10 Great Story Openings
Little later this week than I’d planned, but I’ve got a lot going on this week. Since I’m teaching a workshop this weekend about the art and craft of story openings, I thought I’d give some of my favorite opening lines. Note: Note all of these are genre books, just lines I really like.
This is my go-to opening line when teaching opening lines. This sentence has so much meat (pardon the pun, it’s absolutely intentional) packed into four words, three of them having only a single syllable. It gives a sense of macabre history while also offering questions that drive us into the story.
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” The Gunslinger, by Stephen King
Who is the man in black? Why is he fleeing? Who is the gunslinger? Why is he following the man in black? This epic line brings up so many questions about what happened before and where this story is going to go.
What? Just what? How does one lose a god? What’s the context here? I had to keep reading to find out.
“The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and call me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died.” – Milkman, by Anna Burns
I just love the surrealness of contemporary Irish writers. why doesn’t Somebody have a real name? How does this tie into the milkman dying? Are the incidents related? So many questions I want answered.
What? I mean, WHAAAAT??? Talk about an opening that makes me want to keep reading to figure out what’s going on.
“When Red wins, she stands alone.” – This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mothar & Max Gladstone
This sentence really works well in relation to the title. That’s when the questions start coming, and I want all the answers… right now! What does that have to do with winning or losing the time war? Why is Red alone? Etc. I devoured this book in one day to find out.
“I am a child of my century as old as the century. – Byzantium Endures, by Michael Moorcock.
Which century? How is one exactly the child of a century? If this were most other writers, we might be able to accept it at face value, like being a child of a decade. However, this is Moorcock we’re talking about. We can’t accept anything with Moorcock at face value. So, what does this mean? Guess we have to keep reading to find out.
This opening is full of some hutzpah. Is it even a complete sentence? Still, is the obituary something that’s coming soon? Why’s the narrator thinking about it? Does it happen often, or is this a passing thought just to spark off this story?
“The seller of lightning rods arrived just before the storm.” Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury.
This is a perfect balance between straightforward prose and lingering poetic imagery that lingers in the imagination. It’s a microcosmic story on its own, kicking off one more brilliant Bradbury adventure.
“After an idle discussion with the pest control man who came once a month to spray around the outside of his home in the Ruxton section of Baltimore, William Sterog stole a canister of Malathion, a deadly insecticide poison, from the man’s truck, and went out early one morning, following the route of the neighborhoods milkman, and spooned medium-large quantities into each bottle left on the doorstep of seventy homes.” – The Beast the Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, by Harlan Ellison.
WTF, Ellison. Just WTF?
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