Almost got you there, didn’t I?

Ah, the blank first page. Every writer’s worst nightmare, the Moby Dick of all things literature (which, now that I think about it, is a metaphor in half-baked logic, but I’m sticking with it anyway). But never fear! While this post is just shy of the tail end of novel writing month, as you might have guessed by the title, it’s also about beginnings. Without the beginning, your grand, epic adventure or quiet, introspective drama can’t really go anywhere, right? In my opinion, books also look better when there’s something more than just a very fancy-looking “The” in them. Besides, as I’ve said before, there’s never a bad time to start writing, even if it’s not November (and maybe you spent the better part of the month contemplating the whiteness and blankness of the great white void). So, if you have happened to fall prey to the classic writer’s anxiety this month, I thought we could bust through some blocks and set out to conquer the Great White Page (or perhaps just make you jealous) by taking a look at what I deem (in my most astute and subjective opinion) Some Very Good First Lines and the things they do that hook you from sentence one. 

This does mean that the classics get a bit of an unfair advantage here. They are classics for a reason, with quotable lines that have been seared into the collective literary memory. Take the opening line of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, for example: “It was a pleasure to burn.” A simple six-word sentence that leaves enough to the imagination while establishing the weird, uncomfortable, but very plausible dystopia of the book. What’s burning? Is it the speaker or something else? Why are they enjoying it? A few sentences, paragraphs, and pages later flesh out Guy Montag’s world where books have been outlawed and firemen are the ones responsible for carrying out government-sanctioned censorship, but by then you’ve reached the point of no return (and if you’re like me, you can’t leave anything left unfinished, especially a book).

So, tip number 1: if you’re looking for somewhere to start your story, an opening line that hooks you with curiosity and enough information gaps is a good place to start. Just try to avoid falling into the pit of Way Too Vague. Speaking from experience, it’s a tough climb out of that one.

I think this would be a good time to also mention that for as many rules of thumb we might uncover about how to write the first few lines (or paragraphs) of your soon-to-be bestseller, that means there are just as many to break. Writing, at least to me, has been the most fun and fulfilling when trying to break things well, like when you take something that’s known and mostly accepted (like the sky is blue), and pull it apart and glue it back together so the pieces aren’t quite where they used to be. If you need me to put that in a sentence (or two), though, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy does it best.

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

Before diving into Douglas Adams’ tale about unlucky Arthur Dent who loses his house and then his planet (then spends several meandering years with his alien pal Ford Prefect being an okay space pilot, a decent intergalactic mediator, and a pretty good sandwich artist), we get a macroscopic view of what we already know to be planet Earth- just told from the perspective of someone who has probably never lived a day on planet Earth in their life. So, about rule-breaking. Well, there’s nothing about these opening lines that tells us anything we didn’t already know, right? It says nothing about where exactly we are, who our characters are, or what they’re doing. It’s almost too vague to work, but it does, and to me, it’s because instead of focusing on what’s happening, Adams turns our attention to what things sound like. There’s a tone in the words that lets you know you’re in for a good, rollicking romp in space, and besides that, there’s nothing I think of as more of a cheat code to eye-catching openers than humor. There’s something about the lightheartedness of them that makes you feel like, as a reader, you’re in on the joke. But that might just be me; frank humor is my kryptonite.

What also happens to be my kryptonite is Shirley Jackson’s “is it or is it not a haunted house” tale, The Haunting of Hill House (which I’ve definitely mentioned somewhere before, but as I said, kryptonite). For a book about ghosts, the paranormal, and the ragtag group of outcasts and weirdos assembled to sense if they’re truly in the walls of the titular house, it really doesn’t hide anything.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; 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 nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

From line one, we’re presented with Jackson’s ideas on sanity versus insanity, and everything that plays out following them just happens to be her way of experimenting. It treats the book (and protagonist Eleanor Vance) like a poetic 182-page thesis paper, one that maybe you fell asleep reading and are recalling in the depths of an uncomfortable dream. As you could probably tell, Jackson just has a way with words, and sometimes you don’t need to do anything more to tell (or open) a story than to do it with honesty. Honesty is the best policy apparently applies not just to life, but to writing too!          

Now, for something a little more recent, since I kind of owe you. In my totally, not at all subjective opinion, the opening lines of Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor’s The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home are certified Great. If I’m recommending the spinoff book from the Welcome to Nightvale podcast, the first two lines are what I start my pitch with.

“I set your shoes on fire. All of them.”

And yes, I know this is pretty much a combo of Things On Fire from Fahrenheit 451 and the humor of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I wanted to end off on something simple that packs a punch (which just so happens to be in a pile of flaming shoelaces). Why did this person set someone’s shoes on fire? Was it revenge? A crime against fashion? A protest against jail time for toes? As it turns out, the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home burns shoes for the fun of it. Also, to stop someone named Craig (of course it’s Craig) from going on what she deems a catastrophic date. There are, of course, less chaotic and violent ways to go about that, but since she’s a faceless ghost, a little well-meaning destruction is par for the course as she goes about causing various paranormal conundrums and regaling us (and the heedless Craig) about how she became a phantom without a face. I usually end my little book pitch by saying something like “it’s a swashbuckling adventure-black comedy with too many tonal shifts to count”, or “did you know Mara Wilson narrates the faceless old woman in the audiobook? Like, from Matilda?” but I might need to come up with a better closer because how do you top shoes on fire? I still haven’t figured it out.

But hopefully by the end of this blog post, you’ve got some thoughts to munch on and a reason to get those typing (or pen-scribbling, I don’t know your life) fingers moving. Just put one word in front of the other, and before you know it, you’ll have a book far prettier than a well-calligraphed “The” to your name. Good luck, happy (continued) writing, and until next time!