Mother-Daughter Murder Night has a great first line. But technically it’s the prologue. And when you combine it with the first line of chapter 1, even better. “Beth knew she couldn’t leave for work until she dealt with the dead body on the beach” Mother-Daughter Murder Night, Nina Simon (Prologue) “Three hundred miles south, Lana…
“Perhaps he’ll die this time. He finds this doesn’t worry him. Maybe because he’s so cold he has a drunkard’s grip on his mind. When thoughts come, they’re translucent, free-swimming medusae.” First lines of The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. And I was hooked on her voice from the very beginning.
“He woke up with no eyebrows and no idea how he’d gotten into such a position.” –Dreadful, Caitlin Rozakis
Normally I would post this as a “First Line” and make it pretty, like a meme. But it wasn’t the first line, exactly, that I wanted to feature, here, as it is the first paragraph that is notable, as a whole. And it would not fit in a neat, little, pretty box (literally, digitally). To…
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” -the first line of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, one of the more famous first lines.
“The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.” -first line of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilder, a…
“Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest.” –Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
I pay close attention to first lines. One of my writer aspirations is to have such a great first line that they’ll be begging me to use it in the “First Lines” section of Poets & Writers. I read that section, every month, scrutinizing the novel lines. Then whenever I start a new book, I…
the starving artist 