Opening Lines – What Works And How Do We Find Them? by Susan Moffat

‘Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon, with an 8-ball of coke in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat.’ – Dennis Lehane, Until Gwen.

What makes a good opening line? I guess it’s subjective, but for me the opening line of any piece of writing has to catch my interest. It has to pose a question or lay down a puzzle to make me want to continue reading. It has to set the tone of the piece. Tell me what I’m in for and who’s taking me on the journey. And all this in a sentence or two. If it doesn’t do this I’ll probably still read it – but I’ll have already judged the writer! Harsh? Maybe I am!

For me, Dennis Lehane’s short story Until Gwen has the best opening line ever written. Who doesn’t want to know what happens? You should totally read it by the way – well worth your time! Opening lines in short stories are particularly important. After all, there’s a word count, so every one matters. And your opening line is your opportunity to throw us straight into your world. Lehane does just that. We know exactly who our protagonist is. He’s no choir boy is he? The clever use of tense puts us straight into the story. It involves us. It seduces us with that slight buzz of being ‘bad-ass’. And all in one sentence. Simply sublime!

Opening lines are the literary equivalent of speed dating. You’ve got a couple of lines to sell yourself. Get in, get out. Show us what you’ve got to offer. Be bold. Be amazing. Be controversial. Whatever it takes to get your hook into the reader’s head. Be dull and boring and you’re running the risk of being left on the shelf. (Yes I went there. Get over it!)

Novels have a little more wriggle room on the word count. But great novels still use that same seduction technique with their opening lines.

‘Call me Ishmael.’ —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

‘Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.’ —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)

These opening lines, although different in style, length and content all have a similar effect. They introduce a clear narrative voice and pose an internal question.

Why should we call you Ishmael? Who are you going to be to us?

Why does the narrator assume that men want wives? Surely all men don’t, so why does the narrator assume that they do? What does this tell us about her?

Why is he facing the firing squad? And discovering ice? Really??
Questions automatically give us the need to find answers. And so we read on.

In contrast, look at opening lines from a recent best-seller,

‘I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair – it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal.’

Want to carry on? Millions have. It’s the opening two lines of E.L James, 50 Shades of Grey. Okay it’s an easy one to pick on, and we all know that this book didn’t sell for the author’s literary prowess, and yes I’d kill for her monetary successes, but as far as opening lines go does it work? I included two sentences to give it a chance…

For me I’m in complete ‘judging those word choices’ mode. It scans horribly. Who talks like that? The narrator loses me because she’s not believable. She’s not interesting. She poses one weak question that I’m not that intrigued by. And frankly I really don’t really care what her world is.

Okay, so what was the author’s mistake? In my opinion she chose a boring part of the story to open with. Imagine the impact if she’d started with something less mundane than a bad hair day. Imagine she started with one of the now infamous sex scenes. Would the impact of the opening be less, well, meh? It might’ve made me want to read on. I said might… don’t judge me! As it stands though, I don’t feel the urge to continue the relationship. Now, apply the same scenario to Until Gwen. If Lehane started with,

‘I was having a bit of a bad day because my hair just didn’t look right.’

Yeah, you get the idea!

So, how do you write a killer seductive opening line? Do you spend hours at the keyboard pondering the placement of your first few syllables? Honestly, if you do that you’ll never write anything!! Truth be told, opening lines of a finished piece will not be the first lines you write in your initial draft. Unless you’re a genius. Or a liar. A lot of the time, you won’t know where your story will even start until you’re in the redrafting phase. The first lines you actually write may not even make the final edit. But they are still equally important. Because without them, however clumsy and un-seductive they may be, you will never get to your finished piece.

Writing is re-writing. That’s how it goes isn’t it? That’s how we find the story. Define the protagonist. Craft those killer phrases. That’s when we find the right place to start the story. The part that’s the most seductive. The part that conjures the most curiosity. And that’s how the opening line becomes so clever. So well crafted.

So, did I answer the question about opening lines and where to find them? Probably not. But in a nut-shell, choosing the right part of the story to begin with, that’s how we find our opening lines. No-one will remember a bad hair day. No-one will forget an 8-ball of coke and a hooker. Choosing the starting point is key. The rest, as they say, will follow.