What are the best first lines in fiction ?
Raymond Chandler had some good advice for writers: "When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand." Good counsel indeed for any writer whose masterpiece is temporarily bogged down in reflection, description, philosophising or fancy prose. But it applies only to crime fiction, doesn't it? Surely the mainstream novel doesn't need such low-level manipulations to interest its readers (who are perfectly happy with reflection, description, et cetera)?
Think again. According to a groundswell of opinion, 21st-century writers are losing the battle for the reader's attention and must do something about it pronto.
The issue was recently raised at the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature (they're some words you seldom see in the same sentence) in Dubai when three writers talked about the importance of gripping readers from the first line. "I think people these days are so distracted in terms of iPads and iPhones," said Simon Kernick, "that you need to bring them straight into the story very quickly indeed. If you spend too much time setting things up, it's not going to work."
Richard Madeley, the TV presenter turned novelist, concurred, saying: "The stories of Jane Austen and so on are wonderful but the days are gone when you could take a leisurely approach to writing. Other distractions mean you really have to grab the reader by the throat."
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/what-are-the-best-first-lines-in-fiction-9182766.html
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.......
longship
(40,416 posts)Just kidding.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)Paladin
(28,264 posts)bowens43
(16,064 posts)and
The magicians underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami.
66 dmhlt
(1,941 posts)Writing contest
The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was formed in 1982. The contest, sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, recognizes the worst examples of "dark and stormy night" writing. It challenges entrants to compose "the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels."[6] The "best" of the resulting entries have been published in a series of paperback books, starting with It Was a Dark and Stormy Night in 1984.[16]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)Classic Tom Robbins.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Little_Wing
(417 posts)It remains one of my all time favorites
CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Finnegans Wake.
pinto
(106,886 posts)freebrew
(1,917 posts)K.V.
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)EC
(12,287 posts)"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way."
-- Charles Dickens
Read more: http://www.quoteworld.org/quotes/3649#ixzz2vf6Vtw3c
Glorfindel
(9,730 posts)Runner-up: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
elephant hunter
(70 posts)as usual, by the blows of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters.
2nd choice:
The filigreed hands pointed to five minutes past four.
3rd choice:
On top of everything, the cancer wing was Number 13.
Aristus
(66,384 posts)malthaussen
(17,202 posts)"Take my camel, dear", said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.
Rose Macauley, The Towers of Trebizond."
Honorable mention to the first sentence of George MacDonald Fraser's The Pyrates, but as it"s length exceeds 250 words , impractical to post it here.
-- Mal
Paladin
(28,264 posts)".....he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts......"
There's more, and you can find the full sentence on-line. That's the opening of James Crumley's "The Last Good Kiss," a genuine masterpiece of mystery fiction. Highly recommended......
Xyzse
(8,217 posts)I don't know why, but that first line stuck with me.
Especially since it was also the last line in his trilogy.
The Albion War by Stephen R. Lawhead.
neeksgeek
(1,214 posts)two hours to go, he got a call to dispose of a bomb."
Elmore Leonard's 1988 novel Freaky Deaky.
frylock
(34,825 posts)Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.
cyberswede
(26,117 posts)From Red Wind (1938)
---
Edited to add my next favorite:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Ok..you sold me on Chandler.
shocking that i have never read him.
Not surprising: the first lines of Fear and Loathing I know well.
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)and this is one of my favorite opening lines...
The mood is set....
babydollhead
(2,231 posts)I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I
won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and
my feeling that everything was dead.
Jack Kerouac, On The Road
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)The Stranger
(11,297 posts)-Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
unblock
(52,252 posts)CTyankee
(63,912 posts)If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it.
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)nt
Alex_
(27 posts)DiverDave
(4,886 posts)Those books just hang with me.
unblock
(52,252 posts)Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation. Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974)
Scuba
(53,475 posts)unblock
(52,252 posts)the second chapter, each for begins only with a or b; the third, a, b, or c; etc.
starting with chapter 27 it goes back down, so z's go away, etc.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)unblock
(52,252 posts)villager
(26,001 posts)Vinnie From Indy
(10,820 posts)Last edited Thu Mar 13, 2014, 06:31 PM - Edit history (1)
Confederacy of Dunces
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)but that book gave me nightmares....
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)His writing style was powerful, that book captivated me..so many emotions..extraordinary writer.
CherokeeDem
(3,709 posts)but that particular book disturbed like no other. I think because though his words, it became real.
Little_Wing
(417 posts)Written in 1986. The older it grows, the truer it gets.
Paladin
(28,264 posts)I keep thinking of those Japanese tourists in the book, taking pictures of the inhabitants of a right-wing, theocratic U.S. No, I don't need that sort of depression-inducing novel, given the way things seem to be trending, these days.....
Little_Wing
(417 posts)I think it deserves another go.
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)DOG CARCASS IN ALLEY THIS MORNING, TIRE TREAD ON BURST STOMACH. THIS CITY IS AFRAID OF ME. I HAVE SEEN ITS TRUE FACE.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Tace
(6,800 posts)Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon, 1974
ZombieHorde
(29,047 posts)I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." -- H.P.Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu
thucythucy
(8,069 posts)The opening to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is quasi--that is to say Gonzo--journalism, so maybe it doesn't qualify as "fiction" but it's still an awesome way to begin a book.
longship
(40,416 posts)"even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House.
That first paragraph sends chills down my back every time I read it. A tremendous psychological drama.
Earth_First
(14,910 posts)The Stranger
(11,297 posts). . . he was arrested one fine morning."
Iwillnevergiveup
(9,298 posts)each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
raccoon
(31,111 posts)LeftishBrit
(41,208 posts)It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house
All that cold, cold, wet day
LeftishBrit
(41,208 posts)It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
DiverDave
(4,886 posts)Orwell.
Oh, and:
Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing.
Don Quixote