"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

January 21, 2016 10:34 AM

The evolution of first lines of novels.
posted by Chrysostom (20 comments total)

The first comment on the post was limp, like a dead fish.
posted by nubs at 10:51 AM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

More on the evolution of first lines: a nineteenth-century master's creative process as envisaged by a twentieth-century master.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 10:53 AM on January 21, 2016

Stupid monkey
posted by Potomac Avenue at 10:53 AM on January 21, 2016

More seriously, this is an interesting post - I've often wondered why there is a huge focus on the opening line, when I couldn't tell you the opening line of any of my favorite novels without picking it up off the shelf. Is it really that important?
posted by nubs at 10:55 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

From a comment on the Matthew Diffee FPP, earlier today.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:59 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Let us remember that the Gawker list the article cites is probably better titled, "50 opening lines from novels within arm's reach of the author."
posted by Navelgazer at 11:01 AM on January 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every unhappy family is in need of a clock striking thirteen.

Immortality, here I come!
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:01 AM on January 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

It was the best of Ishmael.
posted by mittens at 11:06 AM on January 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

The writer had long ago given up on writing a good first sentence as a fool's game, a parlor trick, a talking point to be used in writer's seminars and books about technique. Real writers, he told himself, knew that it was the second sentence of a novel upon which all depended, like a 5 ton weight dangling from a thin skein of verbiage. Or perhaps it was the third sentence, where, if you mixed your metaphors and images carefully to that point, you might get the reader to sit down and really engage. Beyond that, the fourth sentence served as a bridge to the glory of the story about to unfold, and so was important in its own right, but not as important as the second or the third.

The fifth sentence, he had determined, was utterly meaningless in terms of the structure of the novel or reader engagement, and could be cut - except for the fact that it would then make the sixth sentence into the fifth. This was his daily struggle.
posted by nubs at 11:29 AM on January 21, 2016 [9 favorites]

“‘Are your eyes blue or grey, Marguerite?’ asked young Mr. Arnold, of Balliol, as they stepped ashore at Thun.”

Well, to be fair, you know exactly what you're getting with that story, and as they say: if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like.

Dorothy Parker, writing in 1927, had a good deal to say about first lines:

From the time I learned to read -- which, I am pretty thoroughly convinced, was when I made my first big mistake -- I was always unable to do anything whatever with stories that began in any of these following manners:

(1) "Ho, Felipe, my horse, and pronto! " cried El Sol. He turned to the quivering girl, and his mocking bow was so low that his sombrero swept the flags of the patio. "Adios, then, senorita, until manana! " And with a flash of white teeth across the lean young swarthiness of his face, he bounded to the back of his horse and was off, swift as a homing paloma.

(2) Everybody in Our Village loved to go by Granny Wilkins' cottage. Maybe it was the lilacs that twinkled a cheery greeting in the dooryard, or maybe it was the brass knocker that twinkled on the white-painted door, or maybe -- and I suspect this was the real reason -- it was Granny herself, with her crisp white cap, and her wise brown eyes, twinkling away in her dear little old winter apple of a face.

(3) The train chugged off down the long stretch of track, leaving the little new school-mistress standing alone on the rickety boards that composed the platform of Medicine Bend station. She looked very small indeed, standing there, and really ridiculously young. "I just won't cry!" she said fiercely, swallowing hard. "I won't! Daddy -- Daddy would be disappointed in me if I cried. Oh, Daddy -- Daddy, I miss you so!"

(4) The country club was a-hum, for the final match of the Fourth of July Golf Tournament was in full swing. Many a curious eye lingered on Janet DeLancey, rocking lazily, surrounded as usual by a circle of white-flanneled adorers, for the porch was a-whisper with the rumor that the winner of the match would also be the winner of the hitherto untouched heart of the blond and devastating Janet.

(5) I dunno ez I ought to be settin' here, talkin', when there's the vittles to git fer the men-folks. But, Laws, 'tain't often a body hez a chanct ter talk, up this-a-way. I wuz tellin' yuh 'bout li'l Mezzie Meigs, ol' Skin-flint Meig's da'ter. She wuz a right peart 'un, Mezzie wuz, and purty!

(6) "For God's sake, don't do it, Kid!" whispered Annie the Wop, twining her slim arms about the Kid's bull-like neck. "Yer promised me yer'd go straight, after the last time. The bulls'll get yer, Kid; they'll send yer up, sure. Aw, Kid, put away yer gat, and let's beat it away somewhere in God's nice, clean country, where yer can raise chickens, like yer always dreamed of doin'."
posted by Countess Elena at 11:41 AM on January 21, 2016 [10 favorites]

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Night City. And a voice was screaming: "It's not like I'm using, it's like my body's developed this massive drug deficiency." It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke.
posted by I-baLL at 11:44 AM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Bulwer-Lytton contest, previously and previously.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 11:50 AM on January 21, 2016

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car,

Fallen Chiba City?
posted by praemunire at 11:57 AM on January 21, 2016

"Fear and Loathing in Chiba City"
posted by I-baLL at 12:08 PM on January 21, 2016

is from Finnegans Wake. Although, of course, one can't really point to the "first" sentence in that book. Any or none of them might be it. Neverthless, my favorite first sentence
posted by uosuaq at 12:27 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

He crept silently across the ceiling, as was his habit.

The first line of one of my own stories. I'm pleased with it.
posted by SPrintF at 12:54 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now."

Enough said.
posted by leonard horner at 7:38 PM on January 21, 2016

I wonder how Gawker missed this one: The amazing opening sentence of Mike Tyson's autobiography.
posted by sapagan at 11:51 PM on January 21, 2016

They intrigue with their insufficiency—making the reader feel he or she has been left out of things and eager to get in the know. You could easily slip in Dickens’s “Everybody said so.” Or the first line of a successful novel from 2014: “At dusk they pour from the sky.” Pronouns like “it” and “they” and demonstrative adjectives like “this” draw the reader in, begging further description.

Not to mention "One weird trick!" and "Doctors hate her!"
posted by clawsoon at 2:24 PM on January 22, 2016

Ten intriguing sentences to open this novel!
posted by nubs at 2:48 PM on January 22, 2016 [1 favorite]