The First Sentence as an Amuse-Bouche
By Therese Walsh | August 2, 2011 |
We’ve heard countless times about the importance of the first page, the first graph, the first sentence. We know that these first words need to hook busy agents and editors quickly if our book has any chance for publication and, once published, has any chance to develop a wide readership. And though we usually have more than one sentence to catch someone’s attention, why not make that first line work as hard as possible?
Recently my daughter read the novel Going Bovine by Libba Bray. She shared the concept with me, and then I picked up the book, turned to the first page and read:
The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World.
“That’s a great first line,” I told her.
She shrugged. “Really?”
“So much of what you told me about the main character is in that first line. He’s a kid, he’s a cynic, and he takes little pleasure in life. You see part of his arc in that first sentence, where the story needs to go to take him to a better place, so his best memory isn’t nearly dying at Disney.”
She looked at the sentence again. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s clever.”
It’s an easy concept–even if executing the concept might take you more time and thought that you’d like: Let the first sentence offer an impactful and authentic taste of what’s to come, an amuse-bouche that teases what the meal that is your story will offer and leaves the reader hungry for more. Don’t write a strong hook that suggests one thing and fails to live up to its promise. “The sky hemorrhaged rain on the first day of the end of the world,” might be a great first line for an apocalyptic thriller but is an obvious fail as the first line of a romance novel. (Note to self: Write an apocalyptic thriller.)
After a happy hour perusing my bookshelves, I’d like to offer up these examples of first lines that I think are not only intriguing but set the tone for the book they introduce.
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury:
It was a pleasure to burn.
Nine and A Half Weeks, Elizabeth McNeill:
The first time we were in bed together he held my hands pinned down above my head.
The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson:
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydid are supposed, by some, to dream.
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger:
It’s hard being left behind.
Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt:
The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon:
It was 7 minutes after midnight.
The Weird Sisters, Eleanor Brown:
We came home because we were failures.
Atonement, Ian McEwan:
The play–for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crêpe paper–was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Mary E. Pearson:
I used to be someone.
Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand:
In 1938, near the end of a decade of monumental turmoil, the year’s number-one newsmaker was not Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hitler, or Mussolini.
Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli:
I am running.
The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch, Marsha Moyer:
I was thirty-three years old when my husband walked out into the field one morning and never came back and I went in one quick leap from wife to widow.
The Good Fairies of New York, Martin Millar:
Dinnie, an overweight enemy of humanity, was the worst violinist in New York, but was practicing gamely when two cute fairies stumbled through his fourth-floor window and vomited on the carpet.
A Dirty Job, Christopher Moore:
Charlie Asher walked the earth like an ant walks on the surface of water, as if the slightest misstep might send him plummeting through the surface to be sucked to the depths below.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in A Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente:
Once upon a time, a girl named September grew very tired indeed of her parents’ house, where she washed the same pink-and-yellow teacups and matching gravy boats every day, slept on the same embroidered pillow, and played with the same small and amiable dog.
A Very Long Engagement, Sébastien Japrisot:
Once upon a time, there were five French soldiers who had gone off to war, because that’s the way of the world.
Friday Mornings at Nine, Marilyn Brant:
They met on Friday mornings at nine because that was the time when Tamara’s husband left for his law firm, when Briget’s kids were safely in school and when Jennifer told everybody she had yoga.
Diamond Ruby, Joseph Wallace:
Ruby Thomas had never seen anything as beautiful as Ebbets Field, with its brick exterior and half-moon windows that reminded her of slices of jelly candy.
Once you’ve been writing for a while, you’ll learn that it’s less difficult to write a compelling first sentence than one that is both compelling and lures with the right sort of hook. Sometimes it’s not possible to write the best first sentence for your book until after the book is written. Don’t be afraid to go back and play. I rewrote the first line of The Last Will of Moira Leahy at least a dozen times before settling on the first line for that story:
I lost my twin to a harsh November nine years ago.
I’m happy with it because it says book about hurting sibling, emotional angst, probably a story about healing, which is what it is.
Treat your first sentence as an amuse-bouche, an alluring sample of what’s to come. Avoid serving your reader the equivalent of a caviar appetizer if what you’re offering in the bulk of your pages is ravioli, and vice versa. Make a promise with your first sentence, and work hard to keep it.
Is your first sentence truly serving your work-in-progress? Feel free to share your first line here, or quote some of your favorite first lines.
Write on!
Photo courtesy Flickr’s mpclemens
Therese Walsh (she/her) co-founded Writer Unboxed in 2006 and is the site’s editorial director. She was the editor of WU’s only book, Author in Progress, and runs the Writer Unboxed UnConference.
Her second novel, The Moon Sisters, received starred reviews and was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal and Book Riot.
Learn more about Therese on her website, and sign up for her newsletter to be among the first to hear about any new projects.
Love this! I spoke with my agent yesterday, and she is suggesting that I change around my novel’s opening scene. Working on this was my first morning task. Oy, the pressure! I was just gonna go with “It was a dark and stormy night,” but then I read your post. Thanks, Therese. (Now I’m gonna go with “I am running.”) ;)
Good luck revisiting that scene, Sarah! (I changed my first scene around shortly before I found my agent.)
I like most of my first lines, but I love this one by author James Scott Bell:
The nun hit me in the mouth and said, “Get out of my house.”
You can never go wrong with Bell :-)
That’s fantastic!
How about Catch-22: “It was love at first sight.” Brilliant, no?
The first line of The Hazards of Hunting While Heartbroken was one of the last changes I made: “No kid dreams of growing up to become a headhunter.”
And as for my WIP, it’s had so many first lines that all I an remember of the first one is that is was truly awful.
I remember the first line of my first draft being awful too. It’s good to get the sub-par writing out of the way early. :-)
There are some great first sentences there! Tuck Everlasting’s is so perfect, because I KNOW that feeling.
Thanks for the round-up and the advice. The examples are a great way of showing what a first sentence can accomplish.
That book is such a heart-breaker. So good!
I don’t know if my first lines are that great, but I work on them forever. This is my favorite first line from A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean: “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”
A great line; it says so much.
Love this, Therese. I’m still playing with the first line of my wip, so this is great fodder for inspiration.
One I recently liked was Charles Frazier’s Thriteen Moons; ‘There is no scatheless rapture.’
An all-time fave, the line that spawned an entire world, is Tolkien’s ‘In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.’ I’ve heard he idly scawled it on a scrap of paper as he was grading exams at Oxford.
It’s been a while, great to see you here! ;-) Thanks for a perfectly timed post.
Thank god for scraps of paper. Great line!
Very nice, Teri. Now I’m going to have to go back and look at my first lines. Hmm. The current WIP starts with:
The air was as still as it was hot—only the whir of a grasshopper’s flight troubled the quiet.
Nice voice, Ray.
Great post, Therese. I love first lines. Sometimes I feel like I collect them in my memory to know what works for me when I read and when I write. I’m smitten – and so impressed – when an author nails it.
One of my favorite first lines:
“I left my wedding dress hanging in a tree somewhere in North Dakota.” — from Cathy Lamb’s JULIA’S CHOCOLATES
Fantastic line; I’ll have to look for that book.
Have you read Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer? You might like it!
We were talking about this the other day in a writing group, along with the importance of titles and how many of the latter are generic and meaningless. If that first line could belong in any other book, then it’s probably not carrying it’s weight.
I’m still working on my first lines, but thank you for the inspiration. Now I have a bigger TBR piles, too.
If that first line could belong in any other book, then it’s probably not carrying it’s weight.
Smart standard.
We were talking about this the other day in a writing group, along with the importance of titles and how many of the latter are generic and meaningless. If that first line could belong in any other book, then it’s probably not carrying it’s weight.
I’m still working on my first lines, but thank you for the inspiration. Now I have a bigger TBR piles, too.
Oh I love a good first line – love the likeness to an amuse bouche!
One reason I love Laura Caldwell and Marcia Muller – they both write my kind of first lines or the last line of the first paragraph or prologue tying in the first line:
Marcia Muller:
“During the hours while other people sleep, the threat always comes from within.”
Gives me chills every time.
Laura Caldwell:
I only wish I’d grasped then that the fall from innocence was a very long one.”
Piques my curiosity.
Love these first lines, Kathy. Thanks for sharing.
So helpful Therese! Also love the pic of the old typewriter. Here is a first paragraph to another novel I have on the back burner.
“Rosalie “Rosee” Williams feared death more than anything and avoided it at every instance. Never went to funerals. Never, ever went to wakes. And would never think of touching a cold, dead body. Not until she inherits her Uncle Charley’s funeral home and cemeteries.”
Thanks, Susan K
I fell in love with that pic, too. Thanks, Susan.
Inheriting a funeral home. Interesting!
“Just me, a bottle of Oban, and Pamela the bartender.”
That’s the first line of my novel…one I’ve worked on (the line and the novel) for many, many months.
Some of my favorite lines are actually the last ones in a chapter. Those are usuallly the whoppers…the ones that either make you stop and think a moment about how true the line rings…or that don’t let you stop for a second because you can’t wait to read what happens next!
Catherine- your first line caught my eye, I like it :-)
I like it!
I know what you mean about the satisfying punch of a good last line, too. They’re also some of my favorites.
Great post about first lines. I’ve been playing with mine for a bit and I think I may have finally nailed it down.
I don’t have a favorite first line but the line from a book I’ve recently read is – “You know Doc, you’re not the first shrink I’ve seen since I got back.” – From Still Missing by Chevy Stevens
Love that.
What a delicious exercise. We all read and have our favorites.
William Least Heat Moon started ‘Blue Highways’ with ‘Beware thoughts that come in the night.’
Or, how about Sarah Blake’s start of ‘The Postmistress’: ‘It began, as it often does, with a woman putting her ducks in a row.’
My personal best is the beginning of ‘The Shot Heard’: ‘He was cold.’
Fun stuff.
Great lines, Alex. Thanks for playing along!
Going Bovine. Awesome book. And the quality of that first sentence isn’t a fluke. It just keeps on going!
It’s on my TBR list now that Riley has given it such high marks. It actually made her sob, and I don’t think any other book has affected her like that.
Love it. Plus now I’m hungry. :D
Teri, aside from yours being one of my all-time favorites (seriously), here are a few others that have left me in awe:
“When the monster finally came through the door, he was wearing a mask.”
— Perfect Match, Jodi Picoult
(IMO, the queen of first lines AND paragraphs; this line provides irony and dual meaning by story’s end.)
“They took me in my nightgown.”
— Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys
(So simple, yet sets the tone of the entire book.)
“They shuffled into the courtroom like twelve of San Francisco’s homeless, shoulders hunched and heads bowed as if searching the sidewalk for spare change.”
— The Jury Master, Robert Dugoni
(Visuals don’t get better than that.)
And from my all-time favorite novel:
“First the colors. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.”
— The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
(For me, no narrator will ever top this version of Death.)
You know I love you, right?
Yikes, “They took me in my nightgown” truly just gave me the chills. I’ll have to read that one with the lights on.
My favorite of all time, from Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle:
“I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.”
(Second sentence, even better: “My life had a tendency to spread, to get flabby, to scroll and festoon likek the frame of a baroque mirror, which came from following the line of least resistance.”)
Gorgeous. I almost included the first line from Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, which makes me swoon with pleasure:
Ooh, what wonderful first lines! Now I want to read all those books.
The first line of my WIP (which, fingers crossed, goes out on sub later this month) was an image that struck me as I read something in a guidebook. I wrote my first paragraph long before realizing I would be writing a book: “In Rajasthan, a five year old child is likely never to have seen rain.” It’s the only sentence that I’ve never changed in eight years. I hope it brings me luck!
I love that first line, Anjali! Good, great luck to you as you head out on submission.
Very helpful, Therese; however, I really believe (after reading thousands of great stories/books in my fifty-eight years) that writing and being published is really more a numbers game (lottery-like) combined with being in the right place at the right time or meeting the right person. I think of it like I do the number of singers that are every bit as good as whomever is “big” now, yet not discovered because they weren’t in the right place or haven’t met the right person. Maria Carey once commented that she was at a party with a friend who happened to introduce her to a record producer. After a few drinks, he agreed to take Carey’s demo cassette to his car and listen to it. The rest, as they say, is history.
There are many, many first lines (and more than a few first paragraphs) that are lackluster and boring, yet, they somehow get published. I LOVE Margaret Atwood, but her first line in “Death by Landscape” is no cliff-hanger. “Now that the boys are grown up and Rob is dead, Lois has moved to a condominium apartment in one of the new waterfront developments.” It’s a fantastic short story, but (my opinion here) is this first line is a sleeper. It’s only because one knows what to expect from a writing genius like Atwood that one keeps reading.
I respect your opinion; I just think we struggling writers need to recognize that it’s keeping your line in the water that eventually lands you a fish…not necessarily how well you fish.
Thanks.
– James Mayor (www.jamesmayor.com)
I respect your opinion, too. Perhaps the essay would’ve been better framed to say you should seek the right first sentence to serve the work — not necessarily to become traditionally published (though that might be a writer’s goal).
I too have spent a lot of time on my opening line, but my focus has shifted this year to the ‘middle act’ because I realized I was putting too many books in the trash that followed this course: Great opening followed by an inexcusable story. Hopefully this will be an upcoming topic :-)
So true, Kari, and I think this is what Don touches on in his comment below. Sustaining a promise from the first line to the last, over the course of 90-100k words, is no small task. I’ve been using a few well-placed sticky notes (around my monitor) to remind myself what each scene and chapter need to deliver.
I could see “The sky hemorrhaged rain on the first day of the end of the world” being the first line of a romance novel/women’s fiction if it’s meant a little tongue-in-cheek with a cynical or sarcastic narrator.
I’m still fiddling with the first line for my current WIP (it’s pretty long), but one of my favorites in recent years has been Robert Charles Wilson’s SPIN:
“Everyone falls, and we all land somewhere.”
It tells me that, in this high-concept science fiction book, we’re going to have a story that’s personal, about hitting the hard times in life and dealing with whatever happens. It’s a beautiful story.
I like that line a lot; it’s comforting. Thanks for sharing.
“In all things, I blame the husband.”
– Kelly Simmons: STANDING STILL
Love!
Oh, how I loved reading this post and the comments. I’m a first/last line junkie. Some favorite firsts of mine:
“The book was thick and black and covered with dust.” A. S. Byatt, POSSESSION
“Before the screaming starts, the night silence of the convent is already alive with its own particular sounds.” Sarah Dunant, SACRED HEARTS
“There were years after it happened, after I’d returned from the town and come back here to the busy blank of the city, when some comment would be tossed off about the Second World War and how it had gone–some idiotic remark about clarity and purpose–and I’d resist the urge to stub out my cigarette and bring the dinner party to a satisfying halt.” Sarah Blake, THE POSTMISTRESS
Great first lines, Erika. Sacred Hearts sounds chilling.
I hate writing opening lines. Usually I work on the rest of the book, and come back to the opening line. Hm, actually, I play with it on and off during the course of writing the back end of the novel.
The current opening line in place is, ‘Night fell but darkness did not.’ Which has held position for a couple of months already but I expect will change in subsequent drafts.
I hear you — they can terrorize when you know they’re not living up to their potential. I like your place-holder, though, for what it’s worth!
Great first lines create a contradiction, raise a question or construct a tiny mental puzzle. They force you to read the next line.
They also can intrigue simply because the language (most editors say “voice”) is unusual and commanding of your attention.
When the world of the story is real in the author’s mind, there’s no need to sell the real estate. the author just leaves the door ajar for the reader to wander in.
I love the confidence in a great first line. I feel secure in the hands of a storyteller. I’m going to have a good time.
There are a lot of good first lines in manuscripts, actually. Line 1259…mmm. usually not as clever.
Wise words, and certainly you would know. A great voice catches my attention every time.
One of my faves:
“My family has always been into death.” Lisa Alther – Kinflicks
From my WIP:
“Juliana Pembroke is a medical doctor, a suffragette, and an American, three things no sane man would want in a wife.”
Right now I’m very fond of ‘The Building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault’, Jim Butcher, BLOOD RITES.
It gives that plot interest and also a feel for the main character right from the first sentence.
Such great examples of first lines. I appreciate the idea that great ones force you to read the next sentences. A favorite beginning I enjoy and enjoy teaching to my middle school students is Langston Hughes’ in the short story, Thank You, Ma’am.
She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails.
Jeffery Deaver’s opening line, “As soon as he stepped into the dim apartment he knew he was dead” hooked me so bad, I couldn’t put the book down until I was done.
From “Garden of Beasts”
Wonderful post, Therese — I loved reading all of these first lines and so appreciated your having included one of mine ;). Thank you.
I’ve revised my revisions more times than I care to admit, being a “one step forward and two steps back” kind of writer. With that in mind . . .
My WIP mystery, Tudor Roses, current opening line: “I had always thought Hamlet’s description of death as the ‘undiscovered country from which no traveler returns’ quite poetic.”
First lines and titles are the bons bons of writing to me – it’s the rest of the book that’s work.
My current WIP: “Running away from home at thirty two? That has to be a first.”
Anthony Burgess: “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.”
The first line of my WIP:
“The day I buried my son, I woke to find him standing next to my bed, reaching out for me.”
Excellent article. I don’t see any ‘first lines’ which are dialogue – words spoken by one of the main characters. Is it ‘wrong’ to open with dialogue as a first line? Here is my first line from my published book, Back Ward.
“Oh, no!”
“It’s all right. You’re all right,” Nurse Judith says, as I prop myself up on my arm, stiff sheets raking at the oozing abrasion on my elbow.
“What happened?” I ask.
“She gave you too much,” she whispers as though Miss Bridges has ears that could hear through walls. She smiles now, wiping my brow with the warm, wet cloth, heated by the love inside of her, I think.
I struggle with my first lines. And every critique partner has a different opinion about what works. But I really like the way you summed up the purpose of a first line here. I will go back to my manuscript and look at it with a new eye. Thanks so much to everyone who commented, as well! A lot of information on this blog.
I’ve rewritten my first sentence so many times, I no longer trust my judgment. I have no idea if it’s as interesting as a new puppy with a bright red ribbon around its neck or more like a pile up on the freeway. Sigh.
I like the idea that the first line is something to play around with after the mauscript is finished. I need to write, write, write so my WIP isn’t eternally IP! I could tinker forever with the first line,paragraph or chapter.
Thanks so much for this terrific article!
After still more futzing, here is the first line of my WIP, Big in Britain.
“I should be embarrassed, it occurred to me just then– ashamed to the point of hot, stinging tears or, at the very least, indignant; I had been drinking since before I got on the fucking plane and my behavior was ridiculous.”
(Too early for proof-reading this post, sorry!)
Great post.
Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is sitting next to me so I looked up it’s first line:
“Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.”
For a Pullitzer, National Book yada-yada winner, I was a little unimpressed. Although it does meet Jan O’Hara’s test, it couldn’t have been in any other book.
What great examples! Loved this post, Therese!
I rarely read through the comments even on my favorite blog posts, but you really touched a nerve here, Therese! I loved reading all the first lines everyone brought to the conversation. Wonderful stuff.
And for those struggling, it might help to know that Hemingway claimed to have rewritten the first chapter of one novel fifty times. Some months ago I saw the original first pages of a novel of his, and they were so generic I thought, This must be the one.
He was such a perfectionist by the end of his life, I’m guessing he rewrote the first chapters of several novels many dozens of times.
You do what it takes to do it right.
I LOVE first lines! One of my all time faves is Ken Follett’s “The last camel died at noon.”
Another is John D. Macdonald’s “We were about to give up and call it a night when someone threw the girl off the bridge.”
I recently finished writing a book where for weeks the hero refused to accept the woman I believed to be perfect for him. I’d planned this couple two books earlier and had been building up to their meeting. But he kept balking. Then just when I was getting really desperate, a line popped into my head:
Madeline Durand was braising short ribs in an Omaha department store when her husband’s sex video went viral.
That was my introduction to celebrity chef Maddy Durand and from that moment the book took off and hopefully readers will enjoy the rest in January. :)
Great post – Sol Stein’s Stein on Writing has a great chapter about opening lines in addition to many other topics.
“Snowman wakes before dawn.” from Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake is one of my personal favourites.
For what it’s worth, today, the first line of my current WIP is:
“I can still remember the wish I made as I blew out the candles on my sixth birthday: to lose the use of my legs.”
However, I’m sure tomorrow it will change…
How about Camus’ The Stranger: “Mother died yesterday.”
Here is my first line (s):
Anyone who has ever had their heart shit on, enjoyed needle drugs, or rotted away in sub-Saharan Africa just might have witnessed things, and could have something worthwhile to say. Worth what I haven’t the faintest idea. This is a story, it could be mine or it could be yours. In all reality it is of little significance, the Africa part, because you and I both know a new town is a discovery and a new place in which to repeat old habits, like placating unchecked impulse, living beyond your means, or spending other peoples’ money.
You can find it on the above website under “Travel”
I love the first line of The Stranger — and I love that book. Camus even plays a small role in my next novel.
Very intriguing opening lines, D.T.!