First Lines

I love the first line in a book. As a reader, it is the line that grabs my attention, sticks the hook in my lip, and draws me in like a fisherman reeling in the largest whopper of his life. As a reader, if the first line does not reach out and grab me, then I find that the first chapter had better redeem itself. If not, I give the book about a hundred pages, and if I still do not "feel" what the author is trying to do, I nod in appreciation of what it took for the author to produce the book, then close it up and retire it to a shelf.

As an author, first lines intrigue me in a way that is hard to explain. Sometimes, I wonder just how it was that the author wrote such a line. Sometimes, it makes me feel a little inadequate as an author. I have spent some time simply writing first lines, trying to make them interesting and unique, but it is a skill that is more innate, I believe, than something that can be learned. One thing that I have noticed is, the first line of a book almost always ties in to the last lines of a book. They are interrelated, and inexplicably linked and by more than simply being sentences in the same book. Think about the first line of the bible: "In the beginning-" What is the last chapter of the bible about? A new beginning. C.S. Lewis put it perfectly when he wrote in the "Space Trilogy" that man has not truly had a chance to live yet, that this time period between Adam's fall and the soon second-coming of Christ is like the faltering steps of a child learning how to walk. Our hope rests not in an end to the world, but in the creation of a new reality, a new world... therefore we see how the first line ties into the last.

Anyhow, here are a few of my favorite "First Lines" from some of my favorite works.

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."

"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul."

"Call me Ishmael."

"As I left the railway station at Worchester and set out on the three-mile walk to Ransom's cottage, I reflected that no one on the platform could possibly guess the truth about the man I was going to visit."

"He lay 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."

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

"The star vanished from the telescope in less time than a single human heartbeat."

"The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten."

"Time was when the bar would have welcomed anyone from Zantiu-Braun's strategic security division, given him his first beer on the house and listened with keen admiration to his stories of life as it was lived oh so far differently out among the new colony planets."

"The last drops of the thundershower had hardly ceased falling when the Pedestrian stuffed his map into his pocket, settled his pack more comfortably on his tired shoulders, and stepped out from the shelter of a large chestnut tree into the middle of the road."