What's Your Opening Line?

fedorable1 · Aug 8, 2005

I'm just curious. I've read a lot about opening lines and various types of beginnings. If you are all comfortable, please feel free to post what your novels opening line is - or are, if you have more than one written.

For me:

Rise of an Exile

"It's wierd."

gp101 · Aug 8, 2005

After many false starts, and dozens of different lines, I went with this:

"Would they be kind enough to kill him before chucking him to the alligators?"

azbikergirl · Aug 8, 2005

From my WIP:
They came for Tanea in the early afternoon, unexpectedly, while she was hanging freshly washed linens on a line.

AdamH · Aug 8, 2005

This may change because I'm still rewriting but right now it's "Ally missed the past."

icerose · Aug 8, 2005

"She’s hiding in here."

Is one of my opening lines.

Thekherham · Aug 8, 2005

We've been through this before, haven't we? All this fuss and bother jsut because it's my birthday.

maestrowork · Aug 8, 2005

"Betrayal makes us do strange things."

Here's a potential opening line for my WIP (haven't finished with the draft yet):

"The civet cat was going to die."

sassandgroove · Aug 8, 2005

I cannot tell you my life story completely without first telling the stories of the strong women who came before me.

(But it is a rough draft and I don't like the opening now that I've written the ending. Thus starts the great revision...)

Kasey Mackenzie · Aug 8, 2005

Opening line from my current WIP, Where Angels Fear to Tread:

"He called himself an angel, but looking at him I had my doubts."

NeuroFizz · Aug 8, 2005

"Agnes Hahn is a donut. In a scone world."
Sorry about two sentences, but they have to go together.

Cheers, NF

DivaWriter · Aug 8, 2005

Openings...

My opening line is...

"I was never one of those women."

scribbler1382 · Aug 8, 2005

Ray committed his first murder when he was nine years old.

kristie911 · Aug 8, 2005

He grabbed her by the hair, pulling her through the living room and down the hall to the bedroom they shared.

mistri · Aug 8, 2005

I have two, kind of.

The first line of my mini-prologue is: The City of Seasons lay like a splendid blot upon the landscape of Thacar.

The first line of the book proper is: They were calling me a fraud?

Mike Martyn · Aug 8, 2005

"The Potato King? He calls himself the Potato King? Really Frank, these people!" she said as she dried the last the dishes from their late lunch.

BlueTexas · Aug 8, 2005

Uncle John rowed across the lake, and Celia already knew what he was coming to say.

maestrowork · Aug 8, 2005

scribbler1382 said:
Ray committed his first murder when he was nine years old.

How did you know?! *gasp*

(I think we did this a while ago... it tickled me to see how these opening lines would string together and form some weird story that remotely made sense...)

sassandgroove · Aug 8, 2005

maestrowork said:
(I think we did this a while ago... it tickled me to see how these opening lines would string together and form some weird story that remotely made sense...)

Wasn't that the last line written that day?

zarch · Aug 8, 2005

"Hot damn!"

rowriter · Aug 8, 2005

this isn't from my current WIP, but something I was working on earlier:

"When Adrienne was nine, her mother walked into her room one Saturday afternoon and found her daughter the audience and choreographer of an eerily educated production of sexual activity between two stuffed animals."

underthecity · Aug 8, 2005

Clang clang! Fifth and Vine, Fountain Square, use the center door, please.

This opening line took me a week to come up with, it introduces my latest regional history book, coming out this December.

And you know what, I'm going to sign these from now on as

allen

scarletpeaches · Aug 8, 2005

"She awoke with a start, and an unidentified man lying beside her."

ricaykw · Aug 8, 2005

With the best of intentions and sparing no expense, oil tycoon and celebrity-status billionaire Wayne Harper had spent his last years balding from chemo treatments and founding the Wayne Institute of Technology.

Bufty · Aug 8, 2005

The advancing storm stealthily encircled its prey.

Saanen · Aug 8, 2005

My current WIP first line:

Dexter said I should write this story down so humans can read it.

The original first line (or rather, two lines) was:

I didn't know I was starting my first season. I thought I had worms.

I had to add a short new chapter one (really a prologue) before the original chapter one, though, to explain a lot of things about the culture. I still love the original beginning, though.

What's Your Opening Line?

Hopeless Romantic

I really do look like this.

Pumped Up Kicks

Lost in School Work

The Alien Writer

Fear the Death Ray

Sassy haircut

One Hit Wonder?

The grad students did it

Write For You, Edit For The Reader

Happy to be here

Sneezy Member

Back from self-exile land.

Fear the Death Ray

Sassy haircut

GOML.

Bibliophile

Finestkind

Where have the last ten years gone?