Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
“You had me at the first line.” Every author dreams of hearing readers proclaim that the first line of a book grabbed them by the lapels and wouldn’t let them go. Rest assured that not only readers but also agents and editors are suckers for a great first line.
Let’s look at some winners and some sleepers and see if we can figure out what makes one beginning work and another makes the reader work to wedge his or her way into the book.
Here’s one I like: “Anybody reared on Sesame Street remembers Oscar the Grouch. How can you not love a furry green monster that lives in a garbage can and breaks into a chorus of ‘I Love Trash’ at the drop of a hat? He would be the perfect mascot for this book, and, I suggest, for our lives. Every one of us has an Oscar within, eager to muck up our world. That’s what this book is all about.” –Bill Giovannetti’s How to Keep Your Inner Mess from Trashing Your Outer World.
Bill draws us into his book by providing us with an image that we resonate with from our childhood. And the author helps us to recall Oscar by engaging our senses with words like “furry,” “green” “breaks into a chorus of.” Then we’re told that Oscar resides within us–and that’s the problem the book discusses.
Just think about all the ways this opening draws us in and sets the stage for the rest of the book. We grasp that while the topic is heavy, the writing won’t be. This will be an easy book to read, even though the content might make us squirm.
Next up: “I should have known better than to respond. My personal planner was full enough without accepting anonymous invitations to dine with religious leaders. Especially dead ones.” –David Gregory’s New York Times bestseller, Dinner with a Perfect Stranger, in which the protagonist has dinner and a conversation with Jesus.
What I like: The cynical tone of the protagonist is served up to the reader at the get-go–and you like the guy. The juxtaposition of dining with someone who just happens to be dead is a grabber.
Here’s the opening from my latest favorite novel, The Help, which depicts life for African American women in the South in the ’60s, when many of them worked in white folks’ homes, raising white babies, who would grow up to hate the black women who were like mothers to them as children.
“Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that’s what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.
“But I ain’t never seen a baby yell like Mae Mobley Leefolt. First day I walk in the door, there she be, red-hot and hollering with the colic, fighting that bottle like it’s a rotten turnip. Miss Leefolt, she look terrified a her own child. ‘What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I stop it?’
“It? That was my first hint: something is wrong with this situation.”
The author, Kathryn Stockett, has, in the matter of a few sentences, established the voice of one of the book’s protagonists, introduced us to her life, and shown us a conflict that weaves its way through the book–a child not loved by her mother but by the black “help.”
Now, here’s an opening that didn’t work especially well for me. It’s from Water for Elephants, a book that I came to adore, but it took time to grow on me.
“Only three people were left under the red and white awning of the grease joint: Grady, me, and the fry cook. Grady and I sat at a battered wooden table, each facing a burger on a dented tin plate. The cook was behind the counter, scraping his griddle with the edge of a spatula. He had turned off the fryer some time ago, but the odor of grease lingered.”
No tension exists in this opening paragraph. It sets the stage for life in the circus during the depression, but I’m not finding anything to hook me and pull me in.
The second paragraph begins to do that work, but I’m still not wowwed: “The rest of the midway–so recently writhing with people–was empty but for a handful of employees and a small group of men waiting to be led to the cooch tent. They glanced nervously from side to side, with hats pulled low and hands thrust deep in their pockets. They wouldn’t be disappointed: somewhere in the back Barbara and her ample charms awaited.”
Just as I evaluate openings in books I’m reading, so too I gauge how long it takes for me to be pulled into a manuscript. And I’m not alone in putting lots of weight on a project’s beginning; many a book lived or died based on its first page.
What openings have grabbed you by the lapels and insisted you read on? What books did you have to persist in getting involved with–or didn’t push you into the content fast enough so you abandoned reading them?
I still run this line through my head, ever since I first read it in Gayle Roper’s manuscript critique group from Mt. Hermon four years ago:
“Fire is a lovely thing.”
I think about it every time I look at a fire, see smoke, or glimpse a kaleidescope of firey colors.
That’s not what you’re looking for, but it’s memorable to me and pulled me in to find out why Bertie thinks it so–since, just returned from her husband’s funeral, she’s looking at her own home. From Kathleen Popa’s lyrical “The Feast of St. Bertie’s.”
I loved the first sentence of James Scott Bell’s Try Darkness: “The nun hit me in the mouth and said, ‘Get out of my house.'”
If the thought of a nun hitting a man and saying that doesn’t draw you in, I don’t know what would. The dialogue that follows sizzles just as much as the first sentence. I normally wouldn’t open a book with dialogue since folks don’t know yet who these people are, but with something that amazing, it works.
If I’m brousing for a new book I read the blurb first and if it sounds interesting, I read the first couple of sentences of the first chapter and either go for it or place the book back on the shelf.
So it’s little wonder that experts like you tell us to polish that opening!
Thanks for calling our attention to it again.
I love this topic, Janet, and I like thinking about it. I have diverse reading habits, but here are four novels I think of off the bat that pulled me in by their opening lines and I still remember them:
“The Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse rode in.
Late as usual.” (Calico Canyon by Mary Connealy)
____
“Eureka, California
8:32 PM
The mission was simple: kill everyone.” (Deadlock by Robert Liparulo)
____
“Catering a wake was not my idea of fun.” (Catering to Nobody by Diane Mott Davidson)
____
“September: 12th Day of September: I am commanded to write an account of my days: I am bit by fleas and plagued by family. That is all there is to say.” (Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman)
___
And a book that blew me away (had me turning pages fast) was one I read as a judge in a published book contest–one I might not have ever picked up if I didn’t have to. It was one that took me a while to get “into” :
“Hills of Hazor take you,” I swore for at least the tenth time since first light. My sword hacked at thick underbrush, but I when I shouldered my way forward, a twig snapped back to hit my face.” (The Restorer’s Son by Sharon Hinck)
I hadn’t read the first one and the world was totally unknown to me. But after I read it, I had to the read the first and last book in that series, too, and loved her style.
I just finished reading Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson, and I can’t stop talking about how fantastic the introductions to the first three chapters were.
Chapter 1: “Prince Raoden of Arelon awoke early that morning, completely unaware that he had been damned for all eternity.”
Chapter 2: “Sarene stepped off of the ship to discover that she was a widow. It was shocking news, of course, but not as devastating as it could have been. After all, she had never met her husband.”
Chapter 3: “None of Arelon’s people greeted their savior when he arrived. It was an affront, of course, but not an unexpected one. The people of Arelon–especially those living near the infamous city of Elantris–were known for their godless, even heretical, ways. Hrathen had come to change that.”
What a fantastic way to introduce the three main characters! Each of these excerpts made my ears perk up, so to speak. I simply HAD to learn more!
I am a huge Stephen King fan (which is probably why I’ve been sucked into the world of romantic suspense). If there was ever an author who could drag you in to a story, it would be him.
One of my favorite opening lines is from The Mist:
“This is what happened.”
To me, the whole purpose of the opening line is to make the reader want to read the next line. And with an opening like that, how can you NOT keep going?
– Nika
What great openings to novels. I laughed aloud at James Scott Bell’s sassy nun. Hmm, I think my books to read list is growing as a result of these great openings.
Great openings.
Water for Elephants didn’t draw me in with the first paragraph, either. The last line of second paragraph…that’s pretty interesting.
I read kid’s books so here are a couple of my favorites:
____________________
His Majesty, King Darrow of Corenwald,
Protector of the People,
Defender of the Faith,
Keeper of the Island,
Tambluff Castle
West Bank of the River Tam
Tambluff, Corenwald
My Dearest King,
You will be glad to learn that I am still available for any quest, adventure, or dangerous mission for which you might need a champion or knight-errant. I specialize in dragon-slaying, but would be happy to fight pirates or invading barbarians if circumstances require.
From The Bark of the Bog Owl, by Jonathan Rogers.
_________
We lived in a perfect stucco house, just off the sparkly Pacific, with a lime tree in the backyard and pink and yellow roses gone wild around the picket fence. But that wasn’t enough to keep my daddy from going to jail the year I turned eleven.
The Year the Swallows Came Early, by Kathryn Fitzmaurice.
_____________________
You mean I get to share my famous opening line?
“The greedy school bus crept through the streets devouring clumps of children until its belly groaned with surfeit, then lumbered back to the schoolhouse where it obligingly regurgitated its meal onto the grounds.”
Okay, it’s bad– really, really bad. But it was bad on purpose. With that line I won the 1999 Bulwer-Lytton competition for the worst first line of a novel in the children’s category.
If you want to have some fun with bad first lines check out http://www.bulwer-lytton.com.
My favorite first line of ALL TIME (never to be outdone, I’m convinced) was from the great Dale Cramer’s first novel, Sutter’s Cross.
I can’t remember it verbatim, but it was something to the effect of: “The first time I saw Harley, he was wearing my pants.”
ZOWEEE! If that doesn’t suck you in, nothing will.
As a side note, if you’d like to check out more great first lines, be sure to follow @twitterlit on Twitter. They serve up first line teasers twice daily.
And if you’re an author and would like to suggest your first line for the TwitterLit service, visit this page: http://www.twitterlit.com/suggestion-form.html
They have nearly 9,000 followers, so there’s great potential for exposure of your writing if they choose your line!
Great topic. I like how you showed ones that work and those that didn’t so well. Great illustration.
I liked Camy Tang’s opening in Shushi for One?: “Eat and Leave. That’s all she had to do. If Grandma didn’t kill her first for being late.” It drew me in because I wanted to see what type of Grandma she had….LOL.
Dean Koontz drew me in with Odd Thomas. Just because of the name. I knew there had to be something “odd” about him: “My name is Odd Thomas, though in this age when fame is the alter at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.”
Thanks for the post!
Strange enough I’ve never had an opening line as memorable as these ones! The books I’ve read of late have all been interesting, but nothing quite ‘catching’ as the ones you have shared. If I ever get some time, I am tempted now to prowl through the library and randomly open books to read random first lines.
I wonder how my own books would hold up to such a test.
How about Susan Meissner’s first line of Blue Heart Blessed?
“She is absolutely stunning, the woman standing in front of me wearing my wedding dress.”
Why was the woman wearing her wedding dress?
I just finished reading The Book Thief for the second time in just a few months. It’s quite a story. Here’s the opening:
“First the colors.
Then the humans.
That’s usually how I see things.
Or at least, how I try.
***HERE IS A SMALL FACT ***
You are going to die.”
Another book I just finished for the second time — and truly one of the best books I’ve ever read — is Blue Hole Back Home. It wasn’t a particular line in the first chapter that drew me in, but one-line nuggets placed strategically throughtout, making me want to keep searching for more. And oh, was it worth the time invested. Rich and satisfying.
Here’s another winner opening, this one from The Time Traveler’s Wife: “Clare: It’s hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he’s okay. It’s hard to be the one who stays.”
How fun to read from a variety of genres so many great lines, Wendy’s really bad one, not withstanding.
I love, “If your teacher has to die, August isn’t a bad time of year for it.” From “The Teacher’s Funeral” by Richard Peck.
Here’s an opener from The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry:
“My name is Towner Whitney. No, that’s not exactly true. My first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.”
So what do you do with a first person viewpoint character who admits she lies?
Or from Someone Knows my Name by Lawrence Hill: “I seem to have trouble dying.”
And just in case you thought a passive sentence couldn’t be a memorable opener, how about this from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by c. S. Lewis: “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
I recently read T.L. Hines’ debut novel, Waking Lazarus. I really liked his opening line:
The first time Jude Allman died, he was eight years old.
The nun hit me in the mouth and said, “Get out of my house.”
(Humility prevents me from naming the author or the book)
Then there’s the first line I used to win a contest (and the attention of the woman who is now my agent):
“Things were going along just fine until the miracle fouled up everything.”
Now if I just had time to finish writing the novel that goes with it.
Without reading the summary, I bought a hard cover book by my favorite author and rushed home to dig into it. However, the hero in the story was no hero. You immediatley disliked him. He was living in another country because he was fleeing a warrant. John Grisham’s other novels began where the hero ventured accidently into a scenerio in which he wasn’t familiar. They were victims. I was so disappointed I immediatley threw it on my garage sale pile.
I am also a big fan of: Bill Giovannetti’s How to Keep Your Inner Mess from Trashing Your Outer World. It’s not oly the first line that draws you in: “Anybody reared on Sesame Street remembers Oscar the Grouch. How can you not love a furry green monster that lives in a garbage can and breaks into a chorus of ‘I Love Trash’ at the drop of a hat? He would be the perfect mascot for this book, and, I suggest, for our lives. Every one of us has an Oscar within, eager to muck up our world. That’s what this book is all about.” Every single chapter keeps you involved on so many levels. I’m going through the book with a small group and it has been life changing for every one of us. Go Bill!
Interesting stuff! I’m just getting started with blogging and trying to gain some insight into writing articles. I like your style!