Can you write a great opening line.?

Question

If you were beginning a novel (fiction) that you wanted the world to remember as your greatest life work what would be the first line.

I am not looking for help on my own story I am just curious how creative we can get.

Also, if you have a favorite opening line form a published book let me know what it is…

Also, please "star" this question if you want others to join in...

Answer 1

At precisely 3:52, I folded a paper airplane.


I stand, hat in hand, and watch my coffin being lowered into the red Georgia soil.


Taking out the garbage changed my life.


Funny, all I remember was a seven on the license plate. On the car that was used to kill me. But I'm not dead. They don't know that. Not yet. So much for lucky numbers.


"Mama, who's that man that's stayin' with Mr. Cooper?"
"With Coop? Din' know there was. Now you set'n' eat, 'for yer breakfast gets cold."
"Yes'm... Mama?"
"Well?"
"Mama, why're you cryin'?"
"Cause it's a beautiful mawin', child, a beautiful day."


I remember the road, a ribbon of black tar and gravel that wavered in the heat of the afternoon. I remember the dust, and the dry, scratchy weeds. I remember the burning sky, one of those skys so blue, it makes you think it's the very bluest blue you'll see... ever.


She said she just wanted to remodel the bathroom. Then came the indoor waterfall and the bonsai trees.


It was a soft day.
Always poets, the Irish. But it *was* soft. The kind of weather that made me want to sing and shout and praise God, which I did, loudly, but then with tears. Hey kids, write this down. When something is too full, it overflows.
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Oopsy! I was only supposed to write ONE?!?!
Well, I pick the last one for myself then. I love Ireland!

Answer 2

Dean Koontz wrote a book on how to write science fiction and horror novels. I think it was before he started to get more famous. In that book, he had two different methods for coming up with a story if you have nothing else going on. One is to come up with a list of adjectives with a strong meaning and a list of nouns with a stong meaning. Then start combining nouns and adjectives from the two lists until something sticks. I am not sure but I would bet that "Dragon Tears" was from this method.

The other method was to write a powerful opening sentence. Something that caught the reader's eye and piqued the reader's interest immediately.

In the novel "Phantoms", the opening line (from memory so I may be off a little): "It was a woman's scream. Brief and distant but definately a woman's scream."

Mine. I have no idea. I am sitting here making up stuff and seeing what fits. So far I have this.

"I wanted the world to end but you never get what you really want."

Now, the exercise is to build a story off of that and see what happens.

Answer 3

I am not a good writer so I won't even try. However, "A Tale of Two Cities", by Charles Dickens, has my favorite opening line ever. I could not possibly re-write that sentence here because it is too long to remember the whole thing. The first line in his novel is about a page long. I suggest you find a copy of that book and see how he does that, it's awesome. If your looking to make an impact, definately look how Charles Dickens did it, he is one of the greatest writers.

Answer 4

The ebb and flow of life came as an unwelcome flood in my fifteenth summer. The circulatory dance where sorrow and joy meet and part would ravage my heart and leave it bleeding, begging for the tender mercies that my childish innocence had once known.

"Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world" (Paolini).

Answer 5

I was working late at the office and i heard the floor creak as i dove on the floor with my .45 blazing toward the corner of the room. Something dropped with a thump and i crawled around my desk and a bloody death mask was staring straight back at me. Eyes wide open, my Black Dahlia was dead as a doornail and I was a rich man. Nobody would ever know.

Answer 6

George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four" starts: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. "
This line, with 99 other opening lines, is quoted on this link: http://www.litline.org/ABR/100bestfirstlines.html

Now for my opening line: "It was the day we had all been waiting for and time stood still."

Answer 7

I looked down at the still corpse of my mother and wondered why I could smell lemons.

Answer 8

Kurt Vonnegut: Cat's Cradle: "Nothing in this book is true"

-or-

Kurt Vonnegut: Player Piano: "This book is not a book about what is, but a book about what could be"

Answer 9

"Ordering a pizza?" I snarled at the little boy, and he dropped his phone and ran. Normally, if someone had snarled at me "Ordering a pizza" I would have growled back, "Yea, want pepperoni?"

this is mostly from Maximum Ride by James Patterson, but it wasn't the first sentence. I thought it was a good line, really catches your attention

Answer 10

"Okay, let's get one thing strait, I am not a writer, and I don't ever intend to become one, but for some bazaar reason unbeknown to me, my mother handed me this journal and told me to start writing; so here I am writing my most intimate thoughts in this stupid journal 'for the benefit of future generations'."

So that was my opening line. What'd you think?

God Bless!!