Best Seller Openings

NOIRTRASH

Literotica Guru
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Aug 22, 2015
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I read several story openings of a popular AH poster. All of the stories have stellar scores, and all are crap. I cant imagine what their appeal is.

So below are openings from sundry best selling books. Do they resemble your's? I bet NO WAY.


I WAS ARRESTED IN ENO’S DINER. AT TWELVE O’CLOCK. I was eating eggs and drinking coffee. A late breakfast, not lunch. I was wet and tired after a long walk in heavy rain. All the way from the highway to the edge of town. The diner was small, but bright and clean. Brand-new, built to resemble a converted railroad car. Narrow, with a long lunch counter on one side and a kitchen bumped out back. Booths lining the opposite wall. A doorway where the center booth would be. I was in a booth, at a window, reading somebody’s abandoned newspaper about the campaign for a president I didn’t vote for last time and wasn’t going to vote for this time. Outside, the rain had stopped but the glass was still pebbled with bright drops. I saw the
 
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Norman Bates heard the noise and a shock went through him.

It sounded as though somebody was tapping on the windowpane. He looked up, hastily, half prepared to rise, and the book slid from his hands to his ample lap. Then he realized that the sound was merely rain. Late afternoon rain, striking the parlor window. Norman hadn’t noticed the coming of the rain, nor the twilight. But it was quite dim here in the parlor now, and he reached over to switch on the lamp before resuming his reading.

It was one of those old-fashioned table lamps, the kind with the ornate glass shade and the crystal fringe. Mother had had it ever since he could remember, and she refused to get rid of it. Norman didn’t really object; he had lived in this house for all of the forty years of his life, and there was something quite pleasant and reassuring about being surrounded by familiar things. Here everything was orderly and ordained; it was only there, outside, that the changes took place.
 
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I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them. Working backward, seeking only facts, I reconstructed her as a sad little girl and a whore, at best a could-have-been— a tag that might equally apply to me. I wish I could have granted her an anonymous end, relegated her to a few terse words on a homicide dick’s summary report, carbon to the coroner’s office, more paperwork to take her to potter’s field. The only thing wrong with the wish is that she wouldn’t have wanted it that way. As brutal as the facts were, she would have wanted all of them known. And since I owe her a great deal and am the only one who does know the entire story, I have undertaken the writing of this memoir.
 
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The road goes west out of the village, past open pine woods and gallberry flats. An eagle's nest is a ragged cluster of sticks in a tall tree, and one of the eagles is usually black and silver against the sky. The other perches near the nest, hunched and proud, like a griffon. There is no magic here except the eagles. Yet the four miles to the Creek are stirring, like the bleak, portentous beginning of a good tale. The road curves sharply, the vegetation thickens, and around the bend masses into dense hammock. The hammock breaks, is pushed back on either side of the road, and set down in its brooding heart is the orange grove. Any grove or any wood is a fine thing to see. But the magic here, strangely, is not apparent from the road. It is necessary to leave the impersonal highway, to step inside the rusty gate and close it behind. By this, an act of faith is committed, through which one accepts blindly the communion cup of beauty. One is now inside the grove, out of one world and in the mysterious heart of another. Enchantment lies in different things for each of us. For me, it is in this: to step out of the bright sunlight into the shade of orange trees;



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I sent one boy to the gaschamber at Huntsville. One and only one. My arrest and my testimony. I went up there and visited with him two or three times. Three times. The last time was the day of his execution. I didnt have to go but I did. I sure didnt want to. He’d killed a fourteen year old girl and I can tell you right now I never did have no great desire to visit with him let alone go to his execution but I done it. The papers said it was a crime of passion and he told me there wasnt no passion to it. He’d been datin this girl, young as she was. He was nineteen. And he told me that he had been plannin to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he’d do it again. Said he knew he was goin to hell. Told it to me out of his own mouth. I dont know what to make of that. I surely dont. I thought I’d never seen a person like that and it got me to wonderin if maybe he was some new kind. I watched them strap him into the seat and shut the door. He might of looked a bit nervous about it but that was about all. I really
 
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“Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song, sounds like she's singing
Ooo, ooo, ooo”​

That was the song. It was blaring from the radio speakers. Stevie Nicks, Edge of Seventeen. It went well with the roaring growl of the cars engine as John sped down the highway. Sped. John was doing one-thirty-five. That’s miles per hour. One hundred thirty five miles per hour. The telephone poles flashed by on the right side of the car. The seams in the highway were one continuous thump. He was in a hurry. She had called, almost hysterical. Someone was in the house with her. They were banging around downstairs. John called the police, but he was closer than any county deputy. She sounded frantic as he had to hang up. She was going to lock herself in the bedroom.
 
Maybe JBJ should post the openings of his stories so we can all be wowed by his mad skills

Or just shut up about what other authors do here.
 
Maybe JBJ should post the openings of his stories so we can all be wowed by his mad skills

Or just shut up about what other authors do here.

Youre begging the question. IF my shit stinks like your breath, that don't make your shit smell like roses. Plus your limp wrist aint broken, look my shit up yourself, Snowflake. You've become the Prince of I TRIED, WHAZZ MY TROPHY.

FWIW the stories I looked at aren't your's. You write better than who I looked at, but your scores aren't as high. I got curious after that writer offered hisself as a reading pot of gold.

Most of the LIT stories start with, 'JANE AND SALLY LOVE DICK A LOT.'
 
Golden hookers may be the start of a good story or you might be on the beach in Tampa. In most cases they ain't what you think they are. In any case, it takes much more than a hooker to make a good story or in some cases, not really.

Jimmy, do more writing and less reading. You'll learn more about writing that way.
 
There for a moment I thought you were talking about my opening dialogue to "A Slut's Triangle" ..... My mistake:(


"Fuck me." I whisper softly in Kryss's ear, closing my eyes, fantasizing about his beautiful cock; feeling his warm breath tickle my neck. "Fuck me, Kryss." I beg again waiting for his reply.

"I love when you beg for it, Ashleigh." Kryss replies sexually aroused by my desperate words staring at me with lust in his eyes.

"Fuck me, please." I beg insistently, waiting patiently; wiggling my ass.

"Oh, I will. Don't worry." Kryss replies holding me in his tight, loving, embrace momentarily, then spinning me around; positioning me face down on the hood of his Mustang to fuck me like a bitch.
 
The waning though as yet not entirely dead or lost art of writing...

These days, I am looking at some 'old'-ish Paul Theroux screenplays. One of them - a flick that just barely made its tiny 2 million buck budget after the usual release season - begins like this:

"We are dependent," said the director of the Mayfair-based think-tank the Institute of Middle Eastern Affairs, "on our special relationship with Saudi Arabia."

It was at that point, as the young and beautiful and rather poor Dr. Lauren Slaughter looked up from the chewed end of her note-taking pencil, that the car-bomb went off outside in the Upper Class Central City London street.


(And that was a good few years ago now).

Still, hence we have young Louis, I suppose. A clever young man.
 
Golden hookers may be the start of a good story or you might be on the beach in Tampa. In most cases they ain't what you think they are. In any case, it takes much more than a hooker to make a good story or in some cases, not really.

Jimmy, do more writing and less reading. You'll learn more about writing that way.

Lemme translate your suggestion to real English, FART MORE AND SMELL LESS
 
Golden hookers may be the start of a good story or you might be on the beach in Tampa. In most cases they ain't what you think they are. In any case, it takes much more than a hooker to make a good story or in some cases, not really.

Jimmy, do more writing and less reading. You'll learn more about writing that way.

If we were all in a car together and TEX shit his pants, and someone said, 'SHIT', TEX would likely reply, AND YOUR SHIT DONT SMELL A BIT BETTER! Which aint the point.
 
I, for one, must say that this thread is making me feel much better about my writing ability, and about most facets of my life.
 
I still say, JANE AND SALLY LOVED DICK MORE THAN MUFF, is the typical LIT opening.
 
Youre begging the question. IF my shit stinks like your breath, that don't make your shit smell like roses. Plus your limp wrist aint broken, look my shit up yourself, Snowflake. You've become the Prince of I TRIED, WHAZZ MY TROPHY.

FWIW the stories I looked at aren't your's. You write better than who I looked at, but your scores aren't as high. I got curious after that writer offered hisself as a reading pot of gold.

Most of the LIT stories start with, 'JANE AND SALLY LOVE DICK A LOT.'

I didn't say your 'shit sucked" I said shut up and show me.

Which is what you didn't do for my first three or four years here. You called people out without having ever written anything yourself.

Then you start writing and I would have thought you'd become less judgmental now that you've done the work caught the abuse and dealt with what every else has.

But you're still going around saying everyone sucks but you, so stop projecting your crap onto me.

The difference between us, , is I got nothing to prove to you and you obviously have a chip on your shoulder showing you don't feel you've proved anything.
 
Lemme translate your suggestion to real English, FART MORE AND SMELL LESS

If that is your translation then we don't speak the same language.

What i said was, an opening line is good to get someone to read on, it is not the whole of the story. High scores are based on what the reader takes away from the story. Is it what they wanted in the end or what they wanted to start with.

Write more and bitch less. You'll learn a whole lot more about writing and what readers really want.
 
If we were all in a car together and TEX shit his pants, and someone said, 'SHIT', TEX would likely reply, AND YOUR SHIT DONT SMELL A BIT BETTER! Which aint the point.

Why are you so interested in my shit? Literally. :D
 
I didn't say your 'shit sucked" I said shut up and show me.

Which is what you didn't do for my first three or four years here. You called people out without having ever written anything yourself.

Then you start writing and I would have thought you'd become less judgmental now that you've done the work caught the abuse and dealt with what every else has.

But you're still going around saying everyone sucks but you, so stop projecting your crap onto me.

The difference between us, , is I got nothing to prove to you and you obviously have a chip on your shoulder showing you don't feel you've proved anything.

Please don't fart, if you do and I don't love it youll insist I think my farts smell like Hillarys cunt.

Where you get dum is believing you gotta be one to know one. My shit don't gotta smell like roses for me to know shit when I smell it. You know I'm right if you've ever liked or hated things you cant do yourself.

Most stories at LIT suck. All yuh gotta do is compare them with good stories, and it becomes painfully obvious. But lemme tell you something Bucko, I've never scored one of your tales or Tex's or Pilots less than a 5. Tio gets 5's, Glynndah gets 5s, and I don't even like them or you or Tex or Pilot. I know good writing and value it even when the writer is an asshat.

And whatever I do or don't do here doesn't improve your writing one iota. And if your stuff ever eats shit I'll ket you know. Don't sweat my sincerity Stinkosaurus.
 
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When TEX and LOVECRAFT fart inside the car theyre riding, they want everyone to say, OH I LOVE THE NEW CAR SMELL, TEX.
 
Best opening paragraph ever:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

What makes it great, aside from it's being a beautifully constructed sentence? Mainly, I'd say, its falsity. The "truth" is not a truth, and it's certainly not "universally acknowledged." In fact, its only adherents are mothers and daughters in the tiny insular world of Jane Austen's fiction. They are deluded, of course, and the sentence instantly makes you a party to their delusion. Having read it, you know 90% of what you need to know about the women of Pride and Prejudice.

And there's no farting in it!
 
Youre begging the question. IF my shit stinks like your breath, that don't make your shit smell like roses. Plus your limp wrist aint broken, look my shit up yourself, Snowflake. You've become the Prince of I TRIED, WHAZZ MY TROPHY.

This is a seriously dope a rap lyric. I'm jus sayin.
 

Norman Bates heard the noise and a shock went through him.
Norman? They have all the names in the world and they chose Norman?
The second I read the name I knew Mother was going to be involved in a paragraph or two.
Why does the shock go through him? What did it it shock next as it passed him?
Who reads these?
 
The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man's brow, yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them. He could not shake the premonition. It clung to his back like chill wet leaves.

William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, the grand daddy of all horror novels.
 
Norman? They have all the names in the world and they chose Norman?
The second I read the name I knew Mother was going to be involved in a paragraph or two.
Why does the shock go through him? What did it it shock next as it passed him?
Who reads these?

"A boy's best-friend is his mother."

...are you not familiar with Psycho?
 
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