Opening paragraphs, yours, mine, and those from great literature.

[MillieDynamite]

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” A Tell of Two Cities -- Charles Dickens

"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me." Herman Melville, Moby Dick (He had me at Call me Ishmael)

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge." Red Wind Raymond Chandler

"The snow was coming down in heavy, wet flakes, a relentless blizzard that had already shut down most of the eastern seaboard, and Lincoln International Airport, a sprawling complex of concrete and glass, was caught in its icy grip, the storm's fury turning the once-bustling terminal into a chaotic, snowbound maze where the lives of hundreds of stranded passengers, along with the dedicated staff who served them, were about to be drastically altered." Airport Arthur Hailey

"Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick." Stephen King

"The Alliance of Worlds had never encountered a genuinely evil species." First Contact: The Strigoi Millie Dynamite

 

[StillStunned]

"The unending darkness ended. Awareness returned."
- Bound to the Blade

"I'll always remember my first sight of Mel under the shower. Turned sideways, rubbing oil on her arms and legs. Showing a bit of boob and arse. Billy Idol playing. I'll always remember how my heart was pounding, how I strained not to move, not to do anything to draw her attention. Forcing my breath to slow down as I watched her hands slide up to rub her tits..."
- Flesh for Fantasy

"There's a place in Spain where you can walk all day and never see another human being. Where your only companions are the snake gliding through the brush, the ibex clinging to the cliff, the eagle soaring overhead."
- Upstream

"Night lay on the temple complex like a silk blanket. Beyond the tall walls, the desert wind whispered the secrets of the sands to the small settlement, but here silence reigned."
- The Silent Watcher

 

[ThatNewGuy]

OH I'M A FAST DOG. I'm fast- fast. It's true and I love being fast I admit It I love it. You know fast dogs. Dogs that just run by and you say, Damn! That's a fast dog! Well that's me. A fast dog. I'm a fast- fast dog. Hoooooooo! Hooooooooooooo!

You should watch me sometime. Just watch how fast I go when I'm going my fastest, when I've really got to move for something, when I'm really on my way-man do I get going sometimes, weaving like a missile, weaving like a missile between trees and around bushes and then pop! I can go over a fence or a baby or a rock or anything because I'm a fast- fast dog and I can jump like a fucking gazelle. Hoooooooo! Man, oh man.

I love it I love it. I run to feel the cool air cool through my fur. I run to feel the cold water come from my eyes. I run to feel my jaw slacken and my tongue come loose and flap from the side of my mouth and I go and go and go my name is Steven.

I can eat pizza. I can eat chicken. I can eat yogurt and rye bread with caraway seeds. It really doesn't matter. They say No, no, don't eat that stuff, you, that stuff isn't for you, it's for us, for people! And I eat it anyway, I eat it with gusto, I eat the food and I feel good and I live on and run and run and look at the people and hear their stupid conversations coming from their slits for mouths and terrible eyes.

-Dave Eggers
"After I was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned"

 

[StillStunned]

I wish I could do evocative like this:

"Torches flared murkily on the revels in the Maul, where the thieves of the east held carnival by night. In the Maul they could carouse and roar as they liked, for honest people shunned the quarters, and watchmen, well paid with stained coins, did not interfere with their sport. Along the crooked, unpaved streets with their heaps of refuse and sloppy puddles, drunken roisterers staggered, roaring. Steel glinted in the shadows where wolf preyed on wolf, and from the darkness rose the shrill laughter of women, and the sounds of scufflings and strugglings. Torchlight licked luridly from broken windows and widethrown doors, and out of those doors, stale smells of wine and rank sweaty bodies, clamor of drinking-jacks and fists hammered on rough tables, snatches of obscene songs, rushed like a blow in the face."
- The Tower of the Elephant, R.E. Howard

 

[RetroFan]

'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' - Opening paragraph of George Orwell's '1984'

 

[AwkwardMD]

The sun dominated above. Even the shadows wilted under the oppression of the day star as it reached its zenith over the fields surrounding Aedor. The cool breeze, coming down from the mountains to the north, brought small relief from the stifling heat. The worst of the long summer months were behind, but that was no balm for the adventurer. She grimaced, brushing sweat from her brow as she looked out upon the parched grasslands.

The road was empty for now, but that was how she liked it. Too many people had failed her over the years, leaving her jaded and trust in short supply. No, the Orc was a loner, through and through.

Maybe this road would be the one she'd been searching for. Maybe, at the end of this stretch of dirt where the grass refused to grow, at the end of another long, tiring walk, she would find the answers she sought. Maybe they were even the answers she needed.

Small for an Orc at a mere six foot five, she was nevertheless a vision of muscle and beauty. Her arms were as thick as braided dock rope. Her legs, even thicker, like rounded slabs. She had a hard look about her underneath her shaggy black hair. Scars adorned her toned body like badges of honor. She had the look of a woman who'd seen the very face of hell, only to claw her way back.

"Stop describing me."

She said, to no one in particular.

"You're being very over-dramatic."

"It breaks the fourth wall if you address me directly," the Narrator whined.

"There is no fourth wall," Val growled, sweeping her arms out. "There's no walls at all! We're on a dirt road between two open fields."

"It's a metaphorical wall," he said, rolling his eyes.

"I told you I'm not paying you for this."

The white-haired man smiled as he bowed. "My good woman, to have the chance to follow you and bear witness to your exploits is all I ask."

"Wasn't planning on having any exploits," she said, her features hardening.

"Adventures then?" he asked hopefully. "Perhaps a grand quest or two?"

"None of them either," Val grunted.

"Surely a woman of your stature and bearing invites a... a... a host! Yes! A veritable host of downtrodden in need of the skills you so clearly possess!"

"I tell them the same thing I told you," she said, shrugging. "No." Val came to a stop and rounded on the man. "What exactly do you get out of this again?"

"I believe this is the future of entertainment. Cutting-edge storytelling and performance art. Part Minstrel, part Bard—"

"Nope," Val interrupted, shaking her head. "Stopping you right there. No Bards. Fucking hate Bards."

The Narrator gasped. "You wound me, Madam!" he cried.

"Not yet I haven't." The old man swallowed hard as Val loomed over him. "You take one more step after me down this road, and I'll break your nose. I ever see you again, I'll break your leg. Clear?"

"As crystal," he said weakly.

Val glared at him a moment longer before turning back down the road. The old man had been a minor annoyance at best, and she mentally flogged herself for letting him get to her so easily. Her frustration had other sources. When she looked back over her shoulder, the road behind her was empty.

"Like braided rope, huh?" she mumbled to herself, twisting her bared arms and nodding thoughtfully. "I can see how that might work for some people."

-Me, Terrible Company

 

[AG31]

It was the door-frame incident that had really knocked her confidence. She'd tied me up, as kinky girlfriends do,[

From Wheelchair Bound by @Kumquatqueen

Probably not "great literature," but it did catch my attention. I mused, now and again, about what made it so arresting.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I should've put yours, mine, ours, and great literature. OPPS!

From Wheelchair Bound by @Kumquatqueen

Probably not "great literature," but it did catch my attention. I mused, now and again, about what made it so arresting.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

"Morning has broken. The moonshadows are gone and the sunlight is streaming through the windows illuminating one of the most spectacular, stupendous and stunningly perfect bodies I’ve ever seen … intertwined against me, barely awake.

But how? What happened? Why am I here? All these months later and I still don’t know."



Definitely not by anyone great.

(Recent story though.)

 

[MillieDynamite]

This is the first four paragraphs of First Contact: The Strigoi!

"The Alliance of Worlds had never encountered a genuinely evil species.

On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, and manned space exploration began. In the year 2064, the first colony on Mars was established. The year 2125 saw the first FTL engine development by Earth. The first contact with an alien species happened in 2130. The Alliance of Worlds was formed in 2368. Doctor Neculai Dumitru developed the first Wormhole drive in 2858, and space travel became instantaneous.

By Earth’s 36th century, explorers from the Alliance of Worlds moved through the Milky Way galaxy, expanding known space. These brave people mapped the stars, met previously unknown races, and found new friends and a few foes. But in the thousand-plus years of the Alliance’s existence, in all their travels, they never encountered a genuinely evil species.

Until now!"

It may not be good, but I like it!

 

[Comshaw]

Aton 77, director of Saro University, thrust out a belligerent lower lip and glared at the young newspaperman in a hot fury. Theremon 762 took that fury in his stride. In his earlier days, when his now widely syndicated column was only a mad idea in a cub reporter's mind, he had specialized in 'impossible' interviews. It had cost him bruises, black eyes, and broken bones; it had given him an ample supply of coolness and self-confidence. So he lowered the outthrust hand that had been so pointedly ignored and calmly waited for the aged director to get over the worst. Astronomers were queer ducks, anyway, and if Aton's actions of the last two months meant anything; this same Aton was the queer-duckiest of the lot.

Issac Azimov "Nightfall"
____________________________________________________________________________________________________

TO THE RED COUNTRY and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.

John Steinbeck "The Grapes of Wrath"
____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range . . .come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River . . .The first little washes flashing like thick rushing winds through sheep sorrel and clover, ghost fern and nettle, sheering, cutting . . . forming branches. Then, through bearberry and salmonberry, blueberry and blackberry, the branches crashing into creeks, into streams. Finally, in the foothills, through tamarack and sugar pine, shittim bark and silver spruce—and the green and blue mosaic of Douglas fir—the actual river falls five hundred feet . . . and look:
opens out upon the fields

Ken Kesey "Sometimes A Great Notion"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Aryn hobbled into the room where the coffin-shaped couch, its clamshell cover standing open, stood waiting in the middle. He had already donned the spider web of fiber lines and sensors that would receive incoming data and turn it into physical stimulus. It covered his entire body from the top of his head to his feet. Under it, he was naked so the tens of thousands of tiny sensors could touch his skin.

Comshaw "The Rider"







Comshaw

 

[SimonDoom]

One of my favorites from literature, Bleak House by Dickens:

LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.


Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.


Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.

Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth.

x x x x

This violates so many usual ideas for starting a story. Many incomplete sentences. Present tense. An inordinate focus on weather. But it does such a perfect job of setting a mood that leads into the main subject of the novel: the problems of the British legal system. It's just great.

Here's mine, from my most popular story, Late Night On The Loveseat With Mom:

The mid-summer heatwave enveloped the city for seven days straight. It drove everyone a little crazy. Evening brought some relief, but even as night fell the heat lingered, hours past sunset. With heat so constant and so intense, everything loosened up: clothes, morals, and passions that otherwise would have stayed buried deep.

Maddy Ryerson had long since tired of the heat. It wore her down, a little more each day. She poured herself a glass of chilled white wine and walked with it to the living room. It was 10 p.m. in the Ryerson house, and the family's favorite T.V. show was about to begin.

I've always felt good about this one. Temperature is a recurring theme in the story, and I feel like I introduced it in a way that foreshadows what is to come. And it didn't take too long. I got to the point fairly quickly.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The Grapes of Wrath, Okies Migrate to California and are abused.

Sometimes, a Great Notion, A logging family, fights for survival.

Now, Comshaw, I must read The Rider by you!

 

[Belegon]

I can't find anything (of mine) on this site that I truly like the first line from. And looking over it made me realize how often my first line is dialogue. Not that there is anything wrong with that, if the dialogue is appropriate it can totally draw you into a story... but I don't have anything on Lit that is truly dramatic or has the effect of a James Bond opening that draws your attention away from outside thoughts and sucks you into the film. My best among everything right now is probably the only thing I have ever started based on an opening line idea. It's still so raw that I don't even have a working title or a first name for my protagonist. He's an immigrant from Scotland who has moved west and is working for a man who has land that my antagonist desperately wants and is willing to murder to get it.

The first bullet saved my life. Well, the bullet and the county fair.
It ticked off the edge of that stupid belt buckle I won and buried itself in my side. It burned. As I spun around, the second bullet rang off the bone handle of my Colt, taking two of my fingers with it. The others lodged in my thigh and my shoulder, but I’ll be damned if I could tell you what order they came in.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I think my best opening might still be my very first, from My Fall and Rise

Would it have been better if the sky were blue and the trees were green and the wild flowers blossomed along the roadside? Or would the end of so much color in my life have made it harder to bear?

I watched the bare trees and the dirty snow banks roll by as my mother drove me to the courthouse. We sat in silence as the radio gave us the morning news. There had been a bombing in the Middle East, a plane crash in Mexico, a mass shooting at a school in Ohio. There was always such bad news. Somebody was always killing someone. Somebody was always being killed. Somebody was always going to prison because somebody killed somebody.

But, then there is White Castle Christmas...

"Fuck Christmas," Clover shouted, "and fuck you, Tony. Fuck Santa Claus, fuck his elves and fuck all ten goddamn reindeers."

 

[MelissaBaby]

Nobody has mentioned Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. . . ." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"

 

[WCSGarland]

From Slowly, Then All At Once

Jessa was bored. As was usual for Jessa, whenever she got bored, she found herself in trouble.

That’s me, by the way. Jessa Bell. Okay, maybe “found” is the wrong verb. Jumped in it with both feet might be more accurate. Trouble and I know each other intimately; as in not platonically, if you catch my drift. Once or twice, trouble has screwed me over… royally… in my tight little bung-hole. That’s another story altogether. Maybe I’ll tell that story one day or maybe not. I mean, the best a girl can do when that happens is to adjust the tits in the boulder holder and get back on the sybian.

 

[Comshaw]

The Grapes of Wrath, Okies Migrate to California and are abused.

Sometimes, a Great Notion, A logging family, fights for survival.

Now, Comshaw, I must read The Rider by you!

Thanks. The premise is that by entering the machine a person can "ride" another consciousness, experience everything they do. Of course this being the site it is, the rider gets to experience sex! But I'm also trying to include the psychological repercussions for the ridden and the one they are having sex with. How would a woman feel if she found out that fabulous sex session with her husband was also shared with an old man who was actually part of it?

Comshaw

 

[SimonDoom]

The first paragraph of William Gibson's Neuromancer:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Chapter 1 of my 8-chapter series, My Mom Is A Hot Mom:

Growing up, I never thought my mom was hot.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Iain Banks, The Crow Road:

It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.

 

[PapaRomantic]

"My sister Bri was dying."

Opening line from my recently published series The Healer

 

[TheLobster]

I don't usually start with snappy cracks of the verbal whip like those, but sometimes I do get a little bit cheeky:

When Anthony woke up and set off for work, it didn't enter his mind that he'd be involved in a devastating car accident. If he could see how utterly wrecked his car would get, he'd say there was no way in hell that anyone had survived. He would be correct, too. The whole thing was about to put a serious damper of his mood.

-- Winding Tails

 

[Cacatua_Galerita]

He died with a felafel in his hand. We found him on a bean bag with his chin resting on the top button of a favourite flannelette shirt. He’d worn the shirt when we’d interviewed him for the empty room a week or so before. We were having one of those bad runs, where you seem to interview about thirty people every day and they are all total zipper heads. We really took this guy in desperation. He wasn’t A-list, didn’t have a microwave or anything like that, and now both he and the felafel roll were cold. Our first dead housemate. At least we got some bond off him.

John Birmingham, He Died with a Felafel in His Hand

 

[Belegon]

Iain Banks, The Crow Road:

That's a great first line. An old instructer of mine once said that the whole purpose of a first line was to get the reader to read the first paragraph, and the first paragraph was to get them to read the first page and so on. This line certainly follows his advice.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

It's certainly not great literature (simple stroker, maybe), but a comment on Letter to an Absent Valentine was "That beginning grabbed my attention!"

I'm not sure how attention-grabbing the first paragraph was:
The well-dressed couple tried not to look askance as the dishevelled long-haired man settled into the aisle seat, instantly lowering the tone of the plane's Business section.

Maybe the next couple paras were what piqued interest?
The wife fell asleep soon after take-off; her husband in the middle seat couldn't. He surreptitiously watched Aisle Guy tapping away on his laptop, cursing under his breath, deleting text, and beginning again. And again. A second request for rum and Coke - oddly polite, even more oddly, without ice - didn't seem to have helped.

Curiosity eventually won. "What are you writing?"

The guy exhaled, then blushed, surprising the questioner.

"Ah. OK. Yeah...