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

[AG31]

Amongst the many 'rules' for openings is, 'Don't start by having your MC stand in front of a mirror describing their appearance'. Make up your own mind whether that is good advice, or not.

It's not the opening paragraph, but close to it, and one of my favorite solutions to presenting the MC to the audience, trite though it may be. I loved writing it.

 

[Zootonius]

I didn't see a rather famous one:

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

 

[SimonDoom]

One of my favorite authors is Flannery O'Connor, a great southern writer of the 20th century. Here's a selection of first sentences from several of her stories:

The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida.

Enoch Emory knew when he woke up that today the person he could show it to was going to come.

It is trying on liberals in Dilton.

Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings.

These are all different ways to start a good story (two of them in particular are among my all-time favorite short stories). But they have a few things in common.

One, they are all in third person, but in three of them we are immediately introduced to a thought or attitude of a main character. We get into somebody's mind right away. We want to know more about how and why that person thinks.

Two, each sentence introduces a mystery of sorts, which makes the reader want to keep reading to solve. Why doesn't Grandmother want to go to Florida? What is "it" that Enoch Emory wants to show? Why is it trying on liberal in Dilton? How does Mrs. Freeman act toward people and why does it matter?

The first sentence or paragraph immerses us, quickly, in a STORY. Readers are given something they want to find out about. The writing is fairly economical and to the point.

The point is, I guess, that there are many ways to do it, but you should try, in as few words as possible, to get your reader into an interesting story and make them care about what's going to happen. Get to the point.

 

[SimonDoom]

I didn't see a rather famous one:

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

This is one of the most famous and apt opening sentences, because it pretty much summarizes the economic impetus that drives every character in every Jane Austen novel. It gets to the heart of what's going on. But it's tricky, because this sentence begins the novel in the third person omniscient POV, which is distancing. Most of the novel is told in a free indirect third person POV style from Elizabeth Bennet's point of view, meaning we see her point of view and hers only and the narration for the most part conveys what we would know purely by being the character of Elizabeth. Starting a novel this way is like starting from 30,000 feet and then parachuting down into the head of a character on the ground. It works in this case because Jane Austen was a great novelist.

 

[StillStunned]

It works in this case because Jane Austen was a great novelist.

Not saying that Austen wasn't a wonderful writer, but it's not such an uncommon approach. Off the top of my head, RE Howard uses it, CL Moore uses it, Fritz Leiber uses it. And that's just my recent sword & sorcery reading. Georgette Heyer uses it, Dorothy Dunnett uses it.

I use it myself, particularly for sword & sorcery. The Rivals Ch. 02: War and Thieves and The Rivals Ch. 04: The Black Tomb, for example, and The Sightless Watcher. And in sci-fi, though less elaborate, Not A Soul.

It's a useful device that lets you paint a picture without infodumping, before zooming in to the POV of your main character. You establish the scene and the mood so the reader knows how to picture the world you've created, and later you don't have to describe much detail. It becomes a backdrop in the reader's mind that you don't need to flesh out any more.

 

[SimonDoom]

Not saying that Austen wasn't a wonderful writer, but it's not such an uncommon approach. Off the top of my head, RE Howard uses it, CL Moore uses it, Fritz Leiber uses it. And that's just my recent sword & sorcery reading. Georgette Heyer uses it, Dorothy Dunnett uses it.

I use it myself, particularly for sword & sorcery. The Rivals Ch. 02: War and Thieves and The Rivals Ch. 04: The Black Tomb, for example, and The Sightless Watcher. And in sci-fi, though less elaborate, Not A Soul.

It's a useful device that lets you paint a picture without infodumping, before zooming in to the POV of your main character. You establish the scene and the mood so the reader knows how to picture the world you've created, and later you don't have to describe much detail. It becomes a backdrop in the reader's mind that you don't need to flesh out any more.

I liked all four of your examples. They serve as general introductions before getting into the head of a particular character, and they set the scene well. What I really like is the use of active verbs to describe a scene. You didn't start the first example with something like, "The fortress was circled by a roc."

I think this works very well for fantasy/sci fi stories, where the setting is almost like a character.

 

[VallesMarineris]

Not saying that Austen wasn't a wonderful writer, but it's not such an uncommon approach. Off the top of my head, RE Howard uses it, CL Moore uses it, Fritz Leiber uses it. And that's just my recent sword & sorcery reading. Georgette Heyer uses it, Dorothy Dunnett uses it.

I use it myself, particularly for sword & sorcery. The Rivals Ch. 02: War and Thieves and The Rivals Ch. 04: The Black Tomb, for example, and The Sightless Watcher. And in sci-fi, though less elaborate, Not A Soul.

It's a useful device that lets you paint a picture without infodumping, before zooming in to the POV of your main character. You establish the scene and the mood so the reader knows how to picture the world you've created, and later you don't have to describe much detail. It becomes a backdrop in the reader's mind that you don't need to flesh out any more.

In that vein there's also from Ulysses:

"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowl."

And then there's the meta first line from Finnegans Wake:

"riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

The mystery in that initial sentence is where the first half of it went. Which won't be answered until . . . no spoilers.

 

[StillStunned]

I liked all four of your examples. They serve as general introductions before getting into the head of a particular character, and they set the scene well. What I really like is the use of active verbs to describe a scene. You didn't start the first example with something like, "The fortress was circled by a roc."

I think this works very well for fantasy/sci fi stories, where the setting is almost like a character.

Thanks! S&S is a particular muscular (so to speak) type of fiction, that's more about action than feelings, and the opening sequence sets the tone for the whole story. If I'd written "The fortress squatted like a toad lurking beneath the dull grey sky, waiting for the circling roc to venture closer", it would have created a more Gothic mood.

In fact, my attempt at Gothic horror (The Countesses of Tannensdal) starts with this:

***
Tannensdal, seen from the train, was as I had expected. Gloomy forests covered brooding mountains along the valley's vast length. Mist ventured out from the safety of crevasses and gorges to send probing fingers oozing up the slopes. Small hamlets stood isolated from each other by dark woodland and steep cliffs and, most likely, centuries of mutual dislike and distrust.

Though it was only a little while past noon, the autumn sun felt pale and weak, like the false smile on a villain's face. I shivered inside my greatcoat, more from the sense of cold indifference that leeched out of the place than from any physical discomfort. It was all a far cry from the soft glow of the Mediterranean, the blazing sunlight of Abyssinia, the sweltering heat of India.
***

All mood and no action.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Another one I love, though it's not from great literature, is from Terry Pratchett's The Night Watch:

Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but finished shaving before he did anything about it.

There's a lot of characterization packed into a few words.

The Vintage translation of Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World starts:

The elevator continued its impossibly slow ascent. Or at least I imagined it was ascent. There was no telling for sure: it was so slow that all sense of direction simply vanished. It could have been going down for all I knew, or maybe it wasn't moving at all. But let's just assume ti was going up. Merely a guess. Maybe I'd gone up twelve stories, then down three. Maybe I'd circled the globe. How would I know?

 

[onehitwanda]

I didn't see a rather famous one:

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

Isn't this "Far from the Madding Crowd"?

edit: Oh, it's Austen. Which explains why I didn't recognise it.

one I've always loved, though it's poetry rather than prose:

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

though it's not from great literature

I will die on this hill. Pratchett may not be seen as "great literature" by ivory-tower academics, but he was one of the greatest observers of people of the 20th century. And he had a treasure trove of wisdom, if you cared to receive it:

Personal is not the same as important

The worst thing you can do is nothing

and, courtesy of Esme Weatherwax:

“What about the fire?” she said.

“What fire?”

“Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both.”

“What fire? I don’t know anything about any fire!”

Granny turned around.

“Of course not! It didn’t happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can’t say ‘if this didn’t happen then that would have happened’ because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say ‘if only I’d..’ because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it. So I don’t.”

 

[SimonDoom]

Thanks! S&S is a particular muscular (so to speak) type of fiction, that's more about action than feelings, and the opening sequence sets the tone for the whole story. If I'd written "The fortress squatted like a toad lurking beneath the dull grey sky, waiting for the circling roc to venture closer", it would have created a more Gothic mood.

In fact, my attempt at Gothic horror (The Countesses of Tannensdal) starts with this:

***
Tannensdal, seen from the train, was as I had expected. Gloomy forests covered brooding mountains along the valley's vast length. Mist ventured out from the safety of crevasses and gorges to send probing fingers oozing up the slopes. Small hamlets stood isolated from each other by dark woodland and steep cliffs and, most likely, centuries of mutual dislike and distrust.

Though it was only a little while past noon, the autumn sun felt pale and weak, like the false smile on a villain's face. I shivered inside my greatcoat, more from the sense of cold indifference that leeched out of the place than from any physical discomfort. It was all a far cry from the soft glow of the Mediterranean, the blazing sunlight of Abyssinia, the sweltering heat of India.
***

All mood and no action.

This is what I like about the story that starts with the roc. You don't see it as a place that you have to start by describing with dimensions and colors and measurements. The interesting thing about it is, first, it's got a flying roc, which is obviously interesting, and it has people who observe and interact with the roc. And by focusing on that you instantly put readers into the world you've built.

I have a general philosophy of reading that verbs are the keys to good writing. Look at the way the author uses active verbs to describe the way things and people interact with each other. If the author focuses on and artfully uses verbs, it's probably good writing.

 

[MillieDynamite]

She's one of my favs as well.

One of my favorite authors is Flannery O'Connor, a great southern writer of the 20th century. Here's a selection of first sentences from several of her stories:










These are all different ways to start a good story (two of them in particular are among my all-time favorite short stories). But they have a few things in common.

One, they are all in third person, but in three of them we are immediately introduced to a thought or attitude of a main character. We get into somebody's mind right away. We want to know more about how and why that person thinks.

Two, each sentence introduces a mystery of sorts, which makes the reader want to keep reading to solve. Why doesn't Grandmother want to go to Florida? What is "it" that Enoch Emory wants to show? Why is it trying on liberal in Dilton? How does Mrs. Freeman act toward people and why does it matter?

The first sentence or paragraph immerses us, quickly, in a STORY. Readers are given something they want to find out about. The writing is fairly economical and to the point.

The point is, I guess, that there are many ways to do it, but you should try, in as few words as possible, to get your reader into an interesting story and make them care about what's going to happen. Get to the point.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I will die on this hill. Pratchett may not be seen as "great literature" by ivory-tower academics, but he was one of the greatest observers of people of the 20th century. And he had a treasure trove of wisdom, if you cared to receive it:

Personal is not the same as important

The worst thing you can do is nothing

and, courtesy of Esme Weatherwax:

I agree with you. He's compared to Twain for a reason. Also from The Night Watch:

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

 

[XerXesXu]

It's not the opening paragraph, but close to it, and one of my favorite solutions to presenting the MC to the audience, trite though it may be. I loved writing it.

?
See#39

 

[AG31]

?
See#39

Sorry. I don't understand your question. Yes, I saw MD's opening para. And I was replying to your post about it being a "rule" not to use this cliche, and your suggestion

Make up your own mind whether that is good advice, or not.

And so I was just sharing how I'd made up my mind on the subject. By using this very cliche and being happy about it in my own story.

 

[XerXesXu]

Sorry. I don't understand your question. Yes, I saw MD's opening para. And I was replying to your post about it being a "rule" not to use this cliche, and your suggestion

And so I was just sharing how I'd made up my mind on the subject. By using this very cliche and being happy about it in my own story.

As I've remarked before, it's only necessary that you understand what you're saying, it's not necessary that anyone else, including myself, do. The world will still continue to rotate on its axis - for a limited time, at least.

 

[Zootonius]

Isn't this "Far from the Madding Crowd"?

edit: Oh, it's Austen. Which explains why I didn't recognize it.

Austen is my literary comfort food, not that deep, just enjoyable. And I suspect, many serious Austen fans will take umbrage to that characterization.

 

[XerXesXu]

'Unweaving the Rainbow' by Richard Dawkins.

'We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.'

Plenty there for the 'grammar Nazis' to feed on; but look how vivid his choice of words is. His word choice makes his text dramatic, engaging, and a pleasure to read.

 

[YmaOHyd]

I've always loved the provocativeness of the opening to Jonathan V. Last's 2002 essay The Case for the Empire, originally published in The Weekly Standard:

Star Wars returns today with its fifth installment, Attack of the Clones. There will talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.

The follow-up pieces to The Case for the Empire trailed on for at least another fifteen years, from a whole variety of writers. It's my contention that they're directly responsible for the eviled-up First Order in the sequel trilogy, and the whole rotten state of Lucasfilm today.

 

[SimonDoom]

'Unweaving the Rainbow' by Richard Dawkins.

'We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.'

Plenty there for the 'grammar Nazis' to feed on; but look how vivid his choice of words is. His word choice makes his text dramatic, engaging, and a pleasure to read.

I like Dawkins. He does a great job communicating a sense of beauty and wonder in the scientific perspective. It was true of The Selfish Gene way back when and more recently with The Ancestor's Tale.

 

[dmallord]

From a work in progress:

The scent of lavender lingered in the air, faint yet unmistakable, weaving through the dim light of Donovan Milford’s home like ghostly memories. He lay still in his reclining chair, weary bones and thin breath, listening to the rhythmic tick of the grandfather clock. Much like its occupant, the house spirit had settled into silence, waiting, counting down.