The First Line: Excerpt from my Book: A Friendly Guide to Writing & Ghostwriting
There’s one thing I’m sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say, “Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”
Stephen King
Once your introduction has passed muster, people will pass further judgment on your book when they read the first line of your book. They will decide whether or not to keep going. Think about meeting someone for the first time. You may feel tongue-tied and shy. It may be a challenge to find the right words. But if you give someone your full attention and listen closely, if you come off as authentic and kind, interesting, interested, and ready to engage, the shyness will disappear and you just might find yourself in a stimulating conversation. Or not.
I was introduced to a man at a party some years ago who quipped, “If I said I liked your body, would you hold it against me?” Then he laughed at his own joke that wasn’t funny. I made a lame excuse to get out of there. “I’m thirsty.” This is iffy because he may offer to bring you a drink. “I need to go to the lady’s room,” is a better one because he can’t go with you. Cheesy pickup lines reek of insecurity, manipulation and a lack of imagination. To avoid this in your writing, remember that your goal is to encourage your readers to lean in, not out, as you capture their attention and pique their curiosity.
Cliches and fancy wording won’t make someone interested in what’s coming next. While there is no boiler plate formula for a good first line, it works when you establish mood, time and place, comedy, tragedy, or inevitability. It can transport a reader out of a difficult or mundane reality into a more satisfying one. When I get hired to edit a first draft, if the writer has chosen a lackluster opening line, I scan the material and I usually find the perfect opening line hidden somewhere in the first or second chapter. I once edited a manuscript with a particularly convoluted opening line. There were extraneous words, bad punctuation (exclamation points are one of my pet peeves), and it didn't make sense. I labored for a while, attempting to understand what the author was trying to say and rewrite it but it remained a mystery to me. I had no idea how to make it accessible. I called my client and said, “I don't know what your first line means.”
“Good,” she told me. “I want to keep my readers on the ball. I want them to have to work hard to get what I’m saying.”
This is condescending and a recipe for failure. The last thing your opening line should do is annoy, confuse, disgust or repel. Your audience wants to be drawn in with the promise of a good reading experience. If the book begins with a sense of tediousness, confusion or superiority, they’ll put it down and search for another one. I don't know about you but I already have so many books on my shelves and in my Kindle, I need to feel extremely moved to purchase another one and that is what a first line can do.
I’ve found that starting with a question is usually ineffective. I don't like it when someone asks a question and then answers it themselves. It makes them sound like a know-it-all, that they’re superior to me and I’m lucky they want to share their vast knowledge with me about something they think I don’t know.
Here is an example of what I just described above:
Why should anyone try my methods?
Because I tried them and they worked for me.
Do I believe in my work?’
Yes.
It would be far less condescending to say, I believe in my methods because they worked for me. Maybe they could work for you, too.
Starting with a statistic is equally unpleasant. It’s dull and technical and tedious. We want to care about a trip you took instead of hearing how many men, women and children go abroad each year. Or how long the flight is. We want to smell and taste the yummy apple pie your mother baked, not be informed about how many apples she used and whether they were Macintosh or Gala. Unless you’re writing a recipe book, that kind of description won’t fly.
A good first line of a book can help not only the reader but the writer as well. When I feel blocked, when I’m reticent to begin writing for any reason, finding the first line serves as a jumping off point. Sometimes it takes me an entire writing session or two or three to figure out how I want to begin. I usually have a few false starts but you have to get something on the page to see if it works. I may keep changing my opening line as I go forward, but whether it remains in place or not, it’s the first step on a steep staircase where something you really want is waiting for you at the top. You’re not there yet, but you’re on your way and so is your reader.
There are times I get that elusive opener immediately. Thank you, Muse. But that’s rare. It usually takes patience and a lot of trial and error to find a good opening line for a book that paints a picture or reveals a secret. I like to make a list of possibilities and eventually I pick one. It needs to make someone feel a certain way or smell something in particular. Stephen King claims that he spends months and in some cases years, writing the opening sentence of Chapter One.
He says: There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It's a tricky thing, and tough to talk about because I don't think conceptually while I work on a first draft – I just write. To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.
Here are a few examples of opening lines from exceptionally good books.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
“One upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person”
Back When We Were Grownups Anne Tyler
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs started to take hold.”
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter S. Thompson