Comments on: Ask the Editor: The power of the opening sentence - 6 tips

By: Mac

Mac — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 01:16:15 +0000

“The small boys came early to the hanging.” Ken Follett, “Pillars of the Earth.” Read it in 1991 and never will forget it.

By: Jeanne Supin

Jeanne Supin — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:04:03 +0000

Don’t be afraid. My telling can’t hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark — weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more — but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth.

Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

By: India Malpas

India Malpas — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:24:06 +0000

Probably misquoted - The boys arrived early for the hanging.

I was twelve when I first started spying on my brother. - not sure where I read that.

By: Mara

Mara — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:24:44 +0000

I love the opening line of Eragon: “Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world.”

By: Tim Sunderland

Tim Sunderland — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:30:51 +0000

Here is the opening line of one of my future novels:

I do not remember a time when I did not know that Rock Hudson was gay.

By: Jeff Valdez

Jeff Valdez — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:53:01 +0000

“There is no place for incandescant light in this town.”

By: Pennsylvania » Moby Dick for the Digital Learner

Pennsylvania » Moby Dick for the Digital Learner — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 19:57:38 +0000

[…] Ask the Editor: The power of the opening sentence - 6 tips […]

By: Shane Durgee

Shane Durgee — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:45:22 +0000

(I know I’m late without a pass, but I like to haunt old literary blogs and this is one of my favorite topics.)

By: Shane Durgee

Shane Durgee — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:27:17 +0000

I’m partial to the opening of the most recent Pulitzer winner, The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao.

“They say it came first from Africa, carried in the screams of the enslaved; that it was the death bane of the Tainos, uttered just as one world perished and another began; that it was a demon drawn into Creation through the nightmare door that was cracked open in the Antilles.”

By: Steven Axelrod

Steven Axelrod — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:22:04 +0000

Here are a few of my favorites:
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” (Orwell,1984)
“Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton” (The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
“Years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia would remember that distant afternoon when he father took him to discover ice.” (One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Marquez
“I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone, and, findoing you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment you come in, as it’s important,the matter is more often important to him than to you.” (Cakes and Ale, Maugham. Here the second sentence pack the dry punchline:”When it comes to making you a present or doing you a favor most people are able to hold their impatience within reasonable bounds.”
“They threw me off the hay truck about noon.” (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cain)
“All Children, except one, grow up.” (Peter Pan, Barrie)

By: Alan Rinzler

Alan Rinzler — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:21:08 +0000

Thanks to all you smart and interesting people who left such good comments. We’ll do a blog on last sentences shortly.

Alan

By: Stephanie Cox

Stephanie Cox — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 11:51:00 +0000

I’m working on an essay now, and the first line of the novel I’m analysing is: ‘Later, as he sat on his balcony, eating the dog…’

now tell me that isn’t effective.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:53:53 +0000

James Agee’s brilliant A Death In The Family opened: ““We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.”

It’s more difficult, and thus more instructive, to udentify the great closing lines; the second bookend and reward for patient and persistent readers.

Thanks for your blog!

By: Mark Anderson

Mark Anderson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:51:20 +0000

The opening sentence to Catcher in the Rye is awful, in my humble opinion. It’s long and wheezy, when it should be short and snappy. The book itself is one I never got my head around, I know it’s a “classic” but that doesn’t mean we all have to like it does it?

(I really liked Daisy Sohne’s comment. She mentioned the opening line from one of the best selling fictions ever written. You can’t argue with that.)

By: Christa Allan » What’s your line?

Christa Allan » What’s your line? — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:24:59 +0000

[…] Tips on opening sentences from Alan Rinzler’s blog, The Book Deal. […]

By: The Book Deal Is A Rich Resource

The Book Deal Is A Rich Resource — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:27:29 +0000

[…] Rinzler’s blog does indeed give an inside view of the arcane world of trade publishing, plus some darn good information for writers. Take today’s post: Ask the Editor: The power of the opening sentence - 6 tips […]

By: Matt McConnell

Matt McConnell — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:10:48 +0000

“HE LAY flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees” (Ernest Hemingway).

“Hopping a freight out of Los Angeles at high noon one day in late September 1955 I got on a gondola and lay down with my duffel bag under my head and my knees crossed and contemplated the clouds as we rolled north to Santa Barbara” (Jack Kerouac).

By: Harmony

Harmony — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:34:12 +0000

“Why is the first line so important?” BIG SMILE AND WINK

By: Daria

Daria — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 05:00:34 +0000

“Take my camel, dear,” said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. (”The Towers of Trebizond” by Rose Macaulay, 1956)

By: Paul Mikos

Paul Mikos — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 04:26:47 +0000

“I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair out of place. We are all alone here and we are dead.” –Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller

I know it is more than one sentence but you must admit it is a great opening.

Another favorite first line is from Albert Camus’ The Stranger, “Mother died today.”