[HN Gopher] What makes a great opening line?
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What makes a great opening line?
Author : colluder
Score : 42 points
Date : 2022-03-10 20:03 UTC (2 hours ago)
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| jl6 wrote:
| See also https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
|
| _Since 1982 the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest has challenged
| participants to write an atrocious opening sentence to the worst
| novel never written. The whimsical literary competition honors
| Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford
| begins with "It was a dark and stormy night."_
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Second sentence: "Suddenly a shot rang out." Which explains my
| (never actually submitted) entry:
|
| "He was a dork, and Stormy Knight suddenly shot the ring right
| out of his fingers, because she was _tired_ of dorks, and
| especially the kind of dork who would presume that she would
| marry him, even though he was a dork and she was the kind of
| girl who could shoot a ring right out of a man 's hand, hitting
| nothing but the ring and a few miscellaneous bits of
| fingertip."
| sophacles wrote:
| Wow, that _is_ attrocious. I kept getting bored part way
| through and had to force myself to go back and try again. Now
| I 've reached semantic saturation on the word dork.
|
| Well done!
| cyberge99 wrote:
| Does anyone know of a book wherein the last line is the same as
| the first? In the sense of making the book self-referencing?
|
| Something along the lines of, "And so it is with you."
| shagie wrote:
| IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was
| a silence of three parts.
|
| The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by
| things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would
| have sighed through the trees, set the inn's sign creaking on
| its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing
| autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men
| inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with
| conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects
| from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there
| had been music . . . but no, of course there was no music. In
| fact there were none of these things, and so the silence
| remained.
|
| ...
|
| (93 chapters later)
|
| IT WAS NIGHT AGAIN. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was
| a silence of three parts.
|
| ...
|
| --- ---
|
| That isn't a "first and last line are the same" but rather "the
| prologue and the epilogue are the same".
|
| For my favorite self reference, however, is part of the Jhereg
| / Taltos series by Burst. He does it a couple times, though the
| one that sticks in my mind the most is a prologue that is a
| cleaning / clothing repair list. "Tear on left sleeve" type
| thing. Then each chapter, that issue happens to the clothes.
| chrismeller wrote:
| "Are you from Tennessee?" Suddenly I feel like we're talking
| about different things...
| hodder wrote:
| The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger
| followed.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "In the beginning, the world was created. This made a lot of
| people angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad move." (OK,
| that's two sentences. So sue me.)
|
| "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost
| deserved it."
| Analemma_ wrote:
| "The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason."
|
| I think Seveneves was one of Stephenson's weaker novels overall,
| but you can't deny it has a killer opening line.
| entropyie wrote:
| The first half of this book was absolutely amazing... Could
| have been one of the best sci-fi books ever, but the second
| half was mediocre and unconvincing... Such a disappointment.
| Still worth it though overall.
| ghaff wrote:
| I rather liked the first part (2 parts?). But then there was a
| wildly improbable transition to the last part that I didn't
| find terribly interesting.
| brimble wrote:
| Stephenson is an excellent author of the first thirds of
| novels.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| He continues the grand tradition of science fiction writers
| producing works of conceptual genius marred only by insipid
| characters lacking any development and absent plots.
| pklausler wrote:
| "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know."
| stavros wrote:
| That's already in the article (yours is two sentences though).
| pklausler wrote:
| Both of the first two sentences need to be there, I felt.
| (Camus uses very short sentences in the first parts of the
| book.) In the last part, the apparent lack of emotion in the
| face of his mother's death is used in evidence for
| Meursault's uncaring nature at the trial.
| stavros wrote:
| I very much agree with you.
| random314 wrote:
| Surprised to not find "A tale of 2 cities". It was the best of
| times, it was the worst of times.
| greenonions wrote:
| "On our wedding day I was forty-six, she was eighteen. Now, I
| know what you are thinking: older man (not thin, somewhat bald,
| lame in one leg, teeth of wood) exercises the marital
| prerogative, thereby mortifying the poor young-- But that is
| false."
| bin_bash wrote:
| "Call me Ishmael."
| shagie wrote:
| Quarter Share, Nathan Lowell.
|
| Chapter One Neris 2351-August-13
|
| Call me Ishmael. Yeah I know, but in this case it's really my
| name: Ishmael Horatio Wang. My parents had an unfortunate sense
| of humor. If they had known what I'd wind up doing with my
| life, they might have picked a different one--Richard Henry
| Dana, perhaps. Exactly why they picked Ishmael Horatio is a
| long, and not terribly interesting, story that started with the
| fact that Mom was an ancient lit professor and ended with my
| being saddled with these non sequitur monikers.
|
| That particular story was over eighteen stanyers before the two
| Neris Company security guards showed up at my door with long
| faces and low voices. Perhaps it was their expressions, or that
| they were looking for me and not Mom, but either way I knew
| their visit wasn't good. I didn't think they had come to drag
| me off to juvie or anything. I'd never been a troublemaker like
| some of the others in the university enclave. They had come for
| me though--to tell me she was dead.
| drno123 wrote:
| On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came
| out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked
| slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
| WJW wrote:
| "Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying
| statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul
| Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it
| is our turn to study statistical mechanics."
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Peeked into the dark sea where the old ones reside...
| slavik81 wrote:
| States of Matter (1975) by David L. Goodstein, for anyone
| wondering.
| shagie wrote:
| Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously.
| ppqqrr wrote:
| "It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future."
| dmje wrote:
| Surely: "It was the day my grandmother exploded" warrants a
| mention..
| czzr wrote:
| Iain Banks? Pretty sure it is, can't remember the title...
| dmje wrote:
| Yeh, The Crow Road. I met him once working a book signing. He
| was brilliant, incredibly down to earth, very very funny and
| an all round good bloke. His books have kept me enthralled,
| especially Dead Air and Complicity. Helluva read.
| ckastner wrote:
| "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a
| dead channel."
| pimlottc wrote:
| That one's in the article. What's interesting is that it
| suggests different colors depending on whether you grew up with
| CRT or flatscreen televisions.
| c22 wrote:
| And if you grew up with a media streaming box of some sort
| you might not even grok the concept of a dead channel.
| rzzzt wrote:
| A disconnected video input is usually presented with a
| solid blue picture. I (along with this person:
| http://www.andrewnormanwilson.com/Blue.html) would love to
| know who came up with the idea!
| sonofhans wrote:
| "There was a wall."
| yongjik wrote:
| "It was starting to end, after what seemed most of eternity to
| me."
|
| Nine Princes in Amber, Roger Zelazny
| weekendvampire wrote:
| "I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to."
|
| - Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent
| skywal_l wrote:
| "Longtemps, je me suis couche de bonne heure"*
|
| -- Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu.
|
| * For a long time, I would go to bed early.
| kingcharles wrote:
| And for a long time you'll be reading the rest of the book!
|
| I started reading it in jail, after reading 1Q84 which had a
| line stating that the only place you'll ever get enough time to
| read that book is in prison.
| endymi0n wrote:
| "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in
| its own way."
| electroly wrote:
| [wakes up] [clown vanishes]
| Bhurn00985 wrote:
| "I opened my eyes to see the rat taking a piss in my coffee mug."
| -- Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis
| scbrg wrote:
| Hah! I'm an Ellis fan, or at least a fan of his Comic Books (or
| are they Graphical Novels, I never learn), but I didn't really
| get along with _Crooked Little Vein_. I honestly don 't
| remember a single piece of the plot (it's 15-ish years since I
| read it), but I _do_ remember that I got the feeling that his
| main objective was to gross me out. A bit like Garth Ennis, but
| it novel format. I get a bit annoyed when (it 's a bit too
| obvious that) the author's main objective is to play his
| audience rather than to tell a story.
| Supermancho wrote:
| https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/john-steakley/1302-armor.htm...
|
| The first line didn't hook me, because picking up a book is
| generally a bigger effort than opening a page and looking at the
| first line.
|
| This idea of "what makes a great opening line" is simply, to be
| simple to understand for me. You need to lead in to the next line
| and the next. The wandering text that was the first line of "We
| Love You Crispina" caused me to skip it. Once I reconsidered that
| it might have something important in it, I had to force myself to
| go back and re-read it. Multiple times. I am not going to
| remember that book.
| [deleted]
| basementcat wrote:
| "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when
| the drugs began to take hold."
| dmje wrote:
| We read fear and loathing to each other in a tent hunkered down
| in a 48hr long storm in Iceland. I don't think I've laughed as
| hard since. What a blinder of a novel.
| vbrandl wrote:
| Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter Thompson if anyone is
| wondering
| cafard wrote:
| I am reminded of the first sentence of _The Postman Always
| Rings Twice_ , something like "They threw me off the hay truck
| about noon." I suppose this is because it was somewhere out in
| southeastern California also.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| On the other end of the spectrum of course, there's the Bulwer
| Lytton Fiction Contest:
|
| https://www.bulwer-lytton.com
| soperj wrote:
| It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the
| chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
| sealeck wrote:
| "Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they
| meant to murder him."
| tombert wrote:
| "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently
| there." from The Go Between by L.P. Hartley.
|
| This has always been one of my favorite lines, and I think it
| says so much about humanity in eleven words, as well as setting
| the tone of the book.
| kromem wrote:
| He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world
| was mad.
|
| (The author later had this opening line as his epitaph. Where it
| made for a great closing line as well.)
| endymi0n wrote:
| "Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but
| that's a long one for me."
| iammjm wrote:
| "I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies."
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Reminded me of: I am sitting in a room different from the one
| you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice
| and I am going to play it back into the room again and again
| until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves
| so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception
| of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the
| natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech.
| I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a
| physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any
| irregularities my speech might have.
|
| Alvin Lucier - I Am Sitting in a Room
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhtO4DsSazc
| pklausler wrote:
| My posture is consciously congruent to the shape of my hard
| chair.
| _jal wrote:
| "They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it
| to his pheromones and the color of his hair."
| basementcat wrote:
| "Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of
| the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded
| yellow sun."
| dsr_ wrote:
| What makes a great opening line? A great rest-of-the-story.
| Nobody praises the opening line of a story that they otherwise
| think is rather boring.
| Joeboy wrote:
| LIFE IN this society being, at best, an utter bore and
| no aspect of society being at all relevant to women,
| there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-
| seeking females only to overthrow the government,
| eliminate the money system, institute complete
| automation and destroy the male sex.
|
| Valerie Solanas' The SCUM Manifesto has a great opening, and
| tbf sustains the pace and spice for a few pages, but
| subsequently becomes almost unreadable.
| [deleted]
| Timpy wrote:
| I don't know, I couldn't get through a chapter of Anna Karenina
| but it's still a great opening line.
|
| "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy
| in its own way."
| blowski wrote:
| Keep going. It's an amazing story.
| dmje wrote:
| Cor yeh, requires some staying power but what an amazing,
| life changing read.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true. Certainly there are a number of
| "classics," including some like _A Tale of Two Cities_ that are
| probably not the author 's best work, which most people would
| probably find boring with memorable openings.
| novosel wrote:
| Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-
| lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down
| the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
| aidos wrote:
| "It began as a mistake."
|
| Post Office - Bukowski
| [deleted]
| flobosg wrote:
| "Muchos anos despues, frente al peloton de fusilamiento, el
| coronel Aureliano Buendia habia de recordar aquella tarde remota
| en que su padre lo llevo a conocer el hielo."
|
| --Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
|
| _Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel
| Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his
| father took him to discover ice._
| [deleted]
| phogster wrote:
| Why can't I zoom in on mobile?
| noaccesstomy wrote:
| THIS is a great opening line. Had a good laugh :D
| greenyoda wrote:
| I'm glad this essay mentioned the opening line of _1984_. It 's
| one of my favorites: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the
| clocks were striking thirteen."
|
| I looked up some of the author's writings. She had an interesting
| opening line in one of her short stories, entitled
| "Endangered":[1]
|
| "The artists were kept in cages."
|
| [1] https://americanshortfiction.org/endangered
| krnlpnc wrote:
| _record skips_ "You're probably wondering how I ended up in this
| situation"
| faffernot wrote:
| Rob Schneider isssssssss
|
| the Compiler. Opening this Summer, 2022.
| Alekhine wrote:
| "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow
| coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down
| along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo."
| blacksqr wrote:
| "Gaul is a whole divided into three parts."
| heikkilevanto wrote:
| "Gallia is quartered in three halves"
| kromem wrote:
| The best part is lost in translation.
|
| The Latin word for divide is exactly in the middle of the
| sentence.
| Melatonic wrote:
| ' "Hello!" said the void. No one replied. '
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