If you’re a writer, you know how difficult it is to nail that elusive (and all-powerful) first line. Writing an entire book is often more enjoyable (and possibly easier) than coming up with that griping, you’ve GOT to read on sentence. Here are 25 first sentences from pretty amazing books that you can mull over this weekend. Recognize any of them? How does your first sentence compare? Does it set the tone of your novel?
First Sentence:
1. “So you want to know all about me.”
2. “He began his new life standing up, surrounded by cold darkness and stale, dusty air.”
3. “My mother used to tell me about the ocean.”
4. Daddy said, “Let mommy go first.”
5. “When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.”
6. “The ornate script on the board twisted in the candlelight, making the letters and numbers dance in my head.”
7. “The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.”
8. “I wait. They keep us in the dark for so long that we lose sense of our eyelids.”
9. “There is one mirror in my house.”
10. “Janie Hannagan’s math book slips from her fingers.”
11. “Enders gave me the creeps.”
12. “I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination.”
13. “I’ve been locked up for 264 days.”
14. “It is my first morning of high school.”
15. “The first time I died, I didn’t see God.”
16. “I used to be someone.”
17. “Prayer candles flicker in my bedroom.”
18. “A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.”
19. “I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up.”
20. “It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.”
21. “Sing, O Goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans.”
22. “They called the world beyond the walls of the Pod “the Death Shop.””
23. “I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I tell you he’s the one.”
24. ““Where are you?” Aunt Hannah demanded as soon as Alex thumbed talk.”
25. “The screw through Cinder’s ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle.”
Authors and titles:
1. Ellen Hopkins CRANK
2. James Dashner THE MAZE RUNNER
3. Carrie Ryan THE FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH
4. Beth Revis ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
5. Suzanne Collins THE HUNGER GAMES
6. Michelle Hodkin THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER
7. Scott Westerfeld UGLIES
8. Lauren DeStefano WITHER
9. Veronica Roth DIVERGENT
10. Lisa McMann WAKE
11. Lissa Price STARTERS
12. Ally Condie MATCHED
13. Tahereh Mafi SHATTER ME
14. Laurie Halse Anderson SPEAK
15. Megan Miranda FRACTURE
16. Mary E. Pearson THE ADORATION OF JENNA FOX
17. Rae Carson THE GIRL OF FIRE AND THORNS
18. Aldous Huxley BRAVE NEW WORLD
19. Jack Kerouac ON THE ROAD
20. Lauren Oliver DELIRIUM
21. Homer THE ILIAD
22. Veronica Rossi UNDER THE NEVER SKY
23. Orson Scott Card ENDER’S GAME
24. Ilsa J. Bick ASHES
25. Marissa Meyer CINDER
“..the color of cat vomit”??? That’s an interesting choice of description. I guess no one can say it’s cliche! 😉
It’s SUCH a good book. With an opening line like that, you know you’re in for a treat 🙂
These would be great to use as prompts 🙂
Xx
Heck yes they would! 😉
These are some great first lines! And I did recognize several. I thought that Veronica Roth’s first line in Divergent was brilliant – why would a person only have one mirror in their house? That draws a person right in. And I remembered the cat vomit one clearly, too, though I read that a few years ago. 🙂 Definitely a memorable first line!
I like the idea of ‘coming up with that griping … sentence’ 🙂 Do the author’s gripes become the reader’s gripes ? I only knew the Iliad, which I’m reading at the moment. So many one word titles (including Iliada in Greek)
How come you left out the first sentence of the Harry Potter series AND the Percy Jackson series. *shakes head in dissapoinment.