This month I’m late publishing – I was on a trip to the Outer Banks with the fam and several of our close friends when Hurricane Dorian hit. Fortunately we were able evacuate and found another spot to land on Lake Gaston. It just so happened that despite the change in location and plans we had a perfect week, beautiful weather, refreshing conversation and lots and lots of laughter.
Now I’m back, fall is in the air and life is begging to be lived. My oldest boy started 1st grade on Monday and I got to walk him to his first day of class. He was decked out in new shoes and new backpack, but the wonder, curiosity and excitement were the same that he’s carried with him since he started tottering after me half a decade ago.
It feels like the opening line to a new story. And I suppose it is.
Speaking of opening lines, our group of writers have put together some favorites for you. Check them out below…
Robin Lythgoe
Author of As the Crow Flies
The internet is full of lists of “best first sentences.” That opening line garners a lot of attention. It has a lot of work to do! It’s got to set the mood and draw the reader in. No hemming and hawing, blushing, or flailing around for something to talk about. (So I would totally fail as an opening line…)
Luckily, writers can devote a little time to figuring out that all-important greeting before someone opens the door. Er… book. I’m going to skip past the Usual Suspects and head straight to my own shelves. Oh, the hand-rubbing and gleeful expressions! I love rummaging through my books and I’m in the mood for a little questionable book-sniffing. So I’m going to stick with physical copies this go-round, which is strictly unfair to the digital part of the collection, but who’s the boss? I’m the boss!
Let’s dive right into something a little terrifying…
Patricia Reding
Author of Oathtaker
I found this subject fun—and challenging, as there are so many great lines to choose from. In the end, I chose to go with a couple very well-known openings—followed by a lesser known line, namely (uh-oh, hear the self-promotion here!) one of my own. The reason for my last choice is that I worked very long and hard on the line, and in the end, am so thoroughly satisfied with it, that I’d like to share it with you (and, in truth, I can’t think of a better time to do so).
Parker Broaddus
Author of A Hero’s Curse & Nightrage Rising
Three favorite opening lines?! Impossible! There are too many! But that’s the point of the exercise I suppose. I’m going to throw these out there, undefended, naked and afraid:
1. “Call me Ishmael.” – Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. Interestingly, while both noteworthy and instantly recognizable, this isn’t the opening line to Moby Dick. It’s actually the opening line to Chapter 1, “Loomings,” wherein Ishmael introduces himself, but the novel started some many pages before with two rambling introductory chapters respectively titled “Etymology” and “Extracts.” Melville used these two sections to introduce us to two fictitious researchers who begin to educate us on cetology: the study of whales. You’ve seen an epigraph before – many novels begin with them – a little apropos quotation that precedes the opening lines. But these two chapters go way beyond that, supplying no fewer than eighty epigraphs. Ugg. Talk about foreshadowing. Melville foreshadowed that the novel would frequently digress into the minutia of whales and whaling, leaving us plodding forward in an attempt to recapture the nominal plot. Nevertheless, “Call me Ishmael,” will always be a great opener.
2. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” – Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone, by J.K. Rowling. There’s probably something of nostalgia mixed in my selection here, but who cares. I’m the one picking. From a literary standpoint I love the whole sentence – every word is working on several levels. The hook is instant – the Dursleys are presented as stuffy and boorish, with the implication that there is something perfectly abnormal to come. We’re in. We want to know what strange and wonderful things are coming, and how it will interrupt the Dursley’s normal, boring, and silly lives.
3. It’s a toss up. “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” – The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway or “Running for my life was not a part of the plan.” – Nightrage Rising, P.S. Broaddus or just about every one of Rick Riordan’s openers.
What about you? Do you have a favorite opening line? Comment and let me know!
Good picks! For my favorite out of those, I’d have to go with “Running for my life was not part of the plan.” LOVE it.