Regarding opening lines

When considering buying a book online, I'll read the free sample and if I want to keep reading, I'll buy the book. However if the first few lines aren't getting me hooked, I'll move on. There are too many books out there to spend time reading the entire first 10% (or whatever amount you get in the free sample) or the entire first chapter or two in a bookshop, to see if I start to like it. For me the cover and title are less important than the first few lines because I'll open up a lot of books and read the first few lines to see what they're like.

You're right in the sense that they are all important in terms of getting someone to buy the book. But the point at which I am most likely to accept or reject a book that I look at is the first few lines. The cover/title combo makes me pick the book up but it isn't what secures the sale. If I reject a book after reading the blurb it's more about whether it's the type of story I'd enjoy. For example if it's clear from the blurb it's not my cup of tea genre wise, I'll put it down. But most of the time if I read the blurb I'll also read the first few lines and it's the first few lines that would sell it or fail to sell it.

I have radically changed my opinion about a book (from bad to very good) after reading only a few lines. I've put bestsellers back on the shelf after only a few lines. It's very common for me to be in a library or bookshop and to just browse books - pick them up, read the cover, blurb and a few lines, and then put them back. While doing this, sometimes I get so hooked that I can't just read the first few lines, I have to keep reading and will go and borrow or buy the book because I literally can't put it down.

Occasionally books hook me from the blurb, e.g. The Martian by Andy Weir. He had me at "I'm stranded on Mars" (first line of the blurb) - this wasn't a sale or no sale thing as my brother bought it for me as a gift, but had I seen it in a bookshop I'd still have read the first few lines before buying it, just in case. (Some books have very grabby titles, blurbs etc then turn out to be dull and badly written.)

Marketing is important, and we're all vulnerable to it one way or another.

That said: if someone I trusted recommended a book to me that had a lousy cover and the first line hooked me, I'd read it. If they recommended a book with a gorgeous cover and the beginning fell flat, I wouldn't.

I think they're orthogonal concepts, really - both important in different ways.

Just to throw a wrench into the works: If the title/cover intrigues me, I'll glance at the blurb, then open the book a quarter or so of the way in -- not too far, so as to avoid major spoilers -- and read a chunk at random. If the writing engages me, I'll randomly flip to another chunk, and possibly give the blurb a bit more attention. If the writing continues to hold up and the blurb makes it sound like my sort of thing, I'll seriously consider buying.

I frequently don't look at the opening lines at all. IME the opening of a book doesn't necessarily correlate to what the overall reading experience is like, and that's before you even get to things like writers putting 10x the attention into their opening paragraphs as they have the rest of the book (either improving or overpolishing, YMMV).

The first line is so important to me as a customer. Then the first paragraph. A good first line will encourage me to read the first paragraph. If I like the first page or two I'll buy it. (but I am happy to DNF books, too.) What makes the opening a winner to me ... is feeling invited into the story, like a mental hug.

Here are four first lines (from four genres) that I pulled together for a workshop. They're from best sellers. Only the second one below works for me (and I often reshelve first person). But that second one is an intriguing line and doesn't demand any effort. I feel invited, not coerced.

Again, all of these books did phenomenally well. (Subjective.)

“We should start back,” Gared urged, as the woods began to grow dark around them. “The wildlings are dead.”

When I think of my wife, I always think of her head.

As I sit here with one foot on either side of the ledge, looking down from twelve stories above the streets of Boston, I can’t help but think about suicide.

The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics successfully put its third satellite into orbit, this one with the capability of sending radio signals down to Earth and taking measurements of the radiation in space.

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Actually for me its the title. So whether that is scanning a shelf in a bookstore (most books are displayed with the spine out, very few are showing the front cover) or the weekend book reviews in the papers. After that, I will read the blurb. If that intrigues me I will have a look at the first page/paragraph. If I am buying through Amazon I will also take a look at reviews.

If I'm on the fence about a book, the first line can make or break it. Most of the books I decide to read have killer first lines.

I don't think anything can slide, though. If you can create a killer title, first line, blurb, whatever, then there's no reason not to.

Woollybear - I agree, the second one is the only one that makes me want to read on (and I'm also not a first-person fan). It's because it creates a question -- why is that what he thinks of? -- that I want answered.

Even if I don't really care about his wife or her head. There's a great lecture by... Lee Child, maybe?... talking about how humans are hard-wired to want answers to questions, even questions they don't care about. That's why some TV shows will pose a trivia question before the commercial break; they know how many people will cling to that station because they have to know what annual festival an island has or what sport has the most weather-related cancellations, even if they're not remotely interested in festivals or sports.

Don't care that much about the cover. That's art, like a poster. An intriguing image, much like an advertisement, doesn't make me buy unless I want the product. Titles might make me open the book, but buying the book is dependent on the opening. If the first lines are boring or don't interest me, I don't keep reading.

I think the first few paragraphs of your book are the most important real estate a writer owns. It's the first thing a reader uses to judge whether or not to buy the book. It's the first thing an agent who's intrigued by a query will use as a measure of whether or not to sign you as a client and it's what's in the balance when it comes to a publisher that chooses to acquire your book.

A beautiful cover, great blurb, snazzy title are fine. But if the writing isn't terrific, if it's confusing, doesn't present an immediate conflict or something fascinating that I have to know more about, if there are grammatical errors, then I move on. Way too many fish in the sea to keep going in order to find out if I'm wasting my time.

Edit: I wanted to add that I also will read books by authors I love, regardless of the opening lines.

I agree with indianroads in that a snappy opening by itself won't get it done. And that it needs to be relevant to the rest of the book.

The sequence of components (for me, but also for most, I believe) quite often goes:
Cover--yes, this looks like a genre/subgenre I'm interested in.
Blurb--okay, this might have some originality; it's an interesting proposition.
Open the book/Look Inside--And here is where the rubber meets the road--this is where the decision is made.

The first sentence has one job: to get you to the second sentence. The second sentence gets you to the third. And so on. Don't Let Up.

It's important to get the opener right. But it's also important to get the entire book right.

I'm with CathleenT on this - esp

CathleenT said:

It's important to get the opener right. But it's also important to get the entire book right.

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ETA: Except, I can totally buy a book for a gorgeous cover - and I have. And sometimes it's been an unfortunate choice as far as the writing goes, but hey I bought it for the cover, so...

indianroads said:

I started this thread somewhat because of the currently running first 3 sentences thread, you see, my belief is that the intense focus on the first bit of the book is overemphasized.

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Hang on, you only seem to be talking about the opening lines of published books (whether self pubbed or trade pubbed). That ignores the stage a lot of those "first three lines" entries are at -- polishing up work for querying.

When you're trying to catch an agent's interest, those first few lines are critical. If they make it past the query to the pasted pages, it can be a really fast snap decision on whether they request or reject. So yeah, it's important to have an opener that lands.

(As for published books, I'm someone whose interest might be piqued by the cover or title or blurb, but those first lines/grafs are what make me decide to actually buy it. I generally read the first page, not only the first lines, but I've 100% rejected based on the opening sentences before.)

I agree with indianroads. Having worked for a publishing company and witnessed what happened re: sales when we released a book with four different covers to learn if one sold better than another, I learned cover is of paramount importance. For me, the blurb is a huge seller: it's a thumbnail sketch of the journey I'll be taking. Finally, the the first pages seal (or not) the deal.

indianroads said:

ETA: my intended point is that for published works, YES, the opening stanza is important, but it shouldn’t take away from efforts elsewhere in the book.

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I didn't realise it was a zero sum game.

Agree very much with Lakey, especially this bit:

Lakey said:

And it’s a microcosm of one’s writing, in the sense that if one has extra words, unclear syntax, or confusing metaphors in one’s opening, then one is likely to have those problems throughout the manuscript, and wouldn’t it be nice to know that now so you can fix it before you show the rest of the book to people you might not get a second chance with?

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The first few times I posted openings in the previous incarnations of the 3 sentences thread, the feedback was about things that applied to the entire manuscript, not just the first three lines. I ended up editing the whole thing based on this feedback. Particularly for beginner writers, you don't need to get the entire thing critiqued to learn from it, in fact it probably would've been extremely disheartening to get the entire thing critiqued, then have every single example of the same handful of beginner errors highlighted each time I'd done them. And also that would be very inefficient use of everyone's time.

Another time, as a result of the 3 lines feedback, when I was struggling to start the story without backstory infodumps, I realised I was starting too late and actually the story started a few days before - I ended up writing about 3 chapters worth of story before the original starting point. I didn't just end up with a stronger opening lines, the entire first few chapters were stronger because of it.

I've also learned loads from critiquing other people's lines and reading the critiques of others. I haven't just learned about writing opening lines of a novel. I've learned about choosing words carefully to say exactly what I mean to say, choosing the right details to convey the important information in a limited number of sentences. How to convey just enough information to paint a clear picture and what details can be left out. How to create intrigue without impairing clarity. Probably I could go on for a while listing this stuff. I used to have a problem with writing too much redundant information (I probably still do that in my forum posts - sorry!) and I've learned how much of these extra words and sentences can be removed without changing the meaning. So much stuff you can learn from critiquing just three sentences.

Also, as a single parent with a full time job, I often don't get time to do longer critiques, like in the share your work section. However critiquing three sentences doesn't take long but still helps to improve my ability to revise my own work.

In all, a massive thank you to everyone who's taken part in the 3 sentences thread!

What Lakey said. The opening needs to be good to hook me, but the rest of that prose should follow the example of the beginning. I have stopped reading books that don't redeem the promise of the opening, just as I've quit watching movies that turned out not to be my cup of tea.

When I was younger, I finished everything, even bad movies and books. I'm older now and have less time left. If you let me down during the reading or viewing process, I'm gone. I have less tolerance for bad books or movies these days.

I like the usage of the term microcosm here. The first line (or first three lines, or the blurb, or the cover, or the author, or even the subject matter) are part of a larger living breathing entity that ultimately makes a potential reader/fan pick up a book, skim said microcosm and ultimately make their way to reading the entire book.

For myself personally, I've been on something of a renaissance lately in my reading in that I am picking up books and reading/listening to that either I was forced to read in college, and didn't, or am picking up for the first time in some cases. So, my reading of these books is not predicated on the first line, the cover, or even the author really. It's because I feel that this is something I should have read, need to read, or have not given enough due consideration.

With that said, I am also suspending any sort of judgement based on the first line, or first three lines, or even chapters for the foreseeable future. I do find that some first lines are more likely to stick than others. Someone upthread even referenced one of them:

Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time

Other well-known first lines:

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
Call me Ishmael.

So, do first lines matter? Yes, they can have a lasting impact. But they do not exist in a void. For me it's part of a whole, and reminds me of when I was a kid and I asked my dad to "tell me a story".

Whether that story started with "once upon a time" or "there once was a..." or anything else would hook me, but it was also the rest of the story that mattered. I had to be able to relate to the story, understand the story, and enjoy the story. Otherwise, it could have been the worst story ever regardless of the first lines.

be frank said:

I didn't realise it was a zero sum game.

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This.

To be fair though, I don't quite understand how one can take the first sentence or three out of the first paragraph for judgement of the book. We don't (generally) read word-by-word, or even sentence-by-sentence.

Judging by the first-few-minutes of reading is probably more the kind of thing readers actually do, I think.

be frank said:

I didn't realise it was a zero sum game.

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Yes, +1 to this.

indianroads said:

In my experience, it often has been. A great opening (or at least a passable one) then the writing flattens out. This could possibly be caused by an overemphasis on those first few lines.

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Really, you think that book made it all the way to publication and no one ever thought to polish the entire manuscript, only the opening lines? I mean, clearly if it was published, there are people who don't agree with your assessment of the writing being flat. Your disappointment is not an objective measure, and it doesn't negate the importance of openings in general. I can't read a whole book to decide if I want to read the book. I've learned over time that the opening is the best indicator of whether I'll enjoy the story. The cover may entice me to pick it up, but it is not the story. The blurb may be about the story but also is not the actual story. Sure, those things are important, but I will still base final decision on the story, and for me, that means reading the opening.