How to Write A Good First Line | 20+ Examples of Great Novel Openings

hello everyone alexa dunn here and today i am going to be going over what makes a great first line opening lines are indeed very very important the literal first thing that a reader is going to read but i'm going to expand a little bit past literal first lines so i'm going to talk a lot about literal first lines to look at second lines third lines paragraphs first paragraphs even in some cases the first page because a first line is only the first line it needs to feed into the things that follow it and very often a first line that isn't immediately obviously special it's actually the way that it plays into the rest of the page that makes it work so in some cases we're just gonna be like dang that's a really great first line that immediately does something but in a couple other cases i'm going to show you the bigger picture there is no one way to come up with a first line no magic formula so i'm not going to give you prescriptive advice on this is how you have to write a first line but i'm going to try to demystify different types of first lines i'm going to give you a ton of examples and kind of go over what a an effective first line can and should do so starting with first line philosophy what are those things that a first line ideally does most of these things but at least have a first line do one of these things really two is even better so the first most obvious thing is it is attention grabbing for whatever reason and we will dissect what some of those reasons might be it's a line that makes someone stop in their tracks and go huh which the second thing a good line is it should prompt some sort of question it could be huh which is maybe mild confusion slash interest mild confusion is okay if you address that confusion immediately confusion that lingers too long is bad but anything that peaks someone's interest in some way literal questions like how what where when any kind of question a question triggers the desire to push forward great first lines also give a sense of voice give the reader an idea of what they can expect from the voice and the writing style of the work sometimes that's funny sometimes it's about the tension in it sometimes it's the mood the rhythm of the writing that will tell someone oh this is going to be breakneck fast-paced sci-fi or this is going to be a moody lit fick or what have you a great first line can also be character building character establishing it's a line that immediately gives you some clue or context as to who the speaker is who you're following what kind of character they are or what their point of view is an important facet of their point of view similarly a great first line can give you snippets of world building sense of place and when you're really firing on all cylinders a great first line can also while doing some of these other things play on themes of the work major concepts themes plot aspects that won't always be obvious to the reader until they're done with the book a few of the first lines i'm going to go over in hindsight because i've read the books i'm like i see what you did there you are starting out with some of the most core and important elements of your story buried into that first line now i know that sounds like a tall order but now i'm going to go into some different types of first lines and this is when i give you a lot of examples i tried to jump around to different genres but i do heavily favor young adult fiction thrillers put a couple of lit fake examples in there tried to find some fantasy and then i pulled a bunch of kind of famous ones as well like classics to show you the thing about classics is in a lot of cases we just don't write like that anymore but regardless they're classics for a reason so i will be bringing up some super famous first lines this is by no means an exhaustive list i started by coming up with ways that i approach first lines then i pulled a ton of examples and tried to work backwards like oh that's a good example of this kind of opening to try to show you variety i have more examples for some of these than others and it is not exhaustive because i'm sure i'm leaving a ton out ultimately my advice to really help you is to pay attention to first lines anytime you pick up a book anytime you have a very good experience with a book it pulls you in pay attention to the first lines and those first pages and what they are doing so the first super common type of first line is what i call the surprising idea the contrary idea it's a line that kind of makes the reader stop this is kind of the go huh one these will work in a lot of different genres but i noticed them a lot in certain types of commercial genres so one that i have for middle grade is sophie had waited all her life to be kidnapped that's from the school for good and evil by someone chanani and i mean you read that line and you go why would a girl want to be kidnapped that is your opening story question and you push on this happens to be my go-to over and over again which is why i have two examples from my own books so the opening two lines of the ivies sometimes the first line as i mentioned isn't perfect and awesome by itself you need the second line as well and that's how the ivies is set up today half the seniors of claflin academy will die on the inside that is so i mean the first one i guess does technically work by itself and this is a thriller it's meant to provoke a reaction it's a surprise line and then you read the next one and that's feeding you into kind of the world of the book it's also an example of my voice a little bit of the kind of wry humor that you can definitely expect to find and the opening line from the stars be steal i love this opening line the extravagance made my teeth hurt it's meant to be a little weird and as you read down the page you realize it's because the main character is so unhappy in this situation where she is that she is grinding her teeth but it's meant to be kind of like the word extravagance the idea that she's somewhere splendid but her teeth hurt she's in pain you're gonna see more examples of this type when i just kind of go through my first lines document so we will come back to examples of this but the next one is kind of the pithy funny opening line these can also be surprising but you're kind of using an intentional humor to do so so one that i have is it was late afternoon on the very last wednesday of august when i realized disney had been lying to me for quite some time about happily ever afters that's from only mostly devastated by sophie gonzalez it's kind of a cousin to that first one but there's a little bit of humor and voice in it i didn't find a ton of super funny lines as i was going through that which is interesting this might be limited to the genres that i read but opening with humor is definitely a device that you can use as long as it's appropriate to the voice of your novel another one that i know is a good way to open a book but i didn't find many examples i found literally one but dagnabbit i know it's a good way i have opened books with this just not ones that were published and that is opening on a line of dialogue throwing people into a scene someone is speaking and it's normally a line of dialogue that you immediately are having a character react to sometimes it's them speaking but most often i see this as a reaction type thing indeed in the example that i did find from always never yours by emily whibley and austin siegmund broca all the world's a stage brian anderson's butchering the line i listen for the posturing and borderline mania shakespeare intended but no so that's a couple of lines another great example it's not simply the opening line it's the things that follow that start to build and pull you in you know how i mentioned great first lines will often demonstrate character same idea here this is a character reacting to someone else saying something you're immediately getting a sense of her perspective and a tiny hint of her personality and the voice of the book another super common great way to open a book but be very very careful not to chew this scenery like with a flowery description of say weather but the descriptive or sense of place opening two examples i have the evening air smelled pleasantly of a fresh grave that is the first line of chapter one of the bone houses by emily lloyd jones the next line is about the main character but the first whiff of the first line is sense of place but also theme cause graves as i mentioned most first lines are going to do more than one job it's doing a lot of things all at once the next one i have is one of those kind of like famous lines but it was a good one this is from the bell jar by sylvia plath it was a queer sultry summer the summer they electrocuted the rosenbergs and i didn't know what i was doing in new york not a literal sense of place in that the character is like feet planted in a spot that's being described but that definitely gives you a sense of time and setting where the story is going to take place the next type i call painting a scene so these are kind of opening lines that again are doing a lot of things at once and it'll make sense when i read them so the first one is from the cruel prince by holly black from the prologue on a drowsy sunday afternoon a man in a long dark coat hesitated in front of a house on a tree-lined street visual image you're seeing a character something is about to happen this next line is from the wife by meg wolitzer so like literary fiction the moment i decided to leave him the moment i thought enough we were 35 000 feet above the ocean hurtling forward and giving the illusion of stillness and tranquility that first line is actually doing a lot but it's also technically that painting this scene of where she is there's there's kind of undercurrents of emotion there and later when i talk more about literal format of first lines i just think about this one i'm going to bring it up again with the repetition and the sentence structure rhythm is a really important part of first line so put a pin in that next is one that i found a lot of examples of and i it's kind of the drop into the action scene slash moment and my categories are inelegant because some of these can go into different ones like multiple ones i do want to disclaim that and the first example i have is from the davinci code by dan brown renowned curator jacques sonier staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's grand gallery its sense of place and painting a scene but there's action in it immediately similarly from my book brightly burning the gravity stabilizers were failing again not the most extraordinary first line but it gives you a sense of setting it's sci-fi immediately and then the second line it's a jump into action shortly after this i glanced up from my sketch pad to see globules of liquid dancing up from my drinking glass and then i might as well continue to read because this is an example of a first paragraph building on an opening idea you kind of need the whole first paragraph the next line is they shimmered red like droplets of blood though i knew it was just cherry flavored nutri drink damn it that's my protein ration for the day wasted this is like a slow building idea of a sci-fi setting this is doing a lot of world building there's a there's a tiny bit of character work in there because she is an artist and that is then in the next paragraph so then i love this next one it's from atonement and this is giving you like a setting the scene with a ton of character in it by playing off of language and form the play for which bryony had designed the posters programs and tickets constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side and lined the collection box in red crepe paper was written by her in a two day tempest of composition causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch i love this opening line this tells you so much about brainy and there's kind of an intensity to her which is very important to the novel also to the meta aspects of the novel with bryony being a writer a creator so next i have what i will call the opening sequence of the last time i lied by riley sager and this is of the first chapter i'm going to talk about prologues versus first chapters in just a couple of minutes because i have thoughts on that i mean spoiler i find most the time the actual first line or lines of chapter one to be stronger than the average prologue the first line by itself does all of this but i'm also going to give you the sequence i paint the girls in the same order story question also there's character in that there's also story theme you're like what girls why are they always in the same order and you know that the main character is a painter so it goes from there vivian first then natalie allison is last even though she was first to leave the cabin and therefore technically the first to disappear i love that opening so many of my examples are thrillers and those sorts of stories those openings their job is to build tension to tease a little bit to give you breadcrumbs of world and character and set up note that a lot of these sentences they're short they're pithy another really good example of this kind of thing is from little monsters by cara thomas similar kind of building start they fire off a round of texts at me five minutes after midnight we're coming get ready they're not threats but my friends have a way of making even the simplest demands feel like ultimatums which says so much about the theme of this book i mean this one too and you don't know until you read them although toxic girl relationships toxic girl relationships and tell the kind of books i like last category i want to talk about i like this kind of opening a lot as well and i call it the deceptively simple statement of facts and some of these other ones count as this as well it can be that surprise opening as well these often they're just like this is the thing but there's something in it that triggers that story question that triggers that huh moment and they're very straightforward simple sentences but they either build to something or they're ironic given the eventual context of the book or just incre not ironic just incredibly important one of my favorite examples of this is from never let me go by kazuo ishiguro and if you haven't read this book this opening might not mean much to you and it doesn't when you start reading it either though it has kind of a rhythm to it there there's a there's an attention and a question in it this is another great example of it's not literally or singly the first line it is the succession of the first few lines that make this opening my name is kathy h i'm 31 years old and i've been a carer now for over 11 years that sounds long enough i know but actually they want me to go on for another eight months until the end of this year that'll make it almost exactly 12 years now i know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think i'm fantastic at what i do there are some really good carers who have been told to stop after just two or three years and i can think of one carer at least who went on for all of 14 years despite being a complete waste of space if this continues on this is a long first paragraph there is so much world building happening in the succession of lines some are short and sweet some are a little longer and are layering on ideas and you're getting a sense of kathy here she's straightforward but a tiny bit sassy a little bit self-aggrandizing and you as the reader are like what the heck is a carer what is the context for any of this and the the length of time and what is this job where it doesn't matter if you're any good at it and if you've read this book you know that it is a gut bunch to the soul i love this opening but great example it's not just your first line sometimes it really is how you build off of a first line to a second to a third to a paragraph to an opening page another deceptively simple opening line is from house of dragons by jessica kluse this is a great example of a very straightforward opening sentence that tells you so much about the fantasy world that this is set in one day after the emperor had died and been eaten the call went out to select his successor a world with emperors he was eaten after he died and so many story questions there and the call went out to select his successor which tells is basically plot conceit and then i'll just read the next couple lines though i think that first one that's one where you're like huh immediately emilia of the arun considered this on dragon back as she hovered 100 feet above the rocky coastline frothing waves surged against the cliff so violently she swore the spray speckled her cheek even at this height and see so the second line like dragon back okay it's a fantasy world with dragons and it's building there's also sense of place going on here lots of different ways to open a book now i'm going to run through a ton of just more examples because i think more examples helps to kind of hear them and look at rhythm and look at structure because next we're going to talk about word choice rhythm and structure i like this opening to the cheerleaders by cara thomas i think this is a good one in terms of tone and character voice this house was made for someone without a soul so i guess it makes sense that my mother wanted it so badly that's i guess that's a good example of very dark humor i could put that in the humor section because that makes you go it tells you a lot about the main character and also gives you a little hint as to kind of uh the tone of the book i'll read on just because i do like how this builds in terms of character voice i can imagine how her eyes lit up when she walked through the 5 bedroom 3 and a half bath new construction i'll bet she thinks this house is the answer to what's wrong with us when tom my stepfather showed me the bathroom attached to my room with its own jacuzzi tub he said bet you feel like cinderella because he's an idiot this is already setting up a lot with character voice it's very teen it's very why a and her relationship with her parents also a great idea of how to do like light flashback with a line of dialogue for characterization i like that technique here's an interesting opening from sharp objects by gillian flynn my sweater was new stinging red and ugly that's a great example of just an opening image that is kind of like huh it's that question thing again and sometimes that question is just like what and it continues on giving you a sense of place and setting the scene it was may 12th but the temperature had dipped to the 40s and after four days shivering in my shirt sleeves i grabbed cover at a tag sale rather than dig through my boxed up winter clothes spring in chicago it's also giving you a bit of character that she'd rather go buy an ugly sweater because it's easy then go through boxes next i'm going to go over a series of examples of prologue first lines and first chapter first lines that build off of each other or play off of each other this is the wife between us by grier hendricks and sarah buchanan she walks briskly down the city sidewalk her blonde hair bouncing against her shoulders her cheeks flushed a gym bag looped over her forearm that's not a particularly special opening line it's a woman walking down the street this doesn't become interesting until you read the rest of the paragraph so another great example of that when she reaches her apartment building her hand dips into her purse and pulls out her keys the street is loud and busy with yellow cabs racing by commuters returning from work and shoppers entering the deli on the corner but my eyes never stray from her so you read and you go oh this woman's being watched by an unnamed from part of the book character so this is a tension building device and then chapter one nelly couldn't say what woke her but when she opened her eyes a woman wearing her white lacy wedding gown stood by the foot of the bed looking down at her this is actually a pretty good example this might be a case where the prologue did exist before because they actually play off of each other very well you start with a stalker an unknown third person stalker and then you come into the first chapter and it's a woman who sees someone standing at the foot of her bed in her wedding dress it was an illusion by the way that's not actually what happened you find out in the next line but you want to read on don't you because you're like oh my gosh vlogs versus first chapters in fantasy i find very interesting so i have the bone houses by emily lloyd jones i already actually gave you the first line of chapter one here's the first line of the prologue the gravedigger's children were troublemakers i still think that's a pretty good line but it's a different perspective this prologue is basically an omniscient narrator telling you a story the next line is they chase chickens the neighbor's yard brandishing sticks like swords claiming that the fowl were monsters in disguise and so on and then the first line of the first chapter is already mentioned hold this in your mind when i go over how to structure your first line because i'm going to talk about pov this now is in the pov while still in third person of the main character the evening error smelled pleasantly of a fresh grave rin breathes it in the sweetness of overturned sod mists rising from the green grass and the wood smoke drifting from the village look at what that's doing as well the contrasting idea is that this air smells pleasantly of a fresh grave and then we're introduced to rin and you already know something's off kilter with this main character and that hopefully is prompting story questions and interest next with the cool prince by holly black i already read you the first line of the prologue which was on a drowsy sunday afternoon a man in a long coat hesitated in front of a house on a tree-lined street so the prologue of the cruel prince is what happened with the main character's parents their tragic fate and what brought her to fairyland and there are details in that first prologue and then the first line of chapter one and it it's actually the only line of chapter one which is a very interesting kind of literary device it's chapter one is one line and that is in fairy there are no fish sticks no ketchup no television this is building on a mood and a tone to draw you into the story next i just want to give you a couple more middle grade examples because i'm very very light on them but middle grade examples can often be a lot cuter a lot pithier you can do the humor opening a lot more often because those sorts of openings work very very well in middle grade the attention grabbing part of that is the contradictory idea the surprising line so percy jackson and the lightning thief by rick verdin look i didn't want to be a half blood you're getting concept you're getting huh from that and some really nice voice and then stand up yumi chung by jessica kim does a really good job of kind of establishing sense of place i should have known better than to think anyone would listen to me at the korean beauty salon you're already getting a sense of conflict there as well as setting and then from a why a book just a good example of a book that literally tells you the premise of the book by the first line dear rachel maddow by adrian kistner opens with dear rachel maddow i am writing to you because of a school assignment and then it goes on to be quite funny and this is another good example of kind of how you can build the next line it's a totally ridiculous reason to be writing but i don't think you'll actually read it anyway this kind of thing is so sixth grade i'm a junior in high school and i've been forced to write to a celebrity hero by my applied english teacher and what's funny about this technique so that's the opening bit on the first page it looks like an email and then the next page is her her email that she's turned into her teacher with her teacher having crossed out lines and put like little notes to her so this is kind of the writing style humor building off of your opening then i just want to give you an example of really great voice i mean a ton of these have great voice but this is actually for a book i haven't read yet but i bought and was on my kindle and like i wonder what the opening lines are and they smacked me in the face this is in the woods from tana french opening line of the prologue this is actually another great prologue versus first chapter example picture a summer stolen hole from some coming of age film set in small town 1950s that already evokes a lot and then the first line of the first chapter what i warned you to remember is that i am a detective that's one that puts you kind of off just because there's a tone to that but also a literal warning that makes you go why are you warning me of this so opportunities to immediately set up conflict is good for an opening line and then i'm just gonna rattle through some classics like lines that i pulled off of famous first lines list so the beloved the wonderful is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife that's giving you tone it's giving you humor and theme this is about people getting married also an interesting first line this is the tin drum by gunter grass a book i have read and a very weird book and a very weird first line granted i am an inmate of a mental hospital my keeper is watching me he never lets me out of his sight there's a peephole in the door and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me if you've read the book there's a lot there but also fun no germans love very long sentences that in english we would consider a run on and i bet the translator had to do a lot of work to get that to work grammatically here's a a really arresting line from paradise by toni morrison they shoot the white girl first with the rest they take their time you know with some books don't be afraid to smack the reader in the face this is also a very enigmatic opening from the ninth circus by erin morgenstern the circus arrives without warning no announcements preceded no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers it is simply there when yesterday it was not one of my all-time favorites last night i dreamed i went to manderley again daphne du maurier from rebecca so that is to say that's just a ton of examples of a ton of different first lines to give you an idea so elements that you should consider when you're writing a first line from all of these examples did you notice the strong crisp and specific word choice in some of them particularly the verbs action verbs that have a lot of tension in them can be great for a first line where you want to build tension also think about some of the nouns that were in some of those opening lines specific nouns that were meaningful to the story sometimes mentioning characters that maybe the reader doesn't know yet but are going to be significant that can be that triggering a story question as well who or what is this person adjectives and adverbs carefully chosen and applied nope most of the first line examples i gave didn't go overboard with a ton of description most of them weren't long the lit fake examples were definitely longer but here and there one that was smartly applied think about the adjectives and adverbs that are going to help with sentence rhythm tone or literal visuals and with precision of language as you can see often simple can be best there is nothing wrong with the short and sweet sentence they're often actually the better opener especially for certain types of commercial fiction and remember it's not always just the first line it should be about how it builds to the second line the third and so on repetition is another thing that you can think of in some cases that i pulled out repetition was very specifically and smartly used to create sentence rhythm the meg wall liter one is a really good example of that and also the series of things example from atonement that rhythm can play on theme it can build interest it can give you tone the atonement example gives a little frenetic energy to that opening line which is telling you something about character generally the words that you choose in your first line should be about character because the next thing you should consider the first line is always p-o-v what is the pov of the line of the story i think this is why prologues and first chapters will often feel a little different prologues are often from another character's point of view or from a different time they can be from the past or from the future they can be from an omniscient narrator's point of view and then the chapter one is close third or similar from the main character's point of view so you should always consider what words would that character use how would they see something what am i telling my reader by how this line expresses something about the pov and to that end the last thing you can consider with prolog also format prolog prologues and format with prologues that you can do something totally different from the pov and the voice of the rest of the book and make sure that they play off each other i gave you those great examples of how a strong but different prologue builds to what you get in chapter one rather than leading to a whiplash with the reader there should be some way that they tie together and another thing would just format sometimes i lie is actually a good example you know going in as the reader that the top of the page says now boxing day december 2016 and you get that opening then the next one is then one week earlier monday december 19 2016 and the voice is different a tiny bit different it's the same person but a week apart when everything has changed so you can actually play on format chapter headings as well to play off of opening lines so what i want to leave you with is the goal of a great first line first couple of lines isn't to write the most earth-shatteringly amazing line that you end up on that best first lines list it's great if that happens but i think that if you put the kind of pressure on yourself you're just going to like fold i will say that the pressures are different depending on the genre that you're writing and you should be familiar with the genre that you're writing so that your first lines opening lines kind of meet the expectations of those readers so admittedly if you are writing literary fiction and certain types of fantasies there probably is a little more pressure to have a beautiful complex opening line but honestly in so many genres especially commercial genres it's much better to be short sweet direct or at least clever with the opening line where short can actually be quite complex or it is the succession of ideas across a couple of lines into the first paragraph but generally don't put too much pressure on yourself because you also don't have to nail it at first go some writers are really good at first lines and that first line comes to them and it does stick i will admit none of my first lines so far have changed once i have a first line it's like go time for me but plenty of writers they revise it later in fact sometimes you'll write an opening scene and you'll realize later oh i actually don't need the first two paragraphs look at this line halfway down this first page that should be the opening line and you come to it later because often when you take the pressure off yourself you'll write a gem later on further down the page or in another place so essentially i just want to alleviate you from some of the pressure i know you want to know how to write the perfect first line but first lines don't actually have to be perfect at least not straight out the gate they just have to work for the story it's only job is to get people interested give them a sense of kind of voice tone character world police etc and get them to read the next line so i gave you some examples that weren't just a first line and think about some of those think about how to build off of an idea and really i would approach it as what's a great first paragraph or few lines i know i've covered a lot and yet never quite enough because this is all about kind of the limitations of the examples that one picks so what i would love to see down below in the comments are examples of some of your favorite first lines maybe even some of your own first lines or hacks that you have for yourself for writing first lines and of course as always let me know any questions that you have and i will try to answer them give this video a thumbs up if you like it and i will make more kind of breaking down concepts of writing videos with plenty of examples and if you're not already subscribed to the channel go ahead and do that i post new videos two to three times a week as always guys thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Alexa Donne

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Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, first lines, first lines of books, first line examples, famous first lines, how to write a first line, how to write a great first line, strong opening lines, opening lines, how to write a strong opening line, examples of first lines

Id: QTh5NzLw_dw

Length: 35min 35sec (2135 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020