I recently discussed the idea of powerful opening lines (and last lines) with a writer friend of mine.
Some are so ubiquitous, that they merely need to be said and everyone knows what the books is. Ahem, “Call me Ishmael.”
Or, double ahem, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
Many writers talk about sweating over that first or last line before they’ll even begin their manuscript. Whatever your style, I think you’ll appreciate today’s post. A collection of famous first lines.
Oh, and to keep things interesting, because I haven’t had a contest in a while, I’ve decided to host a “First Line Contest.” How to enter? Enter the first line of a novel or short story you’re working on in the comments below. I’ll post a poll for voting next weekend! The person with the most votes takes first place. First Place in the poll: A critique of your first 15 pages! Second place, my choice: A critique of your first 5 pages.
FAMOUS FIRST LINES:
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.” -1984 - George Orwell
“It was a pleasure to burn.” Fahrenheit 451 –Ray Bradbury.
“All children, except one, grow up.” Peter Pan –J. M. Barrie
“The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette.” The Princess Bride –William Goldman
“Marley was dead, to begin with.” A Christmas Carol –Charles Dickens
“Willie McCoy had been a jerk before he died.” Guilty Pleasures – Laurell K. Hamilton
“Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.” - Gone with the Wind –Margaret Thatcher
“Call me Ishmael.” – Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” – Pride and Prejudice –Jane Austen
“I’d been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar.” -Dead Until Dark – Charlaine Harris
“The night before he went to London, Richard Mayhew was not enjoying himself.” -Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman
“Kaye took another drag on her cigarette and dropped it into her mother’s beer bottle.” –Tithe –Holly Black
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.” – Lolita— Vladimir Nabokov.
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Anna Karenina –Leo Tolstoy
“It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.” –Delirium—Lauren Oliver
“In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind.” –Graceling –Kristen Cashore
“Please tell me that’s not going to be part of my birthday dinner this evening.” –A Great and Terrible Beauty –Libba Bray
“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.” – A Tale of Two Cities –Charles Dickens
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again.” –Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
“The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought.” –The Alchemist –Paulo Coehlo
“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.” –The Fellowship of the Ring –J.R.R. Tolkein
“I am an invisible man.” – Invisible Man –Ralph Ellison
“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, if you want to know the truth. – The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
“We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. –Game of Thrones –George R.R. Martin
“I was the youngest of three daughters.” –Beauty –Robin McKinley
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” – David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
“I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man.” – Notes from Underground –Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“All this happened, more or less.” – Slaughterhouse Five — Kurt Vonnegut
“I am the Vampire Lestat.” –The Vampire Lestat – Anne Rice
“Miss Alexia Tarabotti was not enjoying her evening.” –Soulless –Gail Carriger
“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 –Sylvia Plath
“I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I’ll tell you he’s the one.” – Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” – The Gunslinger –Stephen King
“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 –J.K. Rowling
ooh! I like this idea for a contest. Very awesome opening lines.
Here’s mine: From one of my (many) WIPs (Not titled yet).
“Just when you think that life can’t get any worse, Vivian Thompson shows up in the hallway.”
Classic. Simple but draws you in
Thank you, Jennifer!
I already love, and hate, Vivian Thompson. More, more!!
Great first line, Sara.
Aws thank you.
I enjoyed your post so much. What a great game to play with writer friends; guess which novel this first line belongs to? You also come up with the best contests! Here’s my opening line from a novel I’ve been writing on the side:
“As Lola lay there at the bottom of the pit, her sight still spinning from her fall, she thought about all the warnings: a girl like you shouldn’t be going into those woods alone; something big is out there and you don’t want to be the one who finds it; at least carry a gun.”
So much fun! (^Sara that sounds awesome!) I can’t wait to see some more!
Poor Lola the pit doesn’t sound like much fun
Lauren, you’re amazing. You’ve managed to pack the setting, a protagonist, an unknown antagonist, and a conflict, all within that first line.
Opening lines are like Lucky 7′s –such a tease! They make me want to read all the stories.
Love your first line, Lauren. I absolutely want to read more!
Thanks Sara!
Woo! New contest!
Here’s the first line for one of my picture books:
Molly the cow didn’t like her flippers.
So cute!
Thanks!
Why?! I love first lines that make me ask “why” right away. Because you just have to read on to find out.
Yay!
First line of a newly conceived book:
I always expect to see a dead body under the stairs.
Oh! Awesome opening!
Thank you!
Ditto on my comment to Mike. First lines that raise questions are always a good hook.
What stairs? Who? Why? Must read on…
My favorite opening line is “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.” – Graveyard Book by Gaiman. Great post.
Oooh –I just read the Graveyard Book last month! I don’t know that I paid much attention to it at the time, but it is a great first line.
“I expected to hear trumpets, I thought I would see horsemen, I predicted
that the Mississippi would run red. But we can’t always get what we want.” -Fred Shrum,”That Funky White Light”
Okay, Fred. This is so freaking cool. Cool in an awesome Hunter S. Thompson kind of way. Why do I never think of openings as fun as this!
Are you sending this out, or is it a WIP? I already love it.
E.B., this is complete and in the query process. Thanks. -F3.
I love when first line posts pop up
I always find interesting wips
Here’s one of mine— from a short I am racing to finish for an open anthology deadline
Dear Santa … Omigosh, how stupid is this?
I know… Trite and simple compared to some of these other ones
“Short” can sometimes play the same angle as the question hook. You have so little information that you’re compelled to read further to find out what’s going on. Plus, Santa? Immediate interest.
I want Santa to bring me a Kindle. Like now. *grins*
Hopefully you will get a chance to read it. It tells how to get everything you want for Christmas!
Oh, and good luck making your deadline! Eeek!
Thanks so much. I’m feeling pretty good about it at the moment. I’m in the closing scenes. Yay!
Great idea, Jennifer! Good luck getting it all ready for the season!
Great post! Thanks for doing this!
Here’s my first line:
“Chris had never felt she was a man trapped in a woman’s body so much as she had simply always felt trapped.”
Wow, K.C., you’ve gotten what I assume is the story’s central conflict spelled out perfectly in the first sentence. I immediately know this is going to be a story about gender identity and a woman’s struggle to come to terms with it. Kudos!
All of these lines are so compelling! Each one makes me want to read on. Great job everyone !
Yay! This has been fun. I hope more people post their “Firsts”
Wish I could join.
Anyway, I’m here to let you know I have nominated you for the VERY INSPIRING BLOGGER AWARD (I love your blog, is why!) If you’d like to participate I write about it here: http://justbeingthoughtful.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/question-813/
Thanks, Addie! I never get tired of blog awards.
Squeee!
Oh, you picked some great ones. I am still working on a compelling first line that I hope will make lists like this. Hope you’ve been well!
You and me both, sister. Cheers to that! *clinking glasses*
Cheers!
Well, as a result of the contest I have established my first lines reek of stinky cheese. Back to the drawing board… great post!
I am sure they don’t reek of stinky cheese. At a certain point, on the N-thousandth revision, it all sounds/smells like stinky cheese.
“How do you want me to kill myself?” my son asked me.
OMG. Awesome first line.
Ha- funny, I was just thinking, “nobody liked my first line…” when i opened my email and saw your comment. Thanks! What makes that line worse is I’m writing a memoir. My son actually said that to me one night- he said I’d be the one to find his body, so he wanted it to be the least traumatic scenario for me. Hey, thanks.
He’s alive and well all these years later thanks to a good psychiatrist.
Oh my goodness. That’s really brave of you to tackle an issue like that in memoir. I think the first line definitely grabs you.
“Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street of Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife.”
-Nathaniel Hawthorne
“During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”
-Edgar Allen Poe
“In the first week after Labor Day, after a summer of hot wind and drought that left the cane fields dust blown and spiderwebbed with cracks, rain showers once more danced across the wetlands, the temperature dropped twenty degrees, and the sky turned the hard flawless blue of an inverted ceramic bowl.”
-James Lee Burke
“Years ago, in State documents, Vachel Carmouche was always referred to as the electrician, never as the executioner.”
-James Lee Burke
“When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”
–Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird.
How did this not already make the list!?!? Thank you, Debbie!