I previously published a review of all of the books I read in 2024, this time I thought I’d explore the topic of Opening Sentences in Fiction and use the books I read in 2024 as my sample.
Intuitively, everyone grasps the importance of the opening sentence. The book cover, the blurb, reviews and recommendations have all provided surface-level engagement that’s lead the reader to the first page. The opening sentence is the start of a deeper, longer connection you’re hoping to establish.
However, I think we generally overstate the importance of the opening sentence as a standalone element - after all, surely no reader re-evaluates their book selection after reading just the first line? It’s possible to write a bad, poor, sloppy, lazy or mediocre first line and for that to be entirely irrelevant to the overall quality of the book or to a reader’s enjoyment of it. Equally, the opposite is true; a great first sentence has no bearing on the quality of the subsequent 8,000 sentences.
So whilst the first line isn’t make-or-break, it is a great opportunity to make your first mark with the reader. A chance to grab the reader’s attention and get them locked-in, a chance to spark a connection with the reader, a chance to have yourself a grand entrance.
So, how best to do that?
Typically, authors will do at least one of the below with their opening sentences:
Introduce the main character
Set the scene of where the story takes place
Throw the reader in mid-scene or partway through a conversation
Establish drama, urgency or importance
Tell the reader what the book will be about
With regards to structure. The most commonly employed tactic is probably short and punchy:
Conscription Day is always the deadliest.
Short, sharp, immediate impact.
However, some authors go for a much more detailed approach:
Edwin St. John St. Andrew, eighteen years old, hauling the weight of his double-sainted name across the Atlantic by steamship, eyes narrowed against the wind on the upper deck: he holds the railing with gloved hands, impatient for a glimpse of the unknown, trying to discern something - anything! - beyond sea and sky, but all he sees are shades of endless grey.
This was Emily St. John Mandel, using her opening line rather as a way to demonstrate her prowess. We get a lot. We get introduced to a character, whilst also learning his age, getting a hint into his life situation (sounds like he might be emigrating across the Atlantic) and feeling the burden of his double-sainted name. We get artful description of being at sea and we also get a lesson in punctuation. It’s probably longer than you’d ideally like it to be, but it does grab your attention. You already know this writer has panache.
Short and punchy is often intended to do the opposite of Mandel’s approach; deliberately giving you only a snippet of information, and typically something that’s going to leave you wanting to find out more. The promise of drama, danger, answers or a revelation.
In Yellowface, the opening line promised an explanation for a shocking event:
The night I watched Athena Liu die, we’re celebrating her TV deal with Netflix.
Whilst Iron Flame promised us a story of revolution:
Revolution tastes oddly…sweet.
On the theme of letting the reader know what to expect, Ursula K. Le Guin promised wizards:
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.
In The Woman at 1,000 Degrees, we deliberately get told only cherry-picked information that leaves us with no clue what’s going on, many questions that we want answers to, and the promise of chaos:
I live here alone in a garage, together with a laptop and an old hand grenade.
As with Mandel, a natural place to start is with introducing a character. Give the reader a name and start to build a character profile for them. This is a fairly common approach as it gets you straight into the story. Of all the opening lines I’ve read this year introducing a character, Perfume takes the cake:
In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.
How’s that for introducing a character and telling you precisely everything you need to know? Powerful isn’t it?
My preference is to begin with the setting. I like to create an environment within which I can then introduce a character.
Some powerful scene-setting like the below really helps paint a picture for the reader about a location, and gives you a stage on which to spotlight a character rather than leaving the reader to imagine them in a void for lack of wider context.
There are few places on Earth more desolate than South-Eastern Siberia at dawn on a bitingly cold March morning.
Or a slightly different take on setting-the scene:
She felt their eyes, all those executioners.
We know very little, but enough to know it doesn’t look good for the unnamed lead character. I picture a shadowed woman, yet to be revealed to us, surrounded by a mass of bodies, with judging eyes glaring bright like headlights.
Every opening sentence I read this year
I’ve listed every opening sentence I read this year below, maybe you’ll recognise some.
Are there any you particularly like from this list? Any others you’ve read that you loved?
The highlight for me is the aforementioned opener from Perfume, I found it so powerful and discerning:
In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.
The full list:
Conscription Day is always the deadliest.
Revolution tastes oddly…sweet.
She was already inside the elevator when he entered.
In the beginning was the bird, as large in relation to me then, by my recollection, as a young dog is now.
One-two-three.
I rise into darkness, away from the garden they watered with the blood of my friends.
When Red wins, she stands alone.
The wind sweeps across the desert, carrying dust and kicking up sand.
If you read nothing else we’ve sent home, please at least read this.
The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards.
There are few places on Earth more desolate than South-Eastern Siberia at dawn on a bitingly cold March morning.
‘Could you',’ said the inspector, ‘run it all by me one more time, Mrs Sutherland?’
The Korowai Pass had been closed since the end of summer, when a spate of shallow earthquakes triggered a landslide that buried a stretch of the highway in rubble, killing five, and sending a long-haul transport truck over a precipice where it skimmed a power line, ploughed a channel down the mountainside, and then exploded on a viaduct below.
I was born in the lowest part of the country, 22 feet beneath the sea.
Edwin St. John St. Andrew, eighteen years old, hauling the weight of his double-sainted name across the Atlantic by steamship, eyes narrowed against the wind on the upper deck: he holds the railing with gloved hands, impatient for a glimpse of the unknown, trying to discern something - anything! - beyond sea and sky, but all he sees are shades of endless grey.
In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages.
This is how Yuli, son of Alehaw, came to a place called Oldorando, where his descendants flourished in the better days that were to come.
She felt their eyes, all those executioners.
“Jamie Gray!” Rob Sanders popped his head out of his office door and waved at me, grinning.
There was a woman named Aud the Deep-Minded, daughter of Ketill Flatnose, who had been queen.
“What’s two plus two?”
The night I watched Athena Liu die, we’re celebrating her TV deal with Netflix.
I live here alone in a garage, together with a laptop and an old hand grenade.
At the age of five, Gustav Perle was certain of only one thing: he loved his mother.
During the last days of the last Tsar, there lived a peasant named Pushkin in a small village one hundred miles from Moscow.
‘Miss Kawasemi?’ Orito kneels on a stale and sticky futon. ‘Can you hear me?’
It was getting hotter.