs" PS: it's not exactly an opening line, it's a dedication. But I think it performs the same function in this case.

chrisan 5y ago

If anyone is interested in Fantasy/Sci Fi, Brandon Sanderson has some lectures at BYU on writing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6HOdHEeosc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6HOdHEeosc This guy not only has amazing stories and characters, but he is able to crank them out soooo fast.

FlyingSnake 5y ago

Many 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.

wintermutestwin 5y ago
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."
- zikzak 5y ago
  I agree but the author might be implying that this was not the first thought and that creates dramatic tension. What triggered the memory? Was he recalling it on purpose to inform his next move? Was he forced to remember because the leader of the firing squad also figured in the memory but he didn't realize it at first?
- playdead 5y ago
  I'm unsure if you've read this novel, but the translation "was to remember" actually works well here, and was probably a deliberate choice. The cycles of time are a major theme in the story.
- bprieto 5y ago
  The Spanish original is "había de recordar", and "was to remember" is a good translation. It's meaning is different from just "remembered", as it implies a causality. It wasn't a random remembrance that just happened, it was some memory that was brought by the proximity of death.
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    Interesting - I didn't realize it was a translated work. I would have inferred causality with "remembered" due to the sentence structure. My comment was intended to decry the loss of my more literate and verbose pre-corporate self.

paulpauper 5y ago

good advice. now i need help with the rest of it

throwaway284534 5y ago

Semi-related, I don’t understand how authors can pour so much work into a book and let it be published with a mediocre cover and backmatter. The old saying is just the opposite. A bad and cliche cover is the real death sentence for a book. And the summary on the back, that’s almost more important than the first chapter! Do authors and publishers really believe that smattering reviews on the backside would somehow impress a reader? “I love this book” says New York Times. Okay…? What’s the pull? IMO the backside of the book should be written in the style of the novel rather than a marketing pitch. Let the reader get a glimpse of the story from the main character’s perspective in their own words.

FemmeAndroid 5y ago
Unless you're talking about self publishing, most authors don't get a strong say in how the book looks. That's up to the publishers. And it's my understanding that publishers really do believe those pull quotes really do affect sales.
jeffwass 5y ago
Traditionally-published authors usually have little say in the layout of their books. I’ve heard of cases where authors have absolutely hated the cover artwork chosen by the publishing houses but were unable to sway opinions. It’s part of the process of going with a traditional publisher. They do the marketing for you, as compared to self publishing, and therefore you have to accept their ‘marketing’ decisions, including cover design.

ainiriand 5y ago

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Mindblowing.

nathell 5y ago
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.

xbar 5y ago

It was a dark and stormy night.

zuzzytel 5y ago

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. And here is an advice from Anton Chekhov: “My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.”

uglygoblin 5y ago

The only one I can immediately recall: "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" - Stephen King's The Gunslinger

SamBam 5y ago

My 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.")

somewhatoff 5y ago
This is a wonderful game! If you don't have access to a country house library, then there is a card-based version: https://oxfordgames.co.uk/shop/ex-libris/ https://oxfordgames.co.uk/shop/ex-libris/
jonnycomputer 5y ago
Neat game. I have a board game, whose name escapes me at the moment. Instead of books, players receive cards, and tell stories about the cards, the player whose turn it is tells a story about their card, and then others hand them a card that they think matches the story, and then everyone has to guess whose card is the player's. If everyone guesses, player gets no points and everyone else 2. If no-one guess, player gets no points either. But if at least 1 person guesses, players gets 2 points, and thoseguessed correctly and who produced cards that other people guessed can get points too.
- fraXis 5y ago
  This sounds fun! Can you please reply with the name of the game?

julienchastang 5y ago

“This is the forest primeval.” Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

jjgreen 5y ago

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.” ― P.G. Wodehouse, The Luck of the Bodkins

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plaidfuji 5y ago

Pulling some random books off my shelf that I think fit with this author’s idea of a “good” opener: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo > The trial was irretrievably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose. Slaughterhouse-five > All this happened, more or less. The House of God > Except for her sunglasses, Berry is naked. Everything is Illuminated: > It was March 18, 1971, when Trachim B’s double-axle wagon either did or did not pin him against the bottom of the Brod River.

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FredPret 5y ago

Step 1: ask yourself: "Do I hope to make money with this?" If yes, proceed to step 2: stop right there

tehnub 5y ago

Reminds me of a post [0] where someone shared potential novel opening lines that had been generated by GPT-2. So many of them are interesting and/or hilarious. A few of my favorites: I am forced to write to my neighbors about the beast. I was playing with my dog, Mark the brown labrador, and I had forgotten that I was also playing with a dead man. I wish someone would make a novel out of these! [0]: https://aiweirdness.com/post/189170306297/how-to-begin-a-novel https://aiweirdness.com/post/189170306297/how-to-begin-a-nov...

chmod775 5y ago

> the first line is frequently the only line a reader reads. Never have I done that. Most people will give it at least half a chapter. A typical reader will already have an idea of what they're getting themselves into - from being familiar with the author, reviews, or blurb. They're not going to put your book down just because your opening isn't something clever. You don't want readers to think about how clever you are anyways. You want them to be immersed in your story, if a story is what you're selling. The first chapter, like any other part of your story, should be interesting, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with starting it as you would chapter five.

tunesmith 5y ago

Had a great time recently, reading aloud the story that starts with this sentence: "It was not until several weeks after he had decided to murder his wife that Dr. Bickleigh took any active steps in the matter."

vlmutolo 5y ago

I've always been partial to clear prose that sets the stage. “The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.” A Wizard of Earthsea

vlmutolo 5y ago

This thread from r/fantasy is a treasure trove of great opening lines. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/lwf5m4/favorite_opening_lines/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/lwf5m4/favorite_op...

SkyMarshal 5y ago

I'm rather partial to the opening line of Michael Crighton's Congo: Only prejudice, and a trick of the Mercator projection, prevents us from recognizing the enormity of the African continent. Then it launches into a modern high-tech version of Heart of Darkness.

com 5y ago

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” A fabulous first line, from The Crow Road by Iain Banks. Doubly good for me since a friend asked me for a recommendation for an interesting read, and I later discovered that he had sent it, unread, to his grandmother for her birthday.