“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” From Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
That first step is the toughest, isn’t it?
At the beginning of a journey, the weight of expectation, challenge, and doubt is the heaviest. Your first step as a writer—the first line of your story—can be crippling. And for good reason. On the first page, your reader is unfamiliar with the unique rhythm of your prose. You must open your story at the ideal place and moment, so you’d better get that right. You must provide essential information. You must establish tone, mood, voice, and perspective. You must encapsulate the spirit of the story in one sentence.
Oh, and make it pithy.
You don’t need Tom Cruise hanging off the wing of a plane to get your readers interested. I’ve broken down a few popular approaches to the opening line with famous examples from my bookshelf, so you can take the guesswork—and panic—out of writing those first auspicious words.
Setting
Many stories introduce setting first. It’s a canny move. The physical setting of a story communicates more than just place and time; mood, language, history, custom, theme, and physical and social danger are all present. Start with setting, and you’ll open a window on an entire world.
It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania: Christiania, this singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.
Knut Hamsun, Hunger (translated) (1890)
Mrs Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops, and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs Rachel Lynde was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed any-thing odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.
Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908)
Theme
Not as often used in genre fiction, a first sentence can be a beautiful vehicle for theme, announcing to the reader that the book has something compelling to say about the big picture. It gives perhaps the most explicit indication of what the story is going to be about.
She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.
Phillip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint (1969)
It was a pleasure to burn.
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
Character
Focusing on a single actor or voice is an excellent choice for stories written in the first person or distinguished by distinctive, larger-than-life protagonists:
I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte.
Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest (1929)
My desert-island, all-time, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order:
- Alison Ashworth
- Penny Hardwick
- Jackie Allen
- Charlie Nicholson
- Sarah Kendrew
Nick Hornby, High Fidelity (1995)
Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902)
Metaphor
It’s only after you’ve finished reading the books that the logic behind these openers makes sense, but they convey essential story elements in an artful way.
It unrolled slowly, forced to show its colors, curling and snapping back whenever one of us turned loose.
James Dickey, Deliverance (1970)
The final dying sounds of their dress rehearsal left the Laurel Players with nothing to do but stand there, silent and helpless, blinking out over the footlights of an empty auditorium.
Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road (1961)
In Media Res
These lines throw the reader directly into the action, offering no preamble, no backstory, no introduction. Genre writers are encouraged to employ these kinds of openers because . . . well, because they establish genre. They announce that what you see is what you get.
I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train . . .
William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959)
“I think we should stop seeing each other.”
Kristan Higgins, Just One of the Guys (2008)
Mystery
These first lines play with a reader’s initial expectations by offering a conundrum, destabilizing genre boundaries, describing a shocking situation, or introducing humour or irony. The intriguing first words make the reader think, “Oh, just one more line”—until they’re in the story’s grasp.
Exactly three months before the killing at Martingale Mrs. Maxie gave a dinner-party.
P. D. James, Cover Her Face (1962)
I moved forward, out of the blackest sleep, to find myself surrounded by doctors . . . American doctors.
Martin Amis, Time’s Arrow (1991)
I thought I’d been to Africa.
Andrea Levy, Small Island (2004)
So instead of allowing that dreaded first line to whip you into an anxious frenzy, think about which element—theme, setting, character—would be the most fitting subject of your opening paragraph, and take it from there, fitting it to your story style with action or metaphor. But take note: the best first lines fall into more than one of these categories. Yours can too.