[Link] 10 books whose first line is enough to convince anyone to read them

by ETimes.in

A strong opening sentence can offer much more than a mere introduction to a story. It can establish the mood, raise interest, and hold a promise of something unforgettable. There are authors, of course, who are successful in hooking the reader right from the opening sentence. In fact, the reader might not be able to put the book down. These are the ten books whose opening sentence is enough to convince anyone to continue with the story, without hesitation.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

First line: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

Read the full list: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/books/features/10-books-whose-first-line-is-enough-to-convince-anyone-to-read-them/photostory/126190537.cms

Famous First Lines

 

Nugget #146 -- Sean Changes His Tune About Opening Sentences

Nugget #117 -- Rule Number One

So that's rule #1 and rule #Only. A good story opening

should trigger something in the reader that makes him

or her want to keep reading. It has no other purpose.

Nugget #114 -- The Reason

Get serious about making your openings strong. It's important.

It's the reason you get to be the first or last story in an anthology

rather than crammed in the middle somewhere. It's the reason

your novel demands to be taken to the register and then home

rather than returned to the shelf. 

Nugget #104 -- No Other Purpose

A good story opening should trigger something 

in the reader that makes him or her want to 

keep reading. It has no other purpose. 

Bill Hart at the typewriter. 

Nugget #103 -- Opening Your Tales

It's not just about your opening sentence. It's about your 

opening page, your opening few paragraphs, or maybe just 

your opening few sentences. That all depends on the story 

you're telling. Only you can know how long your 

opening section is. Regardless of its length, it 

must trigger the reader to keep going. 

What's your favorite opening line from your own work?

 

What's your favorite opening line from your own work?

Barbara Doran: "Old ladies packed quite a punch."

Ed Erdelac: "The rain beat down on 115th Street like it was owed money."

Patrick Giles: "Well crap!"

Elizabeth Donald: "It really was a dark and stormy night." Well, I thought it was funny...

David Gallaher: "This is not a monkey."

Michael Bracco: "The birth of every story is conflict."

Tom Waltz: "Killing my wife hadn’t been as difficult as killing my great grandchildren."

Ralph L Angelo Jr.: "Another when, another now." -- Redemption of the Sorcerer.

Alexandra Christian: "If desperation had a smell, it would be dusty felt, old wood and stale alcohol."

Cynthia Ward: The first sentence is not my long suit. "'You've picked a posh meeting spot,' I tell M as I walk into the cell." -- The Adventure of the Naked Guide

Valerie Finnigan: "I have arrived here on 31 August, '90 after an eventful flight across the Atlantic and Mediterranean." -- Tiger on the Storm

Larry Young: "No real writer gives a shit about anything than PAY TO THE ORDER OF... Anything else is just masturbating."

Jessica Fleming: "They had hung her on the tree without so much as a trial."

Kendall Nye: "The old cat had curled up like a fat black question mark on the couch where my wife used to sit."

Danielle Procter Piper: "The glass trembled in his hand as he lifted it, not really wanting the pale colored liquid in it anyway, but needing it to steady his nerves." --The Fruit of Eden

Tony Acree: "It was 6 pm when the Devil walked into my office and had a seat."

Mark Bousquet: "The Bandolier filled the deputy’s gut with buckshot, the sheriff’s heart with four .32 caliber rimfire bullets, and then locked himself inside a cell to wait." -- from the forthcoming Gunfighter Gothic: The Bandolier.

Patrick Tomlinson: "That's not supposed to be there."

Andrew Salmon: I was so excited to dust off my hardboiled voice that I went to town on my Rick Ruby tale. And it all began with this line: "The grey pall of early twilight muffled the city’s raging at the gradual dying of the light."

Kathy Messick: "Ladies and Gentleman, the one and only, Jimmy Durante!"

Bill Craig: "Her head felt like her brains were leaking out as she opened her eyes."

Whit Howland: "Huey Dusk knew he was dressed to kill..."

Darin Kennedy: "Freshly turned earth. Ammonia."

Nancy Hansen: "On a muggy summer evening, a young woman’s piercing shrieks of agony echoed all through the midnight temple grounds." ~ from the yet unpublished THROUGH A DARK GLASS, which continues the Greenwood Cycle books.

Shelagh Watkins: "Do you wake on Sunday mornings feeling bright and cheerful before you step out to buy your favourite Sunday newspapers, and spend the next four hours reading the print off the page?"

Milton Davis: "This was not the way for a prince to die." -- Changa's Safari

Van Allen Plexico: "Hawk awoke naked and screaming in the heart of a shattered galaxy."

Brian Hill: "A filthy mist rolls down the grimy street, the yellowing vapour reminiscent of the smogs of my grandparents' childhood days."

Bobby Nash: "Abraham Snow knew he was about to die and the thought of it pissed him off to no end." (Opening line from SNOW FALLS.)

Bill Cunningham: "It began, as with all things, in a storm."

Keyser Soze: "My meatloaf sandwich was delivered cold, and I was trying to coax the blonde waitress into giving me an extra slice of pecan pie, but she was having none of it."

Whitt Pond: "If the dead gripe in the ears of the living, do we make a sound?"

Laura Rucker: "My dad was an asshole."

Brian K Morris: "Christmas was a time of joy ... somewhere else." (SANTASTEIN)

Kay Iscah: "I broke a mirror today"

Deborah Brown: "Miss Norton's shower was leaking blood. Again."

Victoria Oliver Rutherfurd: "What do you do for a living? No, really, I'm genuinely curious. Because unlike me there's a good chance it doesn't involve any dead people."

Doug Davis: "Black and white, and sepia brown. A borrowed wedding gown. Dried orchids pressed with ribbons, pink and white..."

John Bruening: "It was early August, and the summer had not been kind to Union City." -- The Midnight Guardian: Hour of Darkness

Lance Stahlberg: "Reese always wondered how he'd react looking down the barrel of a gun."

Lucy Blue: "To make the black cat bone, you have to boil the cat alive." Opening line from "Black Cat Bone."

10 Methods for Crafting Better Story Openings

 

(i.e. It's not just about your first sentence anymore, McFly.) 

by Sean Taylor

I used to be a big fan of having a catchy opening sentence, and I'll admit, sometimes one will still zing by as I'm reading and maybe really make me stand up and take notice. Okay, figuratively, not really. I'm a writer, not a Zumba instructor. Even so, a lot of those hooks fall flat only a sentence or two later, as if the writer had a limited amount of zeal or gumption or whatever you want to call it, and he or she spent it all before the first period of the story.

I used to be a real hard-nose about it, proud of the fact that sometimes all I wasted my time on was an opening sentence to determine if I wanted to read the book or not. I thought at the time that made me a great critic of all things literary, but I've learned since then. The only thing that made me was a [censored].

LIFE'S STILL TOO SHORT, THANKS TO TUCK

Don't get me wrong. I still live by the axiom I learned from my friend James R. Tuck: "Life's too short to read shitty books." And I still draw a hard line in the proverbial sand after a few paragraphs. I haven't learned to have more patience with bad stories, just that like a tasty bite of apple could be the sole good spot on a bruised piece of fruit, sometimes I need more than a mere sentence to get the true feel of a story and its writer.

That said, if a writer can't grab me in the first few paragraphs, then I go back to being the same ol' [censored] I used to be and put the book away.

I don't know what's in the water lately in the world of writer-dom, but this week alone, I have seen three current blog articles about story openings, one from Jerry Jenkins' and his writing lessons online, one from a moderately selling mid-lister, and another from an indie self-pubber. Maybe's it's that time of the year, when Winter is beginning to settle away (well, outside this last big storm, I hope) and the opening of Spring waits to announce itself. Or maybe they all got inspired by the same article elsewhere and it was all a grand happenstance.

Regardless, I wasn't really happy with what most of them said, so (vanity of vanity that I am) I figured I needed to spell out my thoughts on the matter.

So, story openings. What are they good for? Absolutely everything. (Say it again.)

You're singing now, aren't you? That's because that line, as hackneyed and overparaphrased as it is, still says something to your inner brain if you're a pop music fan. It (and here's the key big) TRIGGERS something, in this case a melody.

But for your stories, you should shoot for triggering something else, the desire to keep reading.

So that's rule #1 and rule #Only. A good story opening should trigger something in the reader that makes him or her want to keep reading. It has no other purpose. You can tell me that it's about characterization and moving the plot forward and establishing tone until you run out of words, but the simple truth of it is that your story opening is a trigger. If it can trigger AND do all that helpful, craft-worty stuff like build characterization and move the plot along and establish tone, then already one hell of a writer, and you probably earned every cent of your royalty check this quarter.

But let's look at the flip side. Even if you did all that groovy writer stuff and did it like the Artiste you are (notice the capital 'A,' of course), but readers put your book back on the shelf after giving it a few seconds of reading time, you failed. No trigger. No reader. Bingo, bango, bongo.

Luckily there are more ways to write a trigger than there are sinus issues during a Spring in Georgia.

THE TEN THINGS THE TITLE OF THIS ARTICLE BAITED YOU ABOUT

1. Make 'em sing. 

I don't mean to use a song lyric like I did above (but if that works, then, hey, go for it), but pay attention to the sounds of vowels and consonants in your word choices. Stop readers when you want them to stop (with hard sounds like k, p, g, t, or d). Don't let them stop when you want them to flow through without slowing down (with soft sounds like s, m, n, l, and r). Don't let readers set their own pace. You tell when and where to control the speed. Even if you have very little to say, if you say it well and in a way that makes a reader's brain happy to read it, you've got 'em hooked.

2. One, two, "BANG!" Right in the gullet.

Go for the visceral. This doesn't just mean blood and guts. It means make it make readers feel what you're writing in the body, not in the mind. A torn fingernail or a crotch shot are the low-hanging fruit here. What about a smell that turns the stomach? What about a sensation that chills the spine? Write for physical stimulation. Visceral can go way beyond just making the stomach churn.

3. Come out of left field.

No clock can strike 13, but that didn't stop Orwell. The only way to do this one is to just shoot for the moon. Take that risk to go too far. A good variation of this is to begin with the normal and then save your "strike 13" until paragraph number 3 or 4 (as long as it still hits on the first page). She was a mother, just like any mother, wait... what do you mean she was made out or pure diamond? You get the point.

4. Get sensual.

No, I don't mean trigger a climax from readers. I mean to write for the senses. Put phantom scents and tastes in their brains. There's a smell that makes me think of a hospital. There's a taste that reminds of being a kid and sucking on a nail when I was bored. But be careful to avoid the obvious here. Get beyond your steaming apple pie and your delicious cake. (No, those aren't euphemisms, you bunch of perverts.)

5. Shock 'em.

Toni Morrison shot the white girl first. Who do you shoot? Make a hamburger of a sacred cow. Burn a priest in the name of peaceful protest. Do that thing that just should never be done. It's okay. They're not real people (or even real six-eyes aliens from Bettemhauer 11-X in the Greater Hooten Nebula). They won't even be able to hate you for it.

6. Give readers a question they're dying to get answers to.

Who is the dead man and who killed him? How does the supermodel race car driver win races with a wooden leg? This approach works for more than just mystery books. It's why those books that begin with a first person narrative about the main character's own death can still work and hit the best-seller lists -- because readers want to discover all the secrets that lead to that death.

7. Introduce a character so compelling readers can't turn away.

I'm sure you can rattle of enough of these to use all your fingers (and many of your toes). Open up at the funeral of a dead superhero who demanded that everyone wore orange flowers to his funeral. Meet the sexy German operative through the eyes of your private eye. Say hello to the girl who knows she's about to die, but still wants to save her killer's life before the cops shoot him. Paint a word picture of the chain-smoking drunk who saves kittens from trees and gets paid for it by the city.

8. Dazzle 'em with the most overblown shovel full of BS they've ever read.

This can work, but it has to be intentional. Almost ironic, but not hipsterly so. Get purple. Get florid. Cram adjectives next to nouns in ways that shouldn't work but somehow does. The danger is to go farther than you think you should, or else you can come off as somebody who just doesn't know any better, not someone who has chosen to ignore all the rules for your own zany but necessary reasons.

9. Drop in right in the middle of things.

This one is my favorite. If your story is about a killer walking up the path to a victim's house, knocking on the door, and waiting politely for it to be opened, skip all that and start at the open door, knife brandished. In other words, start after what you think is the beginning. Let something be going on, something happening. Have somebody or something doing something.

10. Don't bore the reader.

This one's obvious. Right? But what does it really mean. Don't be mundane. If at all possible, avoid weak verbs. Use interesting characters. There are thousands of ways to bore a reader from the beginning. In my opinion the worst offender out there (particularly in fantasy) is the infodump. (Call it "world-building" if you like, but you know the truth as well as I do, Buttercup.) Don't give readers and essay... Give 'em action.

STABLE FLOORS AND JUMPING INTO NOTHING

So there you go. I've said my piece.

Now it's up to you. Get serious about making your openings strong. It's important. It's the reason you get to be the first or last story in an anthology rather than crammed in the middle somewhere. It's the reason you novels demands to be taken to the register and then home rather than returned to the shelf.

This is why I can't write any story until I have my opening settled. Sure, I can go back and edit it a bit, but I have to know where I'm started to know where I'm going. A lot of my writer friends don't get this and ask why can't I just barrel through and then redo the opening later. Well, maybe they can, but I can't. Just like you can't build a house without a stable base, I can build a tale without a stable opening. If I'm going to jump out into the great, big fictional nothing in search of words and actions and characters, I need to jump from something solid to have the best footing.

But remember this: It's not just about your opening sentence. It's about your opening page, your opening few paragraphs, or maybe just your opening few sentences. That all depends on the story you're telling. Only you can know how long your opening section is. Regardless of its length, it must trigger the reader to keep going.

That's the goal, the bottom line, the "every other cliche the world can throw at this example."

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #309 -- Effective Story Openings

What makes an story opening effective? What makes you want to keep reading?

This one's an easy one. A story opening has to grab my attention by the throat and refuse to let go. It can do that in several ways, though.

1. It can begin with a highly visceral scene that shocks my senses (and better yet, senses other than my sight and sound).

2. It can create a paradox that my brain won't stop pondering. Such as my tale that begins: "The man who killed me wore a tattoo of Santa Claus across his chest."

3. It can have such a strong sense of character that I want to follow the protagonist. Hard-boiled stories are usually pretty strong at this method.

4. It can appeal to my dark side via greed, lust, etc.

5. It can hit me in the gut with the kind of surprise I never would have expected.

6. Or it can ignore all of these and simply captivate me with the moment. The opening of the movie Unbreakable, for example, does this, calmly showing everyday events leading up to a train ride that ends in a cataclysmic crash.

7. Or it can dazzle me with the gift of language, saying things in a way that captures my imagination and speaks to the poet in me. Zora Neale Huston is great at this.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #286 -- Story Openings and Rewrites

Do you go back and rewrite your opening many times or are you the type who can't move on until it's nearly perfect?

Typically I have to get my opening just right before I'm able to move on. I sometimes spend hours on the first sentence or first paragraph alone. There's so much riding on that bit for my story. It sets the tone and the feel and the whole "attitude" for each word to follow, so without it right or at least close to right, nothing else I follow it with will feel right either -- but that's probably just me. Other writers will tell you differently, to knock it out now and go fix it later, but I just can't work that way for my openings. It's like they lock me up until they get all the attention they need from me.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #282 -- Opening Sentences

As a reader, how much do story openings mean to your enjoyment of a book? Does a bad one make you put a book down and stop reading, or are you willing to forgive a bad one and hope a book gets better later?

I always warn people when they ask me to read their book that I'm a pretentious hard-ass about it. Authors I've never read before get a sentence. That's it. Typically if the first sentence doesn't  grab me and refuse to let go, then I'm out. Writers I'm familiar with get a paragraph or a page or two. People who pay me to read (i.e., edit) get all my attention, but I don't necessarily have to enjoy it. *grins*

My buddy and fellow writer, James Tuck, put it this way: "Life's too short to read shitty books."

I happen to agree with him. If a writer can't grab my interest from the get-go, then what makes me assume he or she will be able to rectify that a few more pages into the tale?

The Opening Salvo -- Grabbing Readers from the First Sentence

Been a long time, but finally it's time for another writer-focused, practical, down to brass tacks (that enough cliches for you?) Bad Girls, Good Guys, and Two-Fisted Action roundtable interview. This time around let's talk about story openings, and what makes them really zing for readers to keep them going past the first sentence, paragraph, and page. 

As a reader, how much to story openings mean to your enjoyment of a book? Does a bad one make you put a book down and stop reading, or are you willing to forgive a bad one and hope a book gets better later?

Scott Sandridge: When I was younger I was willing to forgive a slow start, but as I got older and more jaded, and finding myself with less time, I became less and less forgiving of stories that don't hook me from the start.
 
Mark Koch: I am patient with slow or clumsy openings, but it does impact my opinion of the author. Once my disapproval radar is up, it tends to stay in effect. I'll read it, but I am far less likely to trust and pick up another book from the same author. So, I hope it gets better and typically grind it out but become very skeptical and will need much more to turn it around and allow myself to be impressed.

Tamara Lowery: I'll give it a chance, but only so far.

Lance Stahlberg: Conventional wisdom says you have to grab the reader in the first paragraph or they put it down. I give it at least the first few pages. Roughly the amount that Amazon lets you browse for free. That much is enough to give me a reflection of the writer's style, and set the tone of the story. If it doesn't grab me by page, say, 5, there's no point in continuing.

But that's me personally. For the public at large, I do not dismiss the power of first sentences.

I.A. Watson: Story openings are critical when the book or author is an unknown quantity. I'll tolerate a poor or slow start when I trust the writer or have already enjoyed a previous episode in a series. I'm less tolerant when I don't have previous quality assurances. The house is littered with volumes that failed to engage me by page 20.

Do story openings for different genres need to do different things? For example, in traditional fantasy, an world-building info-dump is still considered okay, even though that sort of thing would be heresy in a thriller. Or should story opening follow the same guidelines regardless of the genre?

Mark Koch: Regardless of genre, the opening is where the author introduces his or her style and makes the first connection with the reader. I don't care what you are writing -- unless it is an academic paper I need a reason to care pronto. An entertaining and vigorous introduction is a must.

Lance Stahlberg: I hate world building exposition dumps. Which might be why I've never been too huge a fan of high fantasy.  But even in that genre, all of my favorite books open with something happening. A demon awakening -- opening on the villain will rarely steer you wrong. A ship spotting a dragon. A thief in the middle of a job.

If you're going to open on setting, that setting better be REALLY cool and original. RA Salvatore got away with opening Homeland by waxing poetic about the Underdark because it was the freaking underdark. A setting like that demands a little extra time. But even in that one rare example... he kept it short. Four pages in, we are looking at Menzoberranzan through the eyes of a drow on an urgent mission. It's still exposition, but things are moving.

Very few settings need an introduction like that. By now, we've seen them all. Today's readers are savvy enough that they can fill in the blanks on their own. So bottom line is I'd say they should always follow the same general principals, regardless of whether it has aliens and space travel or orcs and magic. 

I.A. Watson: I'm actually suspicious of fantasy stories that require an infodump start -- especially a prologue infodump start -- because it suggests a lack of writer refinement. Okay, Tolkein could get away with it. Most of us aren't Tolkein.

The only real rule is to grab the reader and keep them reading. If you can do that with a long essay on the socio-political machinations of the dwarves then great.

Allow me also to add a grumpy caution about the opposite of the info-dump problem, the in media res fashion that explains nothing at all for the first 70 pages, counting on the reader's patience to hold out for motives, backstory, and relevance. I'm not usually that patient.

Tamara Lowery: I think it should function similarly regardless of genre. Personally, I think the opener should drag a reader into the story by the eyeballs THEN you can mess with world-building to let them orient themselves in the story.

Dave Brzeski: There's a related thing that I really hate. When the story starts with a POV character, but you're given no physical details whatsoever this character -- sometimes not even the gender. Then, 30 pages in, the author finally drops in an important detail, which almost always clashes with the version your imagination has made up, in the absense of that information. 

Scott Sandridge: A story needs a good hook, regardless of genre. Also, I don't believe in info-dumps. There's plenty of ways to get your world-building information across without long drawn out boring paragraphs going for pages and pages. And most times, the info-dump is often unnecessary, having no relevancy to the story. At the end of the day, it should be about writing a great story, not writing about how awesome your world is.

Do you go back and rewrite your opening many times or are you the type who can't move on until it's nearly perfect?

Scott Sandridge: No matter how much of the story I already know in my head, I can't even start on it until I have the first sentence down right. That's how important I feel that first sentence, first paragraph, first page is. But once that's done, I usually breeze through until I get to the ending...and then I obsess just as much over the ending.

Lance Stahlberg: A little of both. I have had to force myself to move on from an opening scene and come back to it.

The golden rule of action adventures is to open strong. But I actually hate it when books open too strong just for the sake of having an action scene. When I get too deep into a scene without having clue one about the who or why of what's happening, it has the opposite effect on me that the experts claim it should. I like to set the stage and have at least some intro to the characters.

What ends up happening is I write a relatively slow opening scene that does just that. I reread it. Realize it's too slow, then come back with a quick and dirty prelude to better set the tone that the rest of the story will take.

Again, conventional wisdom says to avoid prologues at all cost. But I think they can work really well when kept short, like a page or two at most.

I.A. Watson: Different things I write have different inspirations -- a concept, a piece of dialogue, a twist I want to use, even a title. Quite often it's the opening scene I want to get out of my head onto paper. A number of stories, even a novel, have started out as just a first scene. Of course, some fisrt scenes have stayed there and never progressed to a second.

I always revisit the first scene at the end of the writing process. Since it was probably the first bit I wrote, the story and style might have been refined in the subsequent 100,000 words so it needs checking for tone. It must have page-turning impact, so it needs some extra polish. The danger is that in tinkering I lose that original spark that made it a good scene in the first place.

Tamara Lowery: Rewrites can wait until time for revisions and edits prior to and after submission. Write it once, let it sit, then go back later with a fresh mind.

What makes an story opening effective? What makes you want to keep reading?

Mark Koch: I can be indulged to care with action, or emotion, or intellectual gymnastics. Paint a fun alternate reality or draw up a curious character. Slap something unexpectedly violent across the windshield. But you had better give my mind a toy to play with before it gets bored. Clever prose can do it, but clever storytelling is a better bet.

Lance Stahlberg: Movement. Always be in motion. It doesn't necessarily need to be violent, explosive action. But the reader wants to follow somebody and see events unfold through their eyes right out of the gate.

And humor. Even the most serious story should be presented with healthy doses of humor, and I want to see that up front.

Scott Sandridge: The opening of the story has to get you asking "What's this? what's going on? I need to know more!" It needs to introduce the main protagonist, or at least someone just as important (like the main antagonist), set up the situation, and provide the motivations to get the character going. In a short story that has to be done within the first page or two. In a novel, before the first chapter has ended.
 

I.A. Watson: The reader has to care about or wonder about something or someone. The reader must invest. Either we like - or hate - a character or situation, or we're intrigued by an event.

Think of the start of Ian Banks' The Crow Road -- "It was the day my grandmother exploded." Nobody could avoid reading the next line. And the next, and the next, and it unfolds from there. Think of Lessa's awakening at the start of Anne McCaffery's Dragonflight and how her fantasy world naturally unveils from there.

A word of caution, though. As a seasoned, cynical, critical reader I am very suspicious now of books that start with a prophecy poem. Tolkein nailed it with "One ring to rule them all..." Other prophecies need not apply.

Prologues are a controversial topic too. I've had publishers request them added and others ask them to be deleted. My general rule is that unless you can quantify what value they add, other than making the author look clever on a second read, then they're best left until you are Stephen King popular and can do whatever you like. Use them if there's good reason. Otherwise, go straight for your readers' jugulars and never let go till they wake up buying the sequel.

Tamara Lowery: Interesting character(s); interesting, fun, or emotionally gripping action; and the kind of location you'd like to visit, can relate to, or hope to God is NOT a real place.

Getting the First and Last Word -- Story Openings and Endings

Whether you're a genre writer or a literary writer or some kind of hybrid (with excellent gas mileage), it difficult to deny that you have to grab a reader's attention right from the get-go. Not only are you in competition with other books, but also with video games, movies, and whatever else can capture your readers' attention. So we turned to a collection of attention-grabbing authors and picked their brains on the subject of story openings and story endings.

How important to you are your openings and endings for your stories?

Lee Houston Junior: VERY. Potential readers don't have time to scan through a whole book, so those moments are essential to grab their attention.

Ron Fortier: Ever since I can remember, it seems most genre writers, particularly those in mystery and sci-fi swear by the so called "narrative hook."  An opening line that is suppose to figuratively "hook" the reader immediately.

And although I can understand the merits of such an opening, its never been my personal approach to writing.  To me all aspects of any story are vital and I rarely assign any added importance to either a beginning or ending.  Each has to work as a part of the whole, thus when writing, I simply sit down and start at the beginning, as my muse has imagined it in my mind.

Of course most stories will have some kind of drama, but again, I just want to tell a good story, involve my reader... and move on.

It shouldn't ever be formulaic, but organic.

H. David Blalock: The opening and the ending should reflect a real logical progression. In other words, if you start out in Podunk, Arkansas you should end up in a likely place, not the 4th Dynasty of Egypt (unless the rest of your story points at it). Readers usually like a short story to deal with one concept at a time. Save the subplots and story arcs for novels and serials.

Van Allen Plexico: I firmly believe in trying to grab the reader by getting things going urgently and immediately, with a quick and powerful sentence or two that is evocative and colorful.  Here are some examples of my openings:

Hawk awoke naked and screaming in the heart of a shattered galaxy.
(HAWK.  Trying to be vivid and evocative.)

Down rained the night, cloaked all in fire and brimstone.
(LUCIAN.  My attempt to be sort of lyrical and also hint that this guy is more devilish than angelic!)

A wormhole is a hell of a place to die.
(ALPHA/OMEGA.  In italics, from the protagonist's POV. Tough and terse and military-SF-ish.) (Incomplete novel.)

The fact that I typed each of these from memory proves that, at least for me, they definitely were "grabbing" and memorable!  :-)

R.J. Sullivan: An opening should be powerful, a hook to make the reader want to read more. One rule of thumb I have heard is "no backstory exposition for the first three chapters." (I broke that in Haunting Blue, oh well). It should establish your POV character or at least the conflict that will affect the POV character. If you think in cinematic terms, think of Star Wars--the opening drew you directly into the story and the conflict. Even though we don't meet Luke for another 20 minutes we know exactly what's at stake, who the players are, and we've seen the destriuction the villains are capable of in a very dramatic way. The opening is vital to get right, because if you blow that, the reader won't continue.

Marian Allen: Openings and endings are very important to me. The opening is where the story swallows the reader, and the ending .... Wait a minute. I start again. The opening hooks and pulls the readers into the story and the ending moves the readers on with a sense of closure, but with that hook still in, so they remember the story and want more.

What makes an effective opening? What is its purpose?

Lee Houston Junior: I have heard all kinds of theories and "rules" on this subject. But I definitely want everyone to feel that my story is worth reading. I want even the casual book browser searching Amazon or wherever to yearn to find out how the story progresses from what little they view.

H. David Blalock: The opening for a short story is critical. The brevity of the piece already restricts your ability to properly tell the story, but there is so much competition for the story versus other stories, novels, TV, etc. that if you can't catch the reader's attention immediately, you are very likely to lose them before the third paragraph.

Marian Allen: An effective opening gives readers the flavor of the piece and the sound of the narrative voice. It's like speed-dating for stories. The purpose is to establish a sense of "who" the story is.

M.D. Jackson: Hit the ground running and don't stop.

What makes an effective ending? What is it's purpose?

Lee Houston Junior: For me, the story has to reach a satisfying climax that "wows" the readers, especially if they didn't foresee the ending I wrote happening. I have heard plenty of positive comments from friends that PROJECT ALPHA did not end the way they expected it to. If you are not only happy that you read my book, but are surprised at how it turned out, then I did my job as a writer.

H. David Blalock: The ending needs to leave the reader satisfied that the story made sense from beginning to end, because if they don't, they won't be reading too much of your work in future. If you plan on ending your story with a bit of a twist, remember to set it up in the body of the work somehow. The twist can be unexpected, but it still needs to make sense in the context of the rest of the work. Of course, you should NEVER end a story with the narrator suddenly waking up. "It was all just a dream" is a really bad way to end any story. The reader will undoubtedly feel cheated and annoyed = one lost reader.

Marian Allen: An effective ending, IMO, is a payoff. Best last line ever: "A boy loves his dog." -- Harlan Ellison, "A Boy And His Dog"

I like endings that circle around or echo something in the opening. I like endings that resonate with the rest of the story.

R.J. Sullivan: Endings are a different beast. Generally, if you "have" the reader and they get to your ending, if the voyage has been worth it, a reader will forgive a weak ending and may still read your next book (Stehen King's endings tend to disappoint -- there, I said it). I feel, even in a series, that each part of a book should have it's own distinct climax and ending, concluding SOMETHING even in a long-running series. That's just my preference as a reader.

What are some of the cliches that writers should avoid or that you have struggled with in creating powerful and effective openings and endings?

Marian Allen: There are no cliches a good writer should avoid. Everything has been done before, but a good writer can take even the most overdone bit and make it fresh and powerful. And anything, no matter how original, can be dull in the hands of a lazy writer.

Lee Houston Junior: "It was a dark and stormy night." ;-) Seriously, finding the right words to set the mood or resolve the story, let alone tell the tale to begin with, is not always easy. There have been times when I have written and rewritten passages because they sounded similar to something else or just weren't good enough. But finding the right words, not only for the opening and closing, but for everything inbetween is what makes the story come alive. But while each subsequent book in my series (Alpha and Hugh Monn, Private Detective) will build upon the past volumes, no book I write will ever end with those three dreaded words "To Be Continued."

H. David Blalock:  There are some cliches you can use that can be forgiven. Opening with action, no matter how familiar, will usually work. Starting out with "They call me mad, but I swear it's true" or like words is a dead giveaway the writer needs to develop his or her style.

The Watson Report: Starting a Story

To my way of thinking, story openings have to do three things in the first few paragraphs.

1. They have to give readers a sense of the kind of story they're reading: mood, narrative style, setting etc. Never start a book "It was a dark and stormy night" but that at least paints the required picture; you are in a dark and turbulent place or a horror satire.

2. They have to "catch" the reader to carry on past the first lines and apply the habit of reading to this work. The first sentence is best when it's a grabber.  Special credit goes to Ian Banks' The Crow Road for "It was the day my grand-mother exploded."

3. They have to be both familiar and unique, so the reader can latch on to things even before the author had had a chance for the first exposition paragraphs while avoiding having the reader instantly pigeonholing the tale. "Oh, the girl's dating a sensitive vampire. Where's my shotgun?" is probably a bad reader reaction. "Oh, this is a bit like a Sherlock Holmes Victorian mystery - except the investigator is a monkey!" is probably okay.

So the best openings are stylish, enthralling, and they set how the reader initially engages with the book. Some of the tricks are:

James Earl Jones-style authorative narrative voice: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." That one's been used, though.

In media res dialogue: "They're breaking through! The damn mutos are already loose downstairs!" Tells you all you need to know about why the next paragraph describes our hero hefting a flame-thrower.

Paint a word picture of something's appearance or history: "Detective Brown's battered Colt '45 had a notch in the grip for every capo of the Werner gang it had ended."

Plunge in with something visceral that we're culturally conditioned not to ignore: a fight or sex are the classics, but having someone sitting there with a razorblade to the wrist, or having a woman in labour, or the flames creeping towards the baby will get the job done too. Few people aren't going to read on at least a few paragraphs to check what happens. "Lindsay Chase switched on the waste disposal grinder and slowly fed her finger between its whirling blades."

Summarize the main theme of the book, what you're about to spend a whole story addressing: "The shabby kitchen wall at 115 Leinster St hadn't been disturbed since 1933. That didn't stop the workmen from discovering the two-day-old corpse of schoolgirl Alison Drew behind the old lath-and-plaster."

Start with a first person storyteller's plea to the reader: "Read this! You don't know what it is that lurks behind your bedroom mirror. You don't know why your reflection sneers at you when you turn away. You have to listen to me, to hear what I've seen, before the night falls and they take me - then come for you!"

Start with a word of advice. "Never trust a man selling a tonic with a hand-stencilled label." This one has a far less cerebral, far more folksy personal contact with the reader than most modern styles, but it can work if you want to set a certain tone.

Set up a paragraph that will pay off in the very last paragraph of your book to give it closure. Start with "Nobody cared that thirty people died in the 210th street tenement fire." and end with "Nobody cared that thirty people died in the 210th street tenement fire - except Rock Joe Johnson. That was why Eileen married him."

I think there's probably an art to the paragraphs right after the opening ones too, the ones that have to start serving up character and information without dumping great chunks of backstory on the poor reader; but that's probably another question. 

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I.A. Watson is an adventure, fantasy, and SF author from Yorkshire, England. For more information visit him online: http://www.chillwater.org.uk/writing/iawatsonhome.htm

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#185) -- Story Openings

This one's from one of the panel attendees during FandomFest at Louisville, Kentucky, this past weekend.

What advice do you have for story openings?

That's not a knife. It's a machete, but you get the point.

1. Start in the middle of the highpoint of physical or emotional intensity. Don't walk up to the door, open it, and notice the mirror in the foyer and the reflection of your date's fancy dress. Instead, start with the man with the knife poking at your prom date's neck.

2. Use strong verbs and nouns. "Was" and other weak verbs are common for story openings but are typically so much weaker than more powerful words. (This doesn't mean "fancy" words, just "powerful" words -- there is a difference.)

3. Use (as much as is possible) simple subject-verb construction. "The knife stabbed Bill's knee and sliced clean through the bone where his old football injury still hurt" is a lot more effective that "Where the knife had stabbed Bill's old wound became a new area of pain for the former all-star quarterback." Someone (or something) does something. Not an abstract concept that then linking verbs to some adjective- and adverb-laden concept. (Unless you're Henry James or James Joyce, of course.)

4. Listen to the sounds in your sentence. Hard sounds stop readers like a punch. Soft sounds flow like a dance. Choose which you need based on the action of your opening.