Which one of you bitches is my mother? – Shirley Conran, Lace
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. – Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
All this happened, more or less. – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
It was love at first sight. – Joseph Heller, Catch-22
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. – Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
I am about to buy a house in a foreign country. – Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun
“Where’s Papa going with that ax?” – E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
The striking thing about these opening lines is their brevity. They’re short, simple sentences that convey a basic thought or action. They draw us in; we want to keep reading.
Not a word is wasted. Yet we’re plunged straight into the story. That’s good writing.
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, we have the classic trope, below:
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” — Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)
The above excerpt is frequently cited as a prime example of bad writing. There’s even a yearly contest for the worst opening sentence (the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest) http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/.
Ironically, “It was a dark and stormy night” isn’t a terrible first sentence. If only Mr Bulwer-Lytton had stopped there.
The name of this style, known as purple prose, was originated by Horace, the Roman poet, and refers to overwrought, pretentious writing. And overwrought, pretentious writing does not a good opening sentence make.
Dorothy Parker, the sardonic doyenne of the Algonquin Round Table, held Aimee Semple McPherson’s autobiography in rather low esteem in this review:
The sun becomes “that round orb of day” (as opposed, I expect, to those square orbs you see about so much lately); maple syrup is “Springtide’s liquid love gift from the heart of the maple wood”; the forest, by a stroke of inspiration, turns out to be “a cathedral of stately grandeur and never ceasing wonder and awe” (argue, if you will, for “cloying quicksand” as the phrase superb, but me, I’ll hold out for “stately grandeur”)… — Dorothy Parker
Even great writers, including Willa Cather, Umberto Eco, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, Gustave Flaubert, and Charles Dickens occasionally succumbed to the lure of purple prose.
Oscar Wilde mocked Nell’s death in The Old Curiosity Shop when he stated ‘One would have to have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without dissolving into tears…of laughter.’
The Old Curiosity Shop, George Goodwin Kilburne
Keep your opening sentence as simple and straightforward as possible. Don’t clutter it up with adjectives, convoluted phrases, or, God forbid, purple prose. Open with a line of dialogue or a statement that makes the reader curious.
Because in the end, your aim in writing that first sentence isn’t to impress anyone with your vocabulary (or your verbosity); it’s to keep ’em reading.
What are some of your favorite opening lines? Least favorite?