The Power of the First Line

The first line.

Yup, I really just made my first line 'The first line'. It is like a handshake with our readers. So, what makes a good first line? Well, there are a few things that you have to do.

• Capture your readers attention!
• Set the tone for your novel.
• Introduce readers to your 'voice'.
• Hook your audience (I know that is the same as the first. It bears repeating.)

So, why should you start out with a bang? Most publishers and editors say that they decide within the first three pages. The truth is much worse than that. You may have the first few paragraphs. Worse still, you may have only one sentence!

Make it count.

So, how do we start a novel off running instead of walking? Well, let's look at some of great writers for guidance.

A first line should make readers ask questions

The strongest openings always make a reader question. Let's take Ray Bradbury's novel "Fahrenheit 451". Its first line is: It was a pleasure to burn. Immediately as a reader, I'm asking myself what is a pleasure to burn? Why is it? Wait, is the narrator the one burning? And bam! I'm down the rabbit hole. With such a simple line, he's captured my attention in so many ways.

It can give us universal concept

In Leo Tolstoy's classic "Anna Karenina", we are given this concept: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Not only are you given something to chew on, the line sets the tone for the novel to come. Be careful! Make sure that the plot supports the concept. This would not have been such a great line if Anna had been happily married in the book.

Be surprising!

In J D Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye", we are treated to: 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. Why is this line so great? It introduces us to the voice of the narrator in style. We are surprised by the narrator's candor when telling us he doesn't really want to go into it.

Start it by being meta!

You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. In this, we are treated by the main character talking about a book he was in! Woah! Makes his character kind of jump off the page, doesn't it?

Hook 'em with a joke!

I don’t know how other men feel about their wives walking out on them, but I helped mine pack. That is the opening line from "Breaking Up" by Bill Manville. It is irreverent. It pokes fun about a sensitive subject. Most of all, it stays on task. We laugh and we get the tone the narrator is going to take the story.

Drop us right in the middle

This one is harder to show from an opening line. But you start it right in the middle of the story. The inciting incident is behind everything that is happening but we never cover it. Neil Gaimen's "American Gods" is a good example. The story starts with: Shadow had done three years in prison.

So, hook them high, hook them hard! Get them into your story so that all those words you have after the first line aren't going to waste. There are certainly more ways to start a story than I've shown here but these are a few to get you started. Happy writing!