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GD Deckard

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53 comments on FIRST LINES

FIRST LINES

First lines should (obviously) suck the reader into the next line and launch the tone of the story.

“Alan Smith watched the man who had been shot through the brain.”
Serious.

“The home looked like any other on the street. But it hadn’t been there yesterday.”
Mystery sci-fi.

“Roy’s Reconditioning Camp for Cats was doing better than expected.”
Humor.

My favorite first line is from Catch 22. “It was love at first sight.”
Great!

Oh, and my least favorite first line:
“Since the publication of the eleventh edition in 1949, each new edition has been marked by a significant shift in publishing technologies, starting with the advent of phototypesetting in the 1950s, whereby text was rendered on photographic paper rather than as lines of metal type, the norm since the first edition.”
– The Chicago Manual of Style Gag me with a spoon.

Good first lines entice the reader to read on. What are some of your favorite first lines, including ones that you have used in your own stories?

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GD Deckard

Severely beaten as a child by a WWII hero and combat-induced-PTSD stepfather, the author, as a teen, faced the old man down with a shotgun and earned his blessing to join the military at the time Americans were learning about a country called Vietnam. The “lazy, no good son-of-a-bitch” opted out of combat and hard labor by becoming an Air Force medic, stamping out suffering and misery on Freedom’s Frontier at Clark Airbase in S.E. Asia and earning some kind of medal pinned on him personally by then Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Brown, for “Saving lives, etc.” There followed a summer in Europe ending in the first of happy marriages. Then graduation with University Honors, kids worth dying for and a career in business. Life is good. Author, The Phoenix Diary, Penguin, 2015. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-phoenix-diary-g-d-deckard/1122175645 Founding Member, Writers Co-op. https://WritersCo-op.com Co-Editor, The Rabbit Hole anthologies. https://www.amazon.com/Rabbit-Hole-Weird-Stories/dp/1691225355/ref=sr_1_1 Founder, SciFi Lampoon Magazine. http://scifilampoon.com/ Contributing Editor, A Celebration of Storytelling https://www.amazon.com/Celebration-Storytelling-GD-Deckard/dp/1951716167 Current WIP: Code Blue and Little Deaths, stories from Clark during the Vietnam War. Recipient of the Psi Young award for Creative Biography.

53 responses to “FIRST LINES”

  1. GD Deckard Avatar
    GD Deckard

    Flash fiction often has great first lines, as the stories in our “Showcase” er, show. Regular contributors, Mimi Speike and Boris Glikman come to mind.

    “Every King of the Beasts harbours a horrible secret that is only revealed when he lies on his back and turns his head completely upside down.”
    – Boris Glikman, Of Mice and Lions

    Mimi, as you know, begins her stories with an illustration.
    Her drawings are powerful first lines.
    ———

    “Under the slashes of our swords, we still love.”
    – Chinese song
    Walking past my lady just now -she’s watching a Chinese movie- that line struck me. Another “type of first lines” might be the quotes that some authors begin their story with. That line could by itself inspire a story.

    Liked by 4 people

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  2. Perry Palin Avatar
    Perry Palin

    “Call me Ishmael.”

    “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

    “He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.”

    “My mother and her mother were friends, and I knew Dana and her older brother and her younger brother and sister while we were still in elementary school.”

    “The teachers all said I was smart enough. Smart enough for what, I wondered.”

    “So I have sailed the seas and come . . . to B . . . a small town fastened to a field in Indiana.”

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    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      The Hemingway quote caused a flashback. Somewhere in Alaska once, I hiked with a scientist friend into an intact forest. The habitat had never been disturbed. The University of Alaska studied its ecosystem. Vehicles of any kind were forbidden, camping was forbidden, and you damn well better pack out every scrap you brought in. What did we do there? We lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest and watched the wind blow in the tops of the pine trees high overhead.

      Maybe, good first lines echo something in the reader’s experience or imagination?

      Liked by 5 people

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      1. Sue Ranscht Avatar
        Sue Ranscht

        Curiously, Hemingway’s character was lying on his stomach, “his chin on his folded arms,” so he wasn’t watching the wind blow in the tops of the pine trees high overhead. I wonder why there is no indication of what they sounded like.

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    2. Mellow Curmudgeon Avatar
      Mellow Curmudgeon

      For me, this set of first lines is a very mixed bag.  I disliked #1, #2, and #4.  (Yes, I recognized #1 and #2.)  I liked #3.  Loved #5 and #6.

      Liked by 3 people

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    3. Mike Van Horn Avatar
      Mike Van Horn

      The two that would draw me in are lying on the pine-needled floor and smart enough for what.

      Liked by 3 people

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    4. Sue Ranscht Avatar
      Sue Ranscht

      To me, first lines have to grab my attention and make me wonder. Give me something to care about. Here, #1 doesn’t draw me in or make me care. #2’s narrator is clearly despicable. #3 describes a peaceful, pleasant setting, but doesn’t capture my curiosity about where the story might go. #4 reads like a shopping list that belongs buried somewhere in Chapter 2. #5 and #6 are snappy and make me ask questions about what they mean and where we are going. I’m in.

      Liked by 5 people

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      1. Mellow Curmudgeon Avatar
        Mellow Curmudgeon

        Exactly.

        Liked by 3 people

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    5. Perry Palin Avatar
      Perry Palin

      1. “Call me Ishmael.”
      Herman Melville, “Moby Dick”. First published in 1851. Those old novels didn’t need an immediate first line hook. In the 19th century people couldn’t turn right away to a Netflix Movie or social media if they didn’t care for the first line. The hook sometimes takes many lines to develop. This is an often quoted first line and I like it.

      2. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
      J. D. Salinger, Catcher In The Rye”.

      3. “He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.”
      Ernest Hemingway, “For Whom The Bell Tolls.”

      4. “My mother and her mother were friends, and I knew Dana and her older brother and her younger brother and sister while we were still in elementary school.”
      First line of my short story, “Secret Love”.

      5. “The teachers all said I was smart enough. Smart enough for what, I wondered.”
      First line of my short story, “Old Dead Poets.”

      6. “So I have sailed the seas and come . . . to B . . . a small town fastened to a field in Indiana.”
      First line of William H. Gass’ non-linear short story, “In The Heart Of The Heart Of The Country”. A wonder of a story for poets and students of philosophy, of which I am neither, but a great read even for me.

      Liked by 5 people

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      1. Sue Ranscht Avatar
        Sue Ranscht

        Yep, #5 does exactly what an opening line should do.

        Liked by 3 people

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  3. MamaSquid Avatar
    MamaSquid

    “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

    -Holden Caulfield, The Catcher in the Rye

    (I see you, Perry!)

    Liked by 5 people

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    1. Sue Ranscht Avatar
      Sue Ranscht

      Yeah, I recognized that one, too, lol. I remember distinctly how it made me dislike Holden immediately. What a self-involved little prick.

      Liked by 4 people

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    2. Mike Van Horn Avatar
      Mike Van Horn

      Gad, I read this book so many years ago, I hardly remember it.

      Liked by 3 people

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  4. mimispeike Avatar
    mimispeike

    From Sly: “The steep drop of circular steps would have been a challenge for anyone, let alone an old wreck with bad knees.”

    This could take you anywhere. In Sly, it begins a work of screwball humor.

    Liked by 5 people

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    1. Mike Van Horn Avatar
      Mike Van Horn

      I can sure identify with this one. Probably no handrail either.

      Liked by 4 people

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      1. mimispeike Avatar
        mimispeike

        The second line: “A wooden hand-hold was long fallen away; only the iron supports remained.”

        Liked by 3 people

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    2. Sue Ranscht Avatar
      Sue Ranscht

      That it’s a screwball humor will come as a surprise!

      Liked by 4 people

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  5. Sue Ranscht Avatar
    Sue Ranscht

    “My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.”

    “The first time I met my Great-Aunt Majel, I threw up all over her antique Persian rug.”

    “I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one.”

    “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”

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    1. Mike Van Horn Avatar
      Mike Van Horn

      Are these all your stories? I identify most with #4 of course, but I’m intrigued by #3.

      Liked by 3 people

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      1. Sue Ranscht Avatar
        Sue Ranscht

        Gee, thanks, Mike! Only #2 is mine. #1 is from Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned, Alan Alda’s 2005 autobiography. #3 Is from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.

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    2. mimispeike Avatar
      mimispeike

      “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”

      I’m asking immediately: Unfashionable to whom? Unregarded by whom?

      Liked by 4 people

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      1. Sue Ranscht Avatar
        Sue Ranscht

        And perhaps your curiosity would compel you to read on…

        Liked by 4 people

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  6. Mike Van Horn Avatar
    Mike Van Horn

    Here are the first sentences of the four books in my sci fi series. All first-person narration by my heroine:

    “Secrets of Immortality Gleaned from Alien Remains,” trumpeted The New York Times on page 1, sounding like the tabloids.
    Aliens Crashed in My Back Yard

    “Woo hooo, I’m flying a spaceship! I’m flying a spaceship around the Moon!” I whooped and hollered as I watched Star Choice sweep over the surface of the Moon—from the safety of my darkened bedroom.
    My Spaceship Calls Out to Me

    Here’s what everybody said to me afterward: “Moon walk by yourself? No connection to the ship, no backup? You are abso-friggin-lutely crazy, woman!”
    Space Girl Yearning

    I was sitting on my deck on a beautiful warm evening, just strumming Gibb and watching the Moon and stars out over the Pacific Ocean, when a call came in from across the cosmos.
    Alien Invasion: There Goes the Neighborhood

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    1. Sue Ranscht Avatar
      Sue Ranscht

      All of them make me want to read on, but #2 got me right from “Woo hooo, I’m flying a spaceship!”

      Liked by 4 people

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  7. elicorrell Avatar
    elicorrell

    Lines! An interesting mathematical concept, especially the curvy-wurvy ones, brings occasional nightmares of the quadratic and the dreaded calculus.

    I’ve spent months fighting with the most fearsome first-line monsters. Thanks for reminding me. 🙂

    Liked by 4 people

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    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      Ha!
      I enjoyed your lines at

      John’s ideas on everything.


      I’m glad you posted here, John.

      And I genuinely love your art at Correll Art:
      https://sites.google.com/view/correll/home
      Thank you for sharing it on the ‘Net.

      Liked by 2 people

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  8. mimispeike Avatar
    mimispeike

    I don’t think anything can beat:

    “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

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  9. Carl E. Reed Avatar
    Carl E. Reed

    GD: We had a great discussion regarding this very subject back in the Book Country days. Can you do a Google Search and post the link here? I can’t do it from my cell phone. I think many involved in this discussion would greatly enjoy what we shared amongst each other back then

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    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      Good idea. I will look, Carl.

      Liked by 3 people

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    2. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      Ack! No luck, Carl. The old Book Country site is postapocalyptic. Some posts are still there, others are not. I found 82 topics that Carl E. Reed had posted in, and none were on first lines. But there is one that I am definitely wanting to post here on Writers Co-op:

      Ten Things Writers Do That Cause Me To Sigh Heavily
      -by Carl E Reed
      https://www.bookcountry.com/Community/Discussion/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=8589934935

      Remember that one?
      😝

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      1. Mellow Curmudgeon Avatar
        Mellow Curmudgeon

        So glad U found this. Yes, it should be posted here, not to mention downloaded onto stone tablets atop Mt Sinai.

        Liked by 4 people

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        1. GD Deckard Avatar
          GD Deckard

          😁👍😂

          Liked by 3 people

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      2. Carl E. Reed Avatar
        Carl E. Reed

        Hilarious! I didn’t realize I was so funny, back in the day!😅🤣😂

        Liked by 4 people

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      3. mimispeike Avatar
        mimispeike

        I’m looking for Angela Martello on Amazon, to see if she ever published the epic she was working on. I find nothing.

        Angela was the one who said (about Sly): I can’t take any more of this. I didn’t know I was going to be plunged into a history class.

        Liked by 4 people

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      4. Carl E. Reed Avatar
        Carl E. Reed

        GD: Found it! THE OPENING & CLOSING SENTENCES OF STORY:

        https://www.bookcountry.com/Community/Discussion/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=8589936546

        Liked by 2 people

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        1. GD Deckard Avatar
          GD Deckard

          Ha! You had writers posting their favorite first & last lines from novels. That’s a fun read. I liked Atthys Gage’s post.

          “Here’s another classic:
          …to wound the autumnal city.
          ***
          Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland and into the hills, I have come to

          Dhalgren, obviously, by Samuel Delany. All the delicious layers of ambiguity! Are we meant to read the unfinished last line as the beginning of the unbegun first? If so, why the superfluous “to”? But without that extra word, would we even think of looping back to the beginning? Certainly the second word of the book, “wound,” beyond its obvious meaning of attack or injure, also hints at the winding and twisting path of the novel. There’s no punctuation at the end, no ellipsis, no period. An ellipsis might suggest returning to the beginning of the novel. A period would just mean “coming to,” as in “waking up.”

          Being Delany, I think we can safely answer: E. All of the above.”

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    3. Mellow Curmudgeon Avatar
      Mellow Curmudgeon

      Hmmm. Google works fine on my Android phone, in both Chrome and Firefox. Maybe U need wifi to get decent speed.

      Liked by 3 people

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  10. Carl E. Reed Avatar
    Carl E. Reed

    Good first lines:

    1. “Officious little prick.”

    2. In the beginning was the Word…

    3. Once upon a midnight dreary; while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore…

    4. Twas brilliant, and the slithy toves..

    5. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking 13.

    6. Bow down; I am the emperor of dreams…

    7. There was me, that is Alex, and my three Droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really Dim, and we sat in the Kordova milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.

    8. This book is to be neither an accusation nor confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. (I cheated a bit here: This is an epigraph which opens the novel.)

    9. I am an invisible man.

    10. The dead were waiting for him in the house. (This one mine: gave it to Mike Hagan to use.)

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    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      “Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:”
      I remember number 4. I memorized that & I’d bet you did too.

      Liked by 4 people

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      1. Sue Ranscht Avatar
        Sue Ranscht

        Then you’ll remember it begins, “Twas brillig and the slithy toves…” 🙂

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        1. Carl E. Reed Avatar
          Carl E. Reed

          Yep! I had mistyped “smithy toves”, LOL! Those are dwarven, not serpentine, creatures…

          Liked by 4 people

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          1. Sue Ranscht Avatar
            Sue Ranscht

            And brilliant, my friend, which might have been auto correct shunning brillig.

            Liked by 3 people

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          2. Mellow Curmudgeon Avatar
            Mellow Curmudgeon

            Somebody should write *Alice in Nibelungenland*.

            Liked by 3 people

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            1. Carl E. Reed Avatar
              Carl E. Reed

              And the politically incorrect cross-genre sequel (an erotic bildungsroman chronicling the sexual misadventures and intellectual awakening of a graduate student in linguistics driven half-mad by a succesion of inarticulate, malaprop-spouting hot dates): Through With Gobbledygook Ass.

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    2. Sue Ranscht Avatar
      Sue Ranscht

      #7 I’ve read Clockwork Orange a couple of times, having seen the original X-rated version of Kubrick’s movie in between. (Only 30 seconds were cut to give it an R-rating and as far as I could tell, it removed only two repetitions at the end, cutting from the governor spoon feeding him to him and the girl in the snow.)

      Reading the opening now, I don’t remember the made-up slang standing out so starkly, but I do believe it seemed much more natural and meaningful in the film than in the book.

      As an aside: That movie was the first genuinely cathartic movie I’d ever seen, and so disturbing that as I pulled out the DVD to watch it again about 5 years ago, my heart rate increased to alarming rapidity causing me to debate the wisdom of re-watching it.

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      1. Carl E. Reed Avatar
        Carl E. Reed

        So many bits of brilliance in that movie: the cruelty and savagery of male adolescents that oftentimes rises to blackly comedic heights of self-hatred/nihilism, the observation that cops/criminals spring from the same youth gangs, the perplexing social challenge/question: What do we do with the psychopaths in our midst? PS. The book blew me away: much funnier than the film. I was envious, stunned, schooled by a master: I didn’t know language could DO that!

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  11. Mike DiMatteo Avatar
    Mike DiMatteo

    “It was a dark and stormy night….”

    This line gets lambasted at every turn, but I kinda like it…because…it was a dark and stormy night. At least now I know what I’m getting into…lightening bolts, thunder, torrential rain…and the Amityville house in the moonlit shadows.

    I didn’t realize how important first lines were until I started this writing journey. I took them for granted, I think, or maybe more accurately, didn’t pay attention to them. I do now.

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    1. Carl E. Reed Avatar
      Carl E. Reed

      Mike, you might enjoy the opening line of COLD TICKLE, the weird tale of mine soon to appear in THE RABBIT HOLE vol. 5: “It was a dark and storming night.” A knowing wink to the reader and a clear shout-out to that preposterous, wince-inducing, melodramatic first line of Bulwer-Lytton’s: a masterpiece of succinct grab-’em-by-the-lapels purple prosody.

      Liked by 2 people

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  12. Mellow Curmudgeon Avatar
    Mellow Curmudgeon

    I wanted to display a few great openings in well-written nonfiction, but most of the works that came to mind required at least as much patience as the way Dickens began *A Tale of Two Cities*.  Hard to find a single short sentence (or even a paragraph) that is both informative and zingy.  Here are 2 outliers, a single sentence and what could be 2 short paragraphs:

    (1) Only once in my life have I been truly close to dying.

    (2) In the old Road Runner cartoons, Wile E. Coyote would frequently find himself running off the edge of a cliff.  But he wouldn’t, as our experience with gravity might lead us to expect, start falling to the ground below, at least not right away.  Instead, he would hover motionless, in puzzlement; it was only when he realized there was no longer any ground beneath him that he would suddenly crash downward. {¶ break}  We are all Wile E. Coyote.  …

    (2#) In the old Road Runner cartoons, Wile E. Coyote would often find himself running off the edge of a cliff.  But he wouldn’t start falling right away.  Instead, he would hover motionless, in puzzlement; it was only when he realized there was no longer any ground beneath him that he would suddenly plunge downward. {¶ break}  We are all Wile E. Coyote. {¶ break}

    I got (1) from page 1 of Sean Carroll’s *The Big Picture*, where it starts a “Prologue” that somehow eluded the tradition of using lower-case Roman numerals to paginate early stuff that many readers would skip.  Should I have looked where many readers would start?

    I got (2) verbatim from the opening of Chapter 1 on page 9 of the same book, then tweaked it to yield (2#).  Yes, (1) and (2 or 2#) both fit the same book.  It’s a great read, with hardly any other places where a brevity freak like me wants to tighten the writing.

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  13. victoracquista Avatar
    victoracquista

    In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. GD Deckard Avatar
      GD Deckard

      A forever classic!

      Liked by 2 people

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    2. Carl E. Reed Avatar
      Carl E. Reed

      … with a severed penis by name of Bobbitt. (Sorry! Some days your brain is stuck in sophmoric, 5th-grade gear.)

      Liked by 2 people

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  14. thepracticaltypographer Avatar
    thepracticaltypographer

    My favorite opening lines.
    1) Stephen King, THE GUNSLINGER: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
    2) Albert Camus, THE STRANGER Translated by Stuart Gilbert): “Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure.”
    3) Irvine Welch, TRAINSPOTTING: “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”
    4) Kurt Vonnegut, SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE: “All this happened, more or less.”
    5) JD Salinger, CATCHER IN THE RYE: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

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