Calm Down About the First Line of Your Story

You only get one chance to make a first impression. This is true in nearly every situation, from work to parties to first dates. It is also true of stories.

I’ve heard a lot of talk about the first lines of stories—how important they are, how they need to hook the reader, how they should effectively introduce the story, establish a unique voice, be surprising, etcetera, etcetera. And all of that is true. But I’ve also met so very many new writers who’ve gotten a little too consternated trying to write the “perfect” first line. I find that, more and more often, the only advice regarding first lines that I want to give to people is this: calm down.

First lines are like titles: if done well, they can hook the reader’s interest from the get go. Sometimes they just pop immediately to mind, and other times the writer really has to dig and work to find a good one. Sometimes writers knock it out of the park; more often, they simply manage something adequate. But even if first lines and titles are only average, most readers and editors will continue to give you their attention for at least a little while longer.

So yes, first lines are important; but they’re not worth the headache that many writers devote to them. There are only a few basic rules that I would suggest that you follow when writing the first lines of your stories:

Make sure that they are free of errors. Almost no editor or reader will set down your story simply because the first line didn’t “grab” them. But if you have grammar or punctuation errors in the very first sentence of your story, that will make them wary.

Don’t let them run on. As I’ve mentioned before, long sentences are both more difficult to properly construct and more difficult for your readers to follow. Asking your readers to swallow a massive amount of information at the very, very beginning of your story is a bit of a tall order. Try to give them the new information and introductions a little bit at a time.

Make sure they are on topic. Sometimes, in their quests to create engaging first lines, writers wander a little too far from their story. They begin on a largely unrelated topic and then wander from there to the story. The problem is, if that first line is so very engaging, your readers will only feel cheated when they find out that it has nothing to do with the actual story. Not a good way to gain fans.

That’s it.

I’m not saying that you should ignore all the other “first lines” advice out there. If you can craft a pertinent first line that is funny, intriguing, or fascinating, that’s great! That’s desirable and impressive; good for you. But here’s the thing: what is funny, intriguing, or fascinating to one person won’t be that impressive to many others. I can’t tell you how often I’ve had other people show me “amazing” first lines that I just wasn’t that impressed with. I’ve been completely floored by amazing first lines that other people just shrugged at with a “meh.” Almost no first lines will be amazing to everyone or even most everyone, so don’t break your brain trying too hard to amaze and wow. As long as you follow the tips above and don’t write anything that will actively repulse readers, you’ll be fine.

Now, this may or may not be a helpful illustration, but I found it fun. I’ve spent quite a bit of time browsing through the first lines of books and short stories, especially ones from very successful books. I’d like to share a few here. I think that, like me, you’ll see that many first lines are impressive, while others are simply quietly competent. Some hit you with a plot hook, while others simply begin a slow process of easing you into a long story.

In making this list, I have avoided all of the “classic” first lines that these lists usually cover. I love the first line of Pride and Prejudice and am less-than-wowed by the famous first line of Moby Dick. But this list is more focused on the first lines of modern stories that have come out in the last few decades. How are today’s writers—your contemporaries—beginning their books?

     Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling)

     Robert Langdon awoke slowly. (The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown)

     When he woke in the woods in the dark and cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. (The Road by Cormac McCarthy)

     “We should start back,” Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. (A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin)

     The trial was irretrievably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson)

     When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. (The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins)

     My suffering left me sad and gloomy. (Life of Pi by Yann Martel)

     I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. (The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini)

     CLARE: It's hard being left behind. (The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger)

     My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. (Twilight by Stephenie Meyer)

     Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. (The Fault in Our Stars by John Green)

     The palace still shook occasionally as the earth rumbled in memory, groaned as if it would deny what had happened. (The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan)

     Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood. (The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan)

     When I think of my wife I always think of her head. (Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn)

     At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. (The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd)

     It was night again. (The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss)

     There is one mirror in my house. (Divergent by Veronica Roth)

     I have never been what you’d call a crying man. (11/22/63 by Stephen King)

     Mariam was five years old the first time she heard the word harami. (A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini)

     Kalak rounded a rocky stone ridge and stumbled to a stop before the body of a dying thunderclast. (The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson)

     Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world. (Eragon by Christopher Paolini)

     There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. (Holes by Louis Sachar)     

See what I mean? I’m sure some of those really grabbed you; others not so much. And I’ll bet the ones that impressed you aren’t all the same as the ones that impressed me. But all of those books were widely-read to an extreme degree. So don’t fret too much about your first lines; they won’t usually make or break your story.

Perspective Errors: Too Little Information

            A knock at the door awoke Sally. She squinted against the light coming through the window and groaned, pulling her warm blanket over her head. But the knock came again, louder and longer this time. With a sigh, she pulled herself out of bed, keeping her blanket wrapped around her shoulders for warmth.

            She opened the door again mid-knock, and found Beth standing there with her fist still raised.

            “It’s about time,” Beth said with a frown, lowering her hand. “Go get dressed, we’re going for a drive.”

            “What?” Sally grumbled. “Why would we do that?”

            Beth folded her arms. “It’s about the Grimoire.”

            Sally blinked, suddenly alert. “The Grimoire? What happened?”

            “We can’t talk about it here,” Jacob said from beside Beth. “Just get ready.”

I’m sure you noticed the problem at the end of that passage—if Jacob was standing next to Beth that whole time, why wasn’t he mentioned when Sally first opened the door? This is another common type of perspective error, when the author fails to share every important thing that the perspective character knows or can sense.

Introduce things to the scene before they're being used

Picture another scene: A burly man in a black suit drags Sally into a parlor, where a sinister-looking old woman is waiting. Clever and threatening words are exchanged, and then the woman tells her burly henchman in the black suit to take Sally out back and dispose of her. The man reaches for Sally, but she grabs the bowling pin on the table and hits him over the head with it.  And then the reader goes, “wait, what bowling pin? Since when was that there?”

If there is a bowling pin on the table, that is something that Sally would have noticed when she came into the room. If you didn’t mention it when it would have been visible, then you can’t use it later—that’s the rule. If you get to the middle of the scene and realize that you need a bowling pin for Sally to use, then scroll back and put it in at the beginning of the scene. The important thing is that your character becomes aware of things naturally; the scene won’t feel real, otherwise.

Now, if your character suddenly realizes that there’s a bowling pin on the floor by their feet just a moment before they grab it, that’s okay—there are situations where that’s the best way to go. The important thing is that you show your character becoming aware of it, so that your reader can become aware of it, too:

Sally suddenly noticed a bowling pin, of all things, lying on the ground by her feet. Without taking time to think, she snatched it up and swung it at the burly thug’s face.

This is still a little abrupt, but it is acceptably and realistically abrupt.

Using perspective errors to create tension = bad writing

The examples above are simple mistakes; the writer forgot to mention Jacob and the bowling pin when they came into the scene instead of when they became important. There will be times, however, where you are tempted to break perspective in this way deliberately. Why? Almost always, it will be for the purpose of artificially creating tension.

For example: Sally, after hitting the thug over the head with that convenient bowling pin, runs from the room. She gets out of the building and into the spacious yards around it. But as she runs up to the open gate that leads off the grounds, a guard steps in front of her and points a rifle at her head. She stops and raises her hands. He tells her to turn around and go back. She pleads, explains, cajoles, and maybe even threatens him—she talks and talks and talks, stalling. Then Jacob suddenly hits the guard over the head (probably not with a bowling pin), having crept through the gate while Sally was distracting the guard.

The writer didn’t mention Jacob until he hit the guard over the head so that the readers would wonder how Sally was going to get out of this situation. If they’d known that Sally could see Jacob sneaking through the gate (she was looking that direction, after all), then the tension of the scene wouldn’t have been as high.

I’m not going to mince words—this is a cheap trick, and you should not do it. Your readers will feel cheated, and they’ll be right to; you flat-out lied to them in an attempt to keep them from figuring things out sooner than you wanted. Your characters can lie to one another all you want; if your story is narrated by one of the characters, then you have the possibility of having them lie about the events of the story (though it won’t necessarily feel less cheap if you do this, so be careful); but you, as the author, as the person telling this story to your readers, cannot ever lie. If you do so, it will be bad writing, and that’s the end of it.

Find a better solution

So, when you’re tempted to do this, just don’t. Find a way around it. Rearrange the scene so that the guard is standing near a corner that Sally can’t see around, so that Jacob can appear suddenly without a perspective error. Have the guard come up behind Sally, so that she can’t see Jacob sneaking up. Give Jacob the ability to teleport, for all I care—unless you’re writing creative non-fiction, then you can do whatever you want—the possibilities are limitless! Just don’t lie to your reader.

To make things even more difficult, the same thing goes for the information your character knows. If you’re writing from the perspective of a detective investigating a murder, and at the end of the story you suddenly reveal that he knew all along that their primary suspect was innocent and that his boss was the real murderer, then you’ve cheated. If he knew that the whole time, and we were in his head, then we should have known, too.

Picture Ocean’s 11 written through Danny Ocean’s perspective: it wouldn’t have worked, because the movie ends with a big reveal about what the real plan was. In a movie that's okay, because we’re not actually in Danny’s head—there’s not technically a perspective error. No lies. But in a book from Danny’s perspective, it wouldn’t work. If he knew the plan from the beginning, and we were in his head, then we should have known, too.

You can get around it—take us out of the detective’s head and put us in someone else’s head (as Arthur Conan Doyle did in the Sherlock Holmes stories, relating them through Watson) or have the detective suddenly figure it out at the end instead of having known the whole time. For your version of Danny Ocean, have the plan go wrong and he suddenly has to improvise; or put the story from someone else’s perspective, someone who wouldn’t be in on the plan. Again, there’s tons of options. 

Just don’t use the perspective error because it’s easier—you want to be better writers than that.