^^1984 :)
the brilliant thing about this opening is its ordinariness. You’ve almost moved on to the second line when it hits you… ‘hold on a minute, striking THIRTEEN?’

As was the case here. The To Kill a Mockingbird quote was the only one, with the possible exception of Pride and Prejudice, that would grab my interest in any way if I were browsing.

I have to say that the Booker Prize winner’s opening would send me fleeing, as would any story that opened with overly flowery description. When I start skimming before the first sentence is over, I don’t see that as a good sign, ha ha.

This is not to impugn anyone’s taste, or say that we should throw up our hands in despair and cease trying. But best to keep in mind that one person’s trash is another’s treasure. I’ve been guilty of squandering my time and effort on crafting that perfect opening, to the detriment of the rest of the chapter/book.

“Dingbat Doris reached into the shark’s mouth, and after it clamped down on her arm and dragged her off of the boat and under thirty feet of clear blue water, she thought to herself: ‘how am I gonna get out of this?’ ”

That, P, is just darned cute.

On a more serious note, I’ve never thought of opening lines like that. Conflict, hrmm?

Good opening lines, which may or may not be one line, must do one thing, and do it quickly: explicitly or implicitly signal conflict.

In conflict with other opinions on this tread, the above opening lines quoted in the article do that well. Some are just more implicit than others. Some people would call the implicit tasteful, and the explicit vulgar; others call the implicit boring and the explicit exciting. That’s a matter of taste, subjectivity, which should be put aside when studying writing techniques. Some people can see the massive amount of conflict implied in “Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.” and others need to be beaten over the head with “The dark man fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” In any case, in each example, the conflict is there.

I think that’s the difference between “pro” writing and “amateur” writing. Amateurs rarely pack in enough conflict, either implicit or explicit, in their opening lines.

No matter how much imagery and description is attached to a conflict-poor opening line, it will never interest a large section of readers. For example: “Darcy walked into the living room. Her hair, pulled into a ponytail, flowed like a golden shower down the middle of her back. Fishnet stockings torn at the knees revealed raspberry red scrapes.” You could keep going with the description, but, in this reader’s opinion, there’s very little of interest in the opening of that story. Contrast the above with this: “When the dinner guests at the Moulon Club acted as if Gordon Emerson were a plague, he knew everyone in his social circle, everyone in his world, knew what he had done — and would never forget.”

Although it could use some sprucing up, I think the second opening carries more interest than the first. The first carries no conflict at all; but the second pits a man against his peers and social circles.

Some more opening lines off the top of my head where I focus on setting up a conflict ASAP…

“It was my sixth birthday when my father started visiting my bed at night.”

“It was Alice Shay Eddings called me a whore, and I wasn’t about to let her get away with it; I ain’t that type a girl.”

“It couldn’t be said of Don McClurry that he was an elegant man; rather he was clumsy, brusque, and had the manners of a boy raised by wolves; that was the main reason he would never fit into our world.”

“Davao City was a tropical paradise, but so utterly different from where I came from (a small village in Northern Canada, if you must know), I feared I would never survive there.”

“Dumbass Damsel in Distress turned into the alley, the man in a dark trench coat right behind her.”

“Dingbat Doris reached into the shark’s mouth, and after it clamped down on her arm and dragged her off of the boat and under thirty feet of clear blue water, she thought to herself: ‘how am I gonna get out of this?’ ”

I’m not saying any of these opening lines competes with the classics quoted above, but I think they do a good job of setting up conflict. And, as every writer knows, conflict attracts readers.

Just my two cents. Now, I’ll accept my flagellation.

P

Shortly before being knocked unconcious and bound a chair, before being injected with an unknown substance against his will, and before discovering that the world was _deeply_ mysterious in ways he’d neve before imagined, Dylan O’Connor left his motel room and walked across the highway to a brightly lighted fast-food franchise to buy cheeseburgers, French fries, pocket pies with apple filling and a vanilla milkshake.

Phew! Not just an opening sentence, a whole opening paragraph. I won’t comment on the sentence length, but we have a check on the other four items… Does it work though? Well, I’ll leave that to you to decide.

The book is “By the Light of the Moon” by Dean Koontz, for the record.

Likewise Pride and Prejudice: it’s an observation, and not necessarily true.

The mist one is just setting description, and the War and Peace one is as boring as the rest of the first three chapters. I’ve never been able to read it, and I’m known for reading 1000 page manuscripts.

The Mockingbird line is the best of the bunch because it tells you there is a story: how the arm was broken. Action and questions, and so the novel unfolds.

But the Gunslinger does it best of all. One of the greatest lines ever, in my opinion. Spooky, sets the tone, the characters giving chase. Amazing.

‘It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.’

And it is made even better by the lines that come after…

Yeah, old HTML pages can be a pain to work with, especially with the development of new coding techniques over time.

I’ll go check it out – but moving it to WordPress would be even better – WordPress is pretty well written and is designed to be standards compliant. Go for it! ;P

http://shortstories.hopcott.net/twist_in_the_tail/twist_in_the_tail03/index.html

It’s on an old HTML site. I’m contemplating converting it to WordPress but there’s so much content it would be a major task and I don’t know whether it would be worth the bother. Using a Content Management system like WordPress tends to give me confidence that the site is technically OK, which I prefer. I’m sure that the old HTML pages have loads of technical problems, inherited over years of change.

I like the premise of this one, and it does hook me and make me want to read the rest. But the first sentence of the 2nd paragraph is rather awkward:

‘How did she know he slouched, she wondered.’ can be turned into a question:

‘How would she know he was slouching?’

More vibrant, isn’t it? ;P

What do you think of this one? (More shameless promotion again, I’m afraid. Aren’t all authors self obsessed?)

It’s from a series of short stories about an ordinary suburban housewife who seems to get thrust into extraordinary situations where she copes rather well.

From ‘Burglars’ by Rob Hopcott:

‘Alice sat neatly down at the kitchen table of her 3 bedroom semi-detached in the suburbs of London. The burglar slouched at the other end of the vinyl kitchen table.

How did she know he slouched, she wondered. After all, the grey packing tape that blindfolded her excluded even the slightest chink of light. But she did.’

To Sam: Either you ran upstairs to get that opening line, or it was next to you by the computer. ;P

‘Suppose that you and I were sitting in a quiet room overlooking a garden, chatting and sipping at our cups of green tea while we talked about something that had happened a long while ago, and I said to you, “That afternoon when I met so-and-so . . . was the very best afternoon of my life, and also the very worst afternoon.”‘ – Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden.

This is one of my favourites (shameless promotion):

From Kingfisher Blue by Rob Hopcott:

She walked into Smokey’s Bar like the breeze that sometimes caresses your face on a gray day. Her fair, nearly blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail with two wisps hanging down by each eye. The bustle of the bar absorbed her into its midst and I lost track of her until she surfaced by the gamblers.