First Lines
What creates a great first line?
Lisbon 2017
Desk Notes explores writing, travel, and literature—with a new issue every Friday.
First lines work best when they combine two adversarial features: a little bit of mystery and a sensation that resembles a slap. With the former we’re enticed to keep reading. There’s a puzzle, ambiguity, an elusive desire to proceed. With the latter we’re provided a jolt, an unexpected bit of certainty, the assurance that the writer has control—what arrives is the sound of a puzzle piece snapping into place.
Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Few discussions of first lines omit Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Notice how he squeezes two time periods into a single moment; the translation in English of “was to remember” is evocative, despite the tears of most style guide writers; and the final word, a noun, manages to combine into one word both the mystery and the slap.
One of the most memorable first lines of recent years comes from Leïla Slimani in her 2016 novel—translated from French as either Lullaby, or The Perfect Nanny—which triggers plenty of questions with a concise and startling open:
The baby is dead.
What I find most notable about the sentence above is her use of the present tense. The second sentence puts us into the past, where the novel remains, and her incongruous switch is effective. The baby was dead coordinates better with the rest of the paragraph but, partly for that reason, it doesn’t quite bite.
Consider the journalist toolbox: how, what, where, who, and—as least important in literature—why. Can the writer begin to answer these questions while still leaving desire? If you dangle a string before a cat, the cat should have a chance, but not too much of a chance. A first line should have the momentum to propel you onward. Here’s a supposedly humdrum line packed with information:
The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.
This is from Flannery O’Connor and her short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find. At first glance, we don’t expect to give it any trophies. We have two nouns surrounded by a prosaic verb in just eight words—three of which are prepositions or articles. But what do we know? The list is long: we are certain that one character is a grandmother, and we have a fairly good hint that other characters are involved; we know what the grandmother doesn’t want, and we assume these other characters want it; we know the grandmother doesn’t live in Florida, but we expect the story, unfortunately for her, to end up in that spot. And those tangible conclusions also point toward an undertone of metaphoric conclusions. Sending a grandmother to Florida has an implicit meaning. The sentence is easy to breeze past, but try to put location, character, and conflict in eight simple words.
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The negation in the Flannery O’Connor line above makes me think of Charlotte Brontë, who had another straightforward opening line in Jane Eyre, beginning the novel with a negative:
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
Now that’s not a line typically mentioned when discussing novel openings, but its purpose is clear. She’s raised questions and propelled you forward. The period is a mere hurdle before the next sentence, and you must continue to comprehend what you’ve read. Since schoolchildren are taught that sentences are complete thoughts, a good first sentence might be a complete thought that leaves unanswered questions.
A first sentence should be a tad breathless, or began just after the beginning. You’re entering the conversation after the words are flowing; you’re joining the action midstream. Part of the mystery, it’s worth remembering, occurs before the opening: the baby is already dead; the Grandmother stated her desires before you even picked up the book; whatever made the walk impossible has already been settled. As a useful heuristic, consider opening your first line with a preposition. You’re already midair once the reader arrives:
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
Faulkner could have opened The sound and the Fury by using the I although, when you read that version aloud, the sentence wavers. To start with the preposition gives the description a crisper edge, and forces you to work just a bit, to strain while you look through that fence. Here’s another opening preposition, one penned by F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby:
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
Prepositions lead you forward; the purpose is to establish a relationship—time, location, direction. To begin your novel with a preposition is to, well, start en route. In other examples of first sentences an explanation becomes more than a simple need:
When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Here we have many of the ingredients: multiple time periods, a transformation, a location, a specific character, undeniable confusion about what comes next. As with much of Kafka, the precise is combined with the mysterious.
Even though this next line loses a bit of thrust without a background knowledge of its Biblical root, Herman Melville’s opening to Moby Dick remains a standard, and can’t be omitted:
Call me Ishmael.
What’s notable about that line, especially in American literature, is how it continues to reverberate. There are numerous examples worth quoting, but I’ll just mention a personal favorite. You might have to squint and know a bit about The Adventures of Augie March, but look at what happens 102 years after Moby Dick, as Saul Bellow quite deliberately gives a 20th Century echo to the line above:
I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.
If you felt a slight drop, or even confusion, at the halfway point, the final word caught your attention. Notice the stutter—“a not so”—just before the slap of the final word. That discordant note is an artful and necessary touch.
Although it’s difficult to achieve, there’s no great mystery to the ingredients of a good opening. What keeps a reader engaged is a continual process of mystery and satisfaction. Just enough mystery to elicit curiosity, just enough satisfaction to elicit delight, and then the cycle repeats. Writers must play with this recipe sentence by sentence. Adding more confusion. More surprises. Pulling back with a little clarity. A feeling of certainty. Then the process begins anew. And while the novel moves along, it’s worth noticing how all the ingredients above apply just as well to last lines.
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