Writing Exercise 25: First lines

There are sometimes quiz questions about first lines of novels. You may be able to quote some, such as "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...", "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day" or "Call me Ishmael." The play Hamlet begins with a guard asking "Who's there?" Poems also have striking first lines; T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' starts with the words "April is the cruellest month". This exercise is about reading some first lines and then writing some.

Stage 1.
Pick up four books - ideally recent novels or volumes of short stories. These may be books you haven't read yet - in fact, not having read them could help. Copy out the first sentence of each novel or of any four the short stories.

Stage 2.
Think about who might be saying those words. Even if it's just the narrator telling someone else's story, what kind of person might the narrator be? What does their voice sound like?
Choose one of the opening lines and write five more sentences in the same voice but telling a different story that fits the opening you have chosen. Try to build up suspense by suggesting secrets from the past that you haven't yet told to the reader.
You can try this with more than one of the openings if you like. 

 Stage 3.
Now look at the first six sentences of the book or story you started with. How much does it reveal and how much does it conceal? What questions do you as a reader start to ask (not necessarily consciously)?

 Stage 4.
Go back to the different opening you developed in stage 2. How much did you reveal and how much did you conceal? What would make your (imaginary) reader want to read on?

 Stage 5.
This time, start from scratch. Write a strong opening line and build on it for a whole paragraph. Think about who is speaking, who they are speaking to and why. Remember that you want the reader to remain curious about what has happened as well as about what is going to happen. Make sure that every sentence - and even every word - adds something new to what has gone before.
(This may sound like an easy thing to do but it's something many writers work on for ages - so don't worry if you find you need to edit again and again.)
See if you can develop your opening into a story or use the same techniques for the opening of a poem or script.

 

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