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Pyter Voeros
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Joined: 26 Jun 2006
Posts: 2
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 Overture and Beginners Please
Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 6:06 pm |
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When people try to teach you how to write the The Next Best-Seller, they always say that you must grab the audience's attention right from the start. So, what are your favourite opening lines? No, I don't mean lines from your own works (put that ego away!), I mean, what opening lines have grabbed your attention and made you want to keep reading?
A couple of my own favourites to start things rolling:
| Quote: | | It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. |
A classic opening to a classic book, George Orwell's 1984. A straight-forward, seemingly mundane sentence, until you hit that jarring last word.
At the risk of seeming pretentious (and I'll admit that I can't read the original Italian), the opening sentence of Dante's Divine Comedy -- an alternative reality story if ever there was one -- is another favourite of mine:
| Quote: | Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ch� la diritta via era smarrita. |
There are (of course) a multitude of translations, but Robert Pinsky's is
suitable evocative:
| Quote: | Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. |
A nicely sinister opening, which gets even more sinister until Dante finally
stumbles across his guide, the poet Virgil. |
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ecgordon
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Joined: 28 Mar 2006
Posts: 291
Location: Waco, Texas
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Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 8:30 pm |
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I think one of the more intriguing opening lines I've ever read is from John Varley's Steel Beach:
| Quote: | | "In five years, the penis will be obsolete," said the salesman. |
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Shadow_Ferret
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Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 318
Location: Milwaukee, WI
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Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:42 pm |
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I don't think I"ve ever been "grabbed" by an opening line.
It takes a good few paragraphs to "grab" me. |
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Violanthe
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Jay Tomio
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Joined: 31 Mar 2006
Posts: 27
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Posted: Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:06 am |
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| Quote: | | �Put a truce to any thoughts of departure. I am she who glides through the sky when the snow is falling fast, the lady of frost and darkness. I am a ghost, which is not to say I ever lived. I am a memory, which is not to say I ever died. I begin at the moment the ice on the river begins to crack like bones of glass. I am a silence written on pulp mash paper, in ink drawn from village wells� |
That's from Catherynne M. Valente's stunning Yume No Hon
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Violanthe
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Jay Tomio
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Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 3:46 pm |
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I honestly never pay much attention unless it ossomething oddly similar or/and exact quote fro manother book or some other form of media.
I pulled the Valente quote,because I think she is one of the great prose writers IMHO, and is capablle of writing some of the moss beautiful lines I have read in the last couple of years.
That is I never really paid attention untilI started accepting submissions for the Ezine which shows a great variety of tendencies. Some submissions are rather ordinary frmo beginning to end, while you can tell many more put so much thought in their opening and closing lines and have nothing in between them.
While I read all submissions completely, it has become much easier to tell what stories I will like from the first paragraph. This probably doesn't apply to novels.
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Violanthe
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Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2006 10:37 am |
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I agree that it's much easier to tell from the first paragraph of a short story submission whether I'll like it (which isn't often), than a novel. But I suppose, that's probably due to the fact that most short story submissions I read are unsolicited and from previously unpublished writers. Whereas most novels I read are at least professionally published, having been through the eyes of many editors already.
How about professionally published short stories? Can you tell from the openers whether you'll like them? That is, can you tell if you'll like a published short story from the opener any easier than a published novel?
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