“I’m sorry Sally, I don’t have much time today. I’m on my way to the airport.” I unwound the scarf from my neck and slid into the chair. “But I did want to talk to you quickly about Hooks and First Lines.” I pulled out the printed email she sent me. “I have your new draft here. You did such a great job of pulling me into the story and deleting all but the essential backstory. Now I want you to take a look at that first sentence.

“See, most authors don’t start their stories out in the right place, and even when they do, they struggle to get that first line. I often write the first line last, after the book is written just because by then I know what the book is about, the theme, the tone, the most compelling element, and I put that into the first line. Consider your first line as a promise to everything you’re going to fulfill in the story.”

“There are four different ways to start a story. I made a list, with examples from literature.”

A VOICE. I don’t love starting with Dialogue, because we don’t know who is talking, but sometimes it can be effective in first person.

For example, “Call me Ishmael.” (Moby Dick), or maybe something from contemporary literature, “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 if, if you want to know the truth.” (The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger).

This works because we are immediately introduced to the character and get into their head. Ultimately, we are wooed by their personality.

Persona. Start your story with the description of someone iconic. Someone that stands out in our minds.

“There once was a boy name Eustace Clarence Scrubb and he almost deserved it.” (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C. S. Lewis.)

Or, “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.” (Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell).

Note that both these voices are omniscient, but you could build a strong character introduction through the voice of a POV character.

Consider the opening to John Irving’s, A Prayer for Owen Meany. “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice – not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God.”

If the character will have a profound impact on your story or your POV character, perhaps start with a snapshot of that character.

Reminiscing.  Many coming of age stories start with a step into the past, some statement that sums up where the character finds themselves today.

I did this in Everything’s Coming up Josey – started with the line, “It’s important to acknowledge that Chase was right and if it weren’t for him I might have never found my answers.”

Basically, it’s a summary of the past, spoken from the present. And the rest of the book is about proving or revealing the impact of this reminiscence.

Here’s one from The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. “In my younger and my more vulnerable years my father gave some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.”

A Statement. I like to start stories with a sort of starting place. A statement of opinion or fear or hope.

Jane Austen does this in Pride and Prejudice, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

When you make a statement, you are setting up the story question in a novel. You’ll spend the rest of the book making a comment about or proving your statement.”

Sally took the page from me and read her first line aloud. “Walker set down his coffee, and dug into his eggs. How he missed his mother’s cooking.” She looked up. “This right before he hears the sound of the explosions as the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. It starts right at the beginning of the action.”

“I know. And it’s not a bad place to start. But what if it started with the bombs already dropping, or perhaps, with him already trying to save lives? And what if what is at stake is whether he will live, or whether he can save the man next to him? Then, how might you start your first line? Perhaps with a snapshot of the person he will save? After all, it is about this man who Walker spends his life trying to replace.”

“I hadn’t thought about that. I just wanted to get right into the story.”

“You could also start with a statement about the war, perhaps, something deep in Walker’s POV. That would get us into his character, and give us something that he might wrestle with the rest of the book.”

“See, we spent so much of our time wanting to get right into the scene we stop to think about the profound impact the first line has. You want to move into action, but first, delight your reader with something that will make them thing, something that whets their curiosity for the rest of the story. The truth us, a reader does want to get into the story, but they also want to be charmed by the first line of the story. That’s your job as the wordsmith.” I took the page back. “I’m need reading material for the plane. But your homework is to come up with a killer first line for next week.”

Truth: Woo your reader with your wordsmithing on the very first line of your novel.

Dare: After you’ve written the first chapter, go back to your first sentence. Have you raised the curiosity of your reader? Are you wooing them into the story?

Tomorrow I’ll touch on a quick technique I use to get into the POV of my character and determine the first line.

Have a great writing day!

Susie May