Lines

Dear Reader, we’ve been blessed with fantastic weather this past week. As cheesy as that may sound, this really is my favourite time of year. I don’t mean the Holidays as much as I mean winter. With freezing temps come blue skies, sunlight, and long, blue shadows on glistening snow. Taking daily walks has reenergized and inspired me and, better still, straightened out my story line.

Apropos lines, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the opening line should be a pithy and engaging one to hook a reader. Like a trap that snaps shut the instant eyeballs hit the page. With this, Dear Reader, I don’t have a quarrel, but there seems to be a rigorous set of “rules” concerning the opening paragraph, most of which I am blissfully unaware.

I skulk around various writer’s haunts (feeling at home in the annals of creative angst) and every so often people post opening lines for feedback. Starved for excuses to procrastinate (or perhaps that is just me projecting) the community flock to pick over the sentences down to the bare bone. It’s interesting, educational, and, sometimes, fun to read and partake.

But. I often think that there are too many rules. “Always do this, never do that.” “Avoid passive voice and adverbs. No prologues. Don’t use too many descriptors. Always start with an action, always name the main character in the first sentence” etc. The list is endless and I can’t even remember them all.

Structure is good but it often seems as though anything that doesn’t conform to the rather arbitrary template is branded wrong or bad writing. And that I do have a quarrel with. The notion that endlessly repeating what others have done before should somehow be better than creating an original text in one’s own voice is absurd. And horrifying. Because sacrificing the original for the formulaic equals the death of art.

Purporters of these rules will say that it’s because it makes texts more commercially viable, they’ll sell better. Well, they’re wrong.

Here’s a list of opening lines for a random selection of bestselling novels – some of our best beloved stories – from different eras, none of which would cut it according to all those rules.

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. – The Great Gatsby



It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. – Pride & Prejudice

My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. – Great Expectations


There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. – Jane Eyre

I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. – Wuthering Heights

“TOM!”
No answer.
“TOM!”
No answer.
“What’s gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!”
No answer. – The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mrs Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down 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 was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof. – Anne of Green Gables

Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway. At 0627 hours on January 1 1975 Alfred Archibald Jones was dressed in cordroy and sat in a fume-filled Cavalier Musketeer Estate facedown on the steering wheel, hoping the judgment would not be to heavy upon him. – White Teeth

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone



Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. – No1 Ladies ‘ Detective Agency



We slept in what had once been the gymnasium. The floor was of varnished wood, with stripes and circles painted on it, for the games that were formerly played there; the hoops for the basketball nets were still in place, though the nets were gone. – A Handmaid’s Tale

I exist! I am conceived to the chimes of midnight on the clock on the mantelpiece in the room across the hall. – Behind the Scenes at the Museum



The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer. – A Song of Fire and Ice, book 1



A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. –Of Mice and Men



In a distant and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part… –The Colour of Magic



Who am I? And how I wonder will this story end? The sun has come up and I am sitting by a window that is foggy with the breath of a life gone by. – The Notebook



There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire. And while that is, as beginnings go, not entirely novel (for every tale about every young man there ever was or will be could start in a similar manner) there was much about this young man and what happened to him that was unusual, although even he never knew the whole of it. – Stardust



Prologue: The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had bought. –The Alchemist


My mother did not tell me they were coming. Afterwards she said she did not want me to appear nervous. – Girl with a pearl earring

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. – The Kite Runner



Prologue: France was falling. Burned-out cars, once strapped high with treasured possessions, were nosed crazily into ditches. – A Woman Of No Importance

In addition, I can mention that The Secret Dreamworld Of A Shopaholic starts with a transcribed letter from the MC’s bank.
 Bridget Jones Diary starts with a list of the MC’s New Year resolutions.
 Carrie starts with a rather dry newspaper article.

If those aren’t commercially successful novels, I know not what. Dear Reader, those “rules” are mostly nonsense.

For my own work, four of five published novels have prologues. And I am sure that the opening lines break most, if not all, of these rules.

The sound wriggled and burnt its way through his veins. The laughter was so genuine; so completely uninhibited an expression of sheer, heartfelt joy. – Oaths of Affection (too wordy)

When Simmons entered the breakfast room carrying the first post, happy rays of April sun reflected in the silver tray. A thick and battered envelope stood out from the rest. – Orient of Adoration (don’t start by introducing a minor character or readers will get confused, too passive, too wordy)

Lady Haversham’s ball was, as always, to be the talk of the town: providing ample fodder for gossip columns and tattle over afternoon tea. – Odyssey of Attachment (don’t start by introducing a minor character or readers will get confused, too passive, too wordy)

Juliet cursed her face. Glaring at her reflection in the dressing-table’s looking-glass, she slapped her gloves onto the desk-top. – Orbits of Attraction (don’t begin with a character looking in the mirror, clichée)

Cars swooshed by but Rose hardly noticed the sirens. St Nicholas Hospital had hired her to plant seasonal flowers in the little park but what should have been an easy job was frustrated by a stubborn carpet of ground elder. – House of Rose (infodump, too wordy)

This is not to say that there couldn’t be improvements, but a writer’s first job is to tell a story whilst being true to their own voice. There is no one formula that will make all readers like your writing, there will always be those that think your text is shit.

“Call me Ishmael.” It’s one of the most famous and acclaimed opening lines. Yet, if I hadn’t been forced to read Moby Dick in school, I would never have made it past that sentence. My brain says ‘Why? Why should I call you anything? Just eff off!’

The point, Dear Reader, is that listening to advice from trusted betas or editors is healthy writing practice but trying to limit yourself and your expression by squeezing into somebody else’s box of preferences is not.

Write your story, your way, in your voice.

And with that, Dear Reader, I leave you to ponder your next opening line on this very fine Monday!