My favorite first sentences · 6:21am Jan 17th, 2013
I loved Kegisak's new story Good Enough, but commented that the first two sentences were the weakest sentences in the story--a grave mistake; those are the sentences you must hone to perfection above all others, except perhaps the last.
Then I remembered that I don't do that.
Some first sentences I love:
There was a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. - C.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Humor and rapid characterization. "Almost" hints at mercy, and at the redemption of Eustace that is to come.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. - William Gibson, Neuromancer
Tells you so much about its high-tech, gray-souled world.
Mama died today. Or maybe it was yesterday. - Albert Camus, The Stranger
The speaker has a good reason for not knowing, but his ignorance and lack of concern foreshadows the fact that he's a sociopath.
True! - nervous - very, very nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? - Ed Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
The stacatto pace, the broken and inverted grammatical structure, and, oh, yes, the denial of madness, hint at the speaker's madness.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed after him. - Stephen King, The Gunslinger
The man in black is probably evil. The gunslinger probably represents justice, or retribution. There will be a chase. There will be blood. It will be black and white and red, not shades of gray. It will not be made pretty with flowery prose.
If I’m going to tell you about the adventure of my life -- explain how I got to this place with these people, and why I did what I’m going to do next -- I should probably start by explaining a little bit about PipBucks. - kkat, Fallout Equestria
Tells us we're going to read an adventure, then yanks it away and talks about a gadget for a page. The things on that page aren't the things the narrator needed to tell us about. The boring digression tells us, I think, how boring life Lil'Pip's life was in the Stable, which is what she really needs to tell you.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The description of part of the galaxy as "unfashionable" tells us that the galaxy, interstellar travel, all that, is old hat, and this story doesn't give a damn about spaceships and ray guns except as tools for moving people long distances rapidly and killing them efficiently. Its prominence and idiocy tells us this is a universe (or galaxy, at any rate) populated by silly, shallow people. "Uncharted" tells us it is not written from the perspective of humans. "Unregarded" tells us that no one in the universe will take us (or the protagonist) seriously.
Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its Outer Walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one halfway over its neighbor until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the Great Walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. - Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
This is wrong, but catchy:
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
The first line establishes Huck's humility. The second is a humorous jab at its own author, and suggests Huck himself (being written by Twain) is about to stretch the truth some, and suggests that Twain's books are "the truth, mainly," despite being about fictional characters. It also hints that Huck isn't hung up on the exact literal truth, because he's a deep thinker, and he understands after his adventure that there's no such thing.
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. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)
Just kidding. I hate this sentence.
Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach. This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face. - Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen
Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)
The strangeness of this quote hints at the surrealism of life under the arbitrary, relentless, mindless tyranny of the Chinese communist party.
The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth the effort. - Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. - Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
The year that Buttercup was born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named Annette. - William Goldman, The Princess Bride
This was buried around page 40, but should have opened the book:
There was a footpath leading across the fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics. - Bertrand Russell, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1951)
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. —James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Shut up, Joyce.
_
What are your favorite first sentences?
_
It's good to hint at your story's theme in your opening sentences. Remembering how many people missed the theme of Detective & Magician, and also how many were almost turned away by reading the first sentence and thinking it was just a retelling of "A Scandal in Bohemia", I just now inserted a new first sentence:
In the course of my association with Mr. Fetlock Holmes, and the stinging barbs of his insight into my person that sometimes accompany it, I have from time wished he would, if only briefly, turn his keen and unflinching gaze upon himself. I did not know then how much of his haughty disposition was a mask. Once only, for the span of a few seconds, I saw that mask slip. In those seconds I saw how cruel and needless my wish was. This slip was the result of a peculiar entanglement with a most peculiar mare.
Good, or bad?
Finnegan's Wake gave me cancer.
"Once upon a time in the magical land of Equestria."
Finnegan's Wake is there to mess with PhD Arts students. That thing is beyond crazy.
1. Fuck James Joyce. Even without an overabundance of knowledge about him or modernist literary theory, I don't think he took the medium in the right direction at all. His works are pretentious, boring, and only serve to teach that for all that books can teach they are also a phenomenal waste of time.
2. Voyage of the Dawn Treader was by far my favorite of the Narnia series. Read it at least six times and loved it at every go.
3. I really need to re-read The Stranger. I'm not sure my teacher at the time knew anything at all what it was about.
4. Kegisak has an amazing profile pic. One of my favorite "Scooby Doo Movies" episodes ever. Oh yeah and Shaggy. Kicking. The Penguin.
Classic.
Blood Rites: Dresden Files
That instantly drew me into the story
"It was a bright, sunny day in Ponyville..." Oh wait, that's one of my least favorite, and one that I see most often.
And so High Fantasy was born.
"Remember remember the 5th of November, the Gunpowder treason and plot, I know of no reason, why the gunpowder treason should ever be forgot."
- V for Vendetta.
To remember the cause and the idea that lead to an event instead of simply remembering it as an occurrence in history.
JOYRCE
WAT U DOING
JOYACE
STAHP
-White Box (google docs version)
719877 Actually The Hobbit was a parody or inversion of some of the conventions of high fantasy, by having a modest, reluctant, unattractive, physically-sub-par hero who just wanted tea and elevensies. (And not the first parody of fantasy. I think Gormenghast was earlier.)
"Naked, the President lay on the table and screamed.
Seeing his customer's discomfort, the masseuse let up on the pressure."
"It was a dark and stormy night..."
So overused, but I still love it.
- Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy: Inferno
Right away, you know the speaker is troubled and well... lost, in every way imaginable.
719899
Which translation?
The last line of Neuromancer is my favorite last line to anything ever. "Ur arire fnj Zbyyl ntnva." (Seriously, don't decode that if you haven't read it.)
This exemplifies Stephenson's penchant for smashing different subcultures and aesthetics together. It also got me curious about the skull gun, which manages to be even awesomer and even stupider than it sounds.
I honestly cannot figure out why this one has stuck with me. It has, though.
And since this website is about ponyfic:
Establishes our narrator's brand of perfectly insipid wit.
719928 I`m fairly certain it was the Norton Anthology of World Literature, 2nd Edition, Volume 1 though honestly, for a translated work it comes off quite poetically. In terms of the beauty of the language being preserved through translation though, I would have to give it to Wolfgang Von Goethe`s Faust.
Oh thank god.
The Neuromancer opening means something totally different now than it did when it was printed, of course. Dead TV channels aren't staticky anymore.
Might I suggest the final line of The Fountainhead?
It's the perfect way to end the book. A complete summary of the book's purpose and meaning, in just one sentence.
And now for something completely different.
719933
That Cheese story is pure gold. Thank you for pointing it out ! I'd have been sad not knowing about its existence.
BEST OPENING SENTENCES OF MODERN LITERATURE*
But if you want to talk about starting off a story with a bang, it's hard to beat Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man:
Not a first sentence in itself, but let me share the first sentence game. Best played with friends or family after a dinner party or similar. The game is played as follows:
1) Gather together a collection of books, one per person. Play proceeds around the room, with each player refereeing their book.
2) The current referee-player readers out the title and description of the book. The other players when attempt to write down a plausible first sentence while the referee writes down the actual first sentences. The guesses are gathered in, mixed up, and read out. Each player then tried to guess the actual first line.
3) A point is awarded for each player who correctly guesses a first line and two points are awarded to the author of a fake first line for each person it fools. The winner is the player to gain the most points.
Quite a fun game. Oh, and again, this probably isn't my favourite first line, but Watership Down opens with the sentence "The primroses were over." I don't know why, but I was able to tell you that without looking. I will probably remember that first line until the day I die. I loved that book.
-----
Oh, and as for actual first lines, I just remembered this one:
From the unpublished alternative opening to Shipping Sickness. The full text can be found here.
719885
I didn't think high fantasy as a genre existed yet.
No kidding?
I knew that most of the core concepts of the genre (magic, elves, dwarves, goblins, etc.) existed in earlier literature, not to mention the myths (especially norse myths that Tolkien loved so very very much), but I thought it was Tolkien who basically codified it all into one genre.
Though I am wrong to call The Hobbit high fantasy anyway. LOTR is high fantasy, The Hobbit is more heroic fantasy, but we wouldn't have LOTR without The Hobbit.
Still my favorite opening sentence.
"Marley was dead: to begin with."
Even though Fallout is all about the stupid crap that leads to conflict, this quote still seems to transcend everything Fallout. It sticks with me more strongly than anything else. Oh, and Project Horizons starts with this quote, which is further proof that it's the best Fallout-Pony writing of all time.
720036 I don't know how many existed before Tolkien, but "The Worm Ouroboros" is the most famous (1922).
Name the book, guys!
720082 A Christmas Carol. I remember, because I went over it when GoH was writing Canterlot Carol. There are several websites with photos of Dickens' original manuscript, like this one.
720012 The Eye of Argon. A must-read.
719892 Oh, you.
720282 It's from "Demarche to Iran" by Alexis Gilliland, which is in the anthology "Alternate Presidents." And I got the quote wrong; oddly enough since it inspired me. I finally got to do an opening line with the same effect with "The fillies flew through the night sky, screaming and hanging on for dear life."
Actually. One of the opening lines I have always been impressed by is:
"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
I always loved the concept and implications.
720336 Agreed. I almost put that in. It tells you immediately this is a fantasy or fairy tale, not science fiction.
720017 That's a variant on the old dictionary game, where someone writes down a word that no one knows and everyone writes a definition for it. You can buy an expensive giant box, I forget the name, that holds a small deck of cards with interesting first sentences of books. I love all those games. My favorite is "Wise and Otherwise", which has collections of folk sayings from around the world. They give you the first phrase, and everyone makes up a second half to complete the saying. Also awesome is "The Origin of Words", which has a deck of slang words like "bigwig", and the story of their origin.
719984 Ironic that the opening to Neuromancer would make no sense within the world of Neuromancer.
720404 I guess the asterisk was a little subtle.
But to follow up on an old and dangling debate: To what extent, if any, do you consider The Eye Of Argon a "good" story (by previously discussed metrics)? What I've taken away from previous discussions is that popular stories are by definition good, without/despite any evaluation of technical quality, because they have accomplished the author's goal of reaching their audience; without that ability to connect, they wouldn't have become popular in the first place. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Argon is one of those rare edge cases of unintentional (and basically unwanted) popularity.
720460 Oh, man. I enjoy reading The Eye of Argon. But it's awful. But I love it! Its horrible twisted and inappropriate metaphors and incorrect adjectives are.... I mean, I hate it, but I love it, but
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720545
... but it causes your brain to core dump?
(Or did FIMFic eat your comment?)
720082
I read that in Gonzo's voice.
720658 Socket error 10060 WSAETIMEDOUT: Connection timed out
720545
If the source of this comment was some kind of actual error, it's unintentionally amazing.
"The road to Cinnabar is lined exclusively with the burned out husks of school buses."
Cinnabar by Edward Bryant.
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 Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
a massively huge sentence for an amazing book.
There's a lot of Joyce hate, and I just want to throw out there, Joyce isn't something you read for fun. Hell, it's barely something you read for the message put inside it. Joyce's claim to fame is really how he enabled future craziness. He payed with sentences and words and ultimately threw so many writing conventions out the window, that many were inspired to do the same. He was groundbreaking. He and those of his time did things with literature that are really quite astounding.
Without him, there would be nothing so crazy as Naked Lunch. And what would this world possibly be without that delightful piece of surrealism?
721579
I can't stand Dickens. Takes twenty minutes to say something that can be said in one, and by the time he's finished you're so far lost from the point that you have to go back again to figure out what he was getting at. It's a good line by itself, but figuring out what he means every few sentences is so tiring that it's difficult to keep reading.
721747 Agreed. But, sadly, the literary establishment has made us hate Joyce by taking his novels, and novels resembling them (like everything written by Thomas Pynchon or Samuel Delaney), not as writing exercises--a means towards a goal--but as the goal itself. For the past 100 years, literary theorists have persuaded, cajoled, and forced great writers to aspire to write writing experiments that could help produce art, while scoffing at those who try to write the thing itself.
It might be more accurate to say that they have a different opinion of what constitutes art--I am interested in art objects, things of some use, while they are interested only in developing new techniques. They are theoretical artists, while I'm an applied artist. I could get along with them and respect them if they could get along with and respect me. They started it, Mom!
Many of Joyce's stories are excellent! I'm not as skilled as Joyce. But I'm skilled enough to see what happened to him. Like most modernists, his earliest work was his best, and he was seduced into writing worse and worse over time by those who praised only the strange and new, rather than the merely great.
From "Chemistry 11: A workbook for students" (thirteenth printing, May 2007) by James A. Hebden
720545 >Windows
Oh Luna why
722263
Well, it is the easiest source of error messages in the omniverse. He probably thought about needing one and one popped up like magic.
722290 Hurm
i meant to leave an angry comment on this blog post the first time i came across it, but i feel that now that you're following me, it has extra weight
FUCK Y'ALL
J.J.'s mouth-piece straight reppin' mad gangsta from Dublin' west si-eede
peace
"It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea" - Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.
I'll admit though, generally I think of the first few paragraphs as being what really is great, not the first sentence. A lot of stories, the first sentence is something very short, and not really what wins you over.
It leads into the next paragraph, which explains why it was a nice day, and why this statement was amusing. But on its own, it is nothing.
Not to say that the first sentence can't set the tone, but usually it takes a bit longer.