What a Line
How will you woo your readers?
I’ve been thinking a lot about first lines lately. There was a time when any story I wrote was completely derived from what I deemed to be a great opening line; without that catchy opener, I couldn’t write. It would roll around in my brain for weeks, snowballing into a paragraph or two, until I had to write it down and finish the story. It was a good way to work–it felt good, anyway. But sometimes, when writing on a deadline (for a workshop or a thesis meeting), I don’t find that line. I have to start a story whether I find the right opening or not. And even if I do find a first line that rocks my world, it doesn’t always rock everyone else’s. It doesn’t always work for the story. Sometimes, it has to be cut.
But, even though the opening lines haven’t been coming to me the way they used to, I do think the first line of a story or book is incredibly important. What do they say–your best two lines should be your first and your last? I don’t know who said that, but I heard it and I believe it. The first line should entice; the last line should resonate. And, let’s face it, you can’t get to the last line without the first line.
Sometimes, for inspiration, I go to the bookstore and open random books to look at their first lines. Some of them stink, of course, but sometimes they send me running for my notebook, ready to write.
But I don’t always want to drag myself all the way to the bookstore, and I’m pretty sure the woman who works at my local Barnes & Noble is starting to get suspicious of me, coming in and never buying anything. So I decided to look on the interweb. And I found a website that claims to know the 100 best first lines of novels, as dictated by the editors of American Book Review.
Now, I don’t necessarily agree with all the website’s picks. Some of my favorites are included, but several of them are left out–like these gems:
“Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.” –John Irving, The World According to Garp
“You never hear about a sportsman losing his sense of smell in a tragic accident, and for good reason; in order for the universe to teach excruciating lessons that we are unable to apply in later life, the sportsman must lose his legs, the philosopher his mind, the painter his eyes, the musician his ears, the chef his tongue.” –Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole
“We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen.” –Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End (I know that was three sentences but they all flow into each other).
What are some of your favorite opening lines?
“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” – Graham Greene, The End of the Affair.
Oh, now I see that one is on the list…
But it’s still a good one!
“And then we came to the end of another dull and lurid year.” — Delillo’s Americana — which Ferris echoes in his title.
“If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.”
Bellow’s Herzog (from memory, might be off a word or two)
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” The Bell Jar.