Memorable Lines
Memorable lines are just that – memorable, unforgettable. They lodge as charged electrical particles in the axons and synapses of the neurones in our human brains, ready to be retrieved and relived at any instant. They are the kind of lines that we, as writers, most definitely want to create even if we are writing stories in the thriller genre.
Some of the great reads have them as the opening line on page one, chapter one. There, they set the scene and hint at the story and issues to come with a perfect economy of words. A few that come to mind are "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish" from Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and "I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills" from Karen Blixen's Out of Africa. The shortest one I can think of is "Life is difficult" from M Scott Peck's The Road Less Travelled. As Peck's book is mostly about the necessity of facing the suffering involved in living life, the first three words set the tone perfectly for what is to follow.
As for me, I would settle for creating a memorable line just about anywhere in one of my stories; maybe in describing a piece of violent action or expressing some character's inner turmoil or even in the description of the wild landscape that is the backdrop to the action taking place. The only thing is; I would never know when I had actually created it. That is something only the reader can ultimately decide.
