hey writers...lets hear the first sentence of that great novel you have hidden away!!

[kid a]

i'm no writer, but i love skimmnig first sentences in borders, sometimes i'm hooked, sometime not.

[Inchworm]

1. "Midway in our life's journey, I went astray from the straight road

and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood."

I do that too! Mainly because I am not much of a reader :)

:hi:

[Orrex]

18. Nice!

I'll bet that you went through heaven and hell to write that line.

[Inchworm]

25. I had to find the book in my "goin to jail" bag

:rofl:

[Inchworm]

36. "I’m no Jiminy Cricket,

but my position affords me certain abilities that, if he were genuine, would be the envy of any conscience."

I just realized you wanted the first line of something I've written and not Dante :D

:blush:

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. "As the rain pelted his beret hat like a ferocious wildebeest bereft of kin,

his hardened-steel ratcheted socket wrench with the extension tube and a 3/16" hexagonal head fell out of the left pocket of his Cumberland overcoat and fell onto the poured concrete sidewalk, and thus did the beginning of his sick, grotesque demise that would horrify an entire world and leave seventeen-nineteenths of it eaten by radioactive giant rats, another one-thirty-eighths silently begging for death, their mouths quiet due to being burned away by acid and unable to kill themselves because their arms had been rendered into suet to feed the alien god-birds, one-thirty-eighth insanely hideously cackling uncontrollably, and the last one-seventy-sixth hopeless and anxious, and one-seventy-sixth being the ones horrified by his sick, grotesque demise and also by the destruction from the earthquakes from when the moon smashed into the earth in Europe, begin.

[CreekDog]

8. Even mine is better than this!

WTH?

[DS1]

12. Snap-on or Craftsman?

This Clancy fan has to know!

[Rabrrrrrr]

64. Ooops, sorry - I meant to include "pneumatically driven Snap-on that

came with a free calendar that he used to hang in his high school locker"

[unpossibles]

3. "It was funny and sad, like a trainwreck full of clowns."

Technically, that won't be a novel - it's for my memoirs. Then again, the line between Point Of View truth and fiction is kind of blurry.

That's also the title: A Trainwreck Full of Clowns. I might even make it a pop-up book, just for giggles.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

34. That's funny. And sad. And funny.

[unpossibles]

44. thanks.

I was going to make it a trainwreck of zombie clowns - for the funny, sad, scary trifecta, but decided it rolled off the tongue better as is.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

71. "A Trainwreck Full of Clowns" is one of the best titles ever.

[unpossibles]

83. thank you!

I've been kind of busy, but I need to get back to work on it.

[CreekDog]

4. Ok here goes:

OMG LOL LAST WEK I SAW SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER ON TV AND R3ALIEZD TAHT A LOT OF TAHT MUSIC MAEKS MA FEL GOD!!!1!!! OMG LOL I UESD 2 B QUIET TEH DANCER!11!!111!

--plagiarized, shamelessly.

[cloudbase]

5. It was a dark and stormy night.

C'mon, you knew it was coming!
I got nothin'.

[SeattleGirl]

41. Dang it, that was MY first line!

:rofl:

[LanternWaste]

6. "Illinois summers may not seem like paradise to us...

"An Illinois summer may not seem like paradise to us anymore, but to a twelve year old boy, that first day of vacation is more than magic... it's the day that the impossible is created."

I kid you not-- which is why I stick to writing screenplays-- there's no art involved in those. :evilgrin:

[Maraya1969]

7. "Everything smells like Rusty"

[BurtWorm]

9. Hey, you there in Borders: come get hooked on this book with me.

:patriot:

[gmoney]

10. Not sure if it's the first, but it certainly establishes the character.

"'Yeah,' I said, and started smoking another cigarette. Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, I'm always smoking another cigarette." --John Self in Martin Amis' MONEY

[theredpen]

11. The night was stormy and dark.

Original!

[lost-in-nj]

13. I guess in hindsight

I should have listened in Sex Ed....
If I had
I might not be where I am right now

my name is lost and this is my story....





lost

[Deep13]

14. Many people have written at length about the events of [***]...

...and they are all wrong.

[Fire Walk With Me]

15. The sky over the port was the color of television, tuned to Barney.

Riffing on, or stealing from, "Neuromancer" by William Gibson.

[BlueIris]

31. I was just going to post, "Now where have I heard that before, hmmmm?"

;-)

[Fire Walk With Me]

54. 14 years ago I tried writing an SF spoof.

That was about the only good bit and it's not even mine :)

[CreekDog]

16. edited to avoid stray lightning bolts

:eyes:

[Deep13]

17. Don't care for fiction myself. n/t

[LaurenG]

20. Oh - it was going to be so much more fun accusing you of plagiarism!

darnit! :rofl:

[CreekDog]

22. I was stealing from the best

:smoke:

[rug]

19. He thought maybe he shouldn't have sliced off the ears.

[Bucky]

21. "Call me the best of times." (It's a twofer)

[A-Schwarzenegger]

32. What the dickens? Well, it sounds like a whale of a story.

[KG]

23. Call me Ishmail...

:hi:

[BarenakedLady]

24. "Wanted: Apprentice.

Must have own broom. Ragtag fashion a plus. Please see Ms. Broomhilde Bogg, 13 Old Hag Lane, Town of Scree."

[Inchworm]

28. That sounds neat!

...dern no broom. We use a rake :P

Flirt- Flirt- Flirt- :loveya:

:hi:

[UrbScotty]

26. "Great performance last night," said Angelina to Brad.

Second sentence: Brad had just performed in the place they call 'Down Under.'

[BlueIris]

27. "They were so small when the Lookout first caught sight of them: two slow moving spheres of pearl...

approaching the perimeter, glinting nascently between the fir trunks also standing watch there."

Copyright BlueIris, 2007. You steal, you die.

ETA: Yes, I know I killed the joke in this thread. I don't care.

[DS1]

I'd drop the 'there' off the end

It's kinda redundant :P

[SteppingRazor]

45. I'd drop "at the edge of" for the same reason.

A perimeter is, by definition, the edge of something.

But then, I'm a fan of minimal writing, for the most part.

[BlueIris]

51. 'Kay, fellas? If this ever sees a pro editor, s/he is likely to shred every sentence.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but assuming I am blessed by any of the Publication Gods, creative control will go out the window. I doubt the first line will look anything like this. I just pulled it off my machine for fun.

[SteppingRazor]

56. D'oh! Sorry.

Being one of the aforementioned pro editors, I'm absolutely incorrigible when it comes to giving unsolicited and likely unwelcome advice. Mea culpa! :hi:

[DS1]

29. The book publisher never knew that as he dipped his quilled pen

into his inkwell in order to sign a declination letter to aspiring author Max Tankree, aspiring author and former ultra-sniper of the 3RD Elite Airborne Panzer Sniper Scout Team 6 Alpha Specialist Double First Class Max Tankree had already calculated the influence that the windage and window pane would have on his titanium-jacketed custom .708 calibre Winchester Magnum pre-rifled match-grade laser-balanced minuture-HEAT round before it slammed through the back of the his head.

[Oeditpus Rex]

30. 'It was a dark and stormy night

and Donald Rumsfeld was giving the president his daily briefing."

[SteppingRazor]

33. I've never quite finished one, but I've got a few half-completed ones...

Here's a couple openers.

They say the American Dream is dead, but I still believe.


I taught myself how to fall.

[skygazer]

35. The night was sultry.

:P

[Aristus]

37. Here's mine:

"I grew up in a small town called the United States Army."

[graywarrior]

38. Jack Haggerty held the Smith and Wesson 9 mm next to his temple and pulled the trigger.

[EnviroBat]

39. Her ample breasts were beginning to show throught her white

blouse being moistned by the gently falling summer rain...

Oops! Wrong novel...

[Bucky]

40. Well...

Thanks for that anyway.

[EnviroBat]

43. I do what I can...

[Inchworm]

46. Darn...

I was so there!

:applause:

[Aristus]

68. Wow. PM me the rest, will you?

:evilgrin:

[DarkTirade]

42. Gods, I haven't looked at my writings in so long...

They're all pretty crappy in hindsight. :P I need to get back on the wagon and start some of them over again. Good characters, decent plots... but I really just need to work on my storytelling.

[JoDog]

47. "Albert looked into the cracked glass

and smoothed back her hair and straightened her collar."

[Maddy McCall]

48. Belinda knew, when she saw the bloodstained poodle hair in the trash compactor, that she'd...

...never see her darling Buffy again.

[Redbear]

49. "I freakin hate computers,"

said the disheveled man sitting behind the large, expensive desk.

[Missy Vixen]

50. "I was going to kill my sister, Amy."

There it is ;-).

Julie

[madeline_con]

80. Clarify, please.

Is the speaker telling someone named Amy about wanting to kill his/her sister OR are they saying they were going to kill their sister, whose name is Amy?

[Missy Vixen]

81. The speaker is the heroine of my single title contemporary romance novel

The next line has something to do with wondering how she was going to tell Mom and Dad that Amy wouldn't be at Sunday dinner anymore, but she'd figure that out later...

Julie

[ET Awful]

52. I emerged from Topanga Canyon at twilight and caught my first glimpse of the ocean

sparkling in the moonlight in what appeared to be an imitation or maybe even a tribute to the darkening sky.

[LSK]

53. The End.

Its a short story.

:D

[SteppingRazor]

57. Heh. Does remind me, though, of what has to be the shortest story ever:

It was by Ernest Hemingway, and it was just six words long:

For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.

[TreasonousBastard]

55. over 7 billion dives in this galaxy, and I end up...

in a lesbian bar the second time in a month, and none of them knows how to fix a stardrive.

[Kutjara]

58. He dropped his Starbucks Venti Soy Latte in shock and stood up quickly from behind...

...his 2.4GHz Dell Inspiron laptop, sending his Herman Miller Aeron chair crashing into the Laura Ashley "Winter Rose"-clad wall of the Anoushka Hempel-designed study, as the news on the iHome HBR6000 clock radio, which he kept sitting atop the SubZero fridge-freezer (with filtered ice-water dispenser), announced that his best friend, the Armani-loving senior executive at Nordstrom, Mack Leopard, had been murdered while parking his new Mercedes SLK55 AMG outside the local branch of Borders Books, no doubt in an ill-fated attempt to buy the excellent new John Grisham novel, "Another Lawyer Does Some Lawyery Stuff."

OK, it's not much of a sentence, but think of the sponsorship potential. I wouldn't have to sell a single copy (which is probably just as well)!

Product placement's not just for Hollywood any more.

[Robb]

59. "In another town, I probably would’ve had more decisive plans..."

"...to justify turning the wrong way on a one-way street -- specially being, as I had to admit I was, four drinks into what had threatened to become another long night at the bar."

[Redstone]

60. My neighbor rolled his car slowly to a stop in front of my house. As I approached,

he rolled down his driver's-side window and solemnly announced: "In the trunk of my car, I have a keg of beer. And a pig."

Redstone

[SPKrazy]

61. okay

the people had finally had enough... and they took to the streets in not just anger, but pure unadulterated rage.

[texas1928]

62. All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy.

[Lyric]

63. "I remember that I was happy that day. The reason I remember this

is because the memory's color is yellow and bright, a warmth still felt behind eyelids that drew the curtains on that day over 20 years ago. Life is an ocean of colors for me. Other people organize their thoughts in words and shapes, but I was born knowing that contentment is peach and cream, disappointment is bitterly red, and love is the deep blue of a quarry lake in mid-August on a cloudless, brilliant day. I was ten before I realized that "the blues" weren't something that other people enjoyed."

More than one sentence, but there you go. :)

[mikita]

65. well I learned one thing from this thread...

I am definitely a fan of short first sentences for a novel I would pick up and read.

Thanks! :hi:

[KamaAina]

66. "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

oh, wait a minute, that's starting to sound familiar... back to the ol' drawing board...

edit: caps

[RushIsRot]

67. Specks of dust drifted slowly through the rays of sunlight that leaked past the

cracked wood in the old door.

[WolverineDG]

69. The students always wondered

what the small black box on Miss Dove's desk was for.

(this was from a dream; a pretty cool story too, but unfortunately, I never got past what happens when the kids find out exactly what that black box does)

dg

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

70. Ermintrude blinked awake abruptly when the door creaked open in the wind and

a urine-coloured stream of dusty light slid greasily across the crusty floor of her bedchamber, revealing to her horror the bloated, fly-blown corpse of her lover Raoul -- Raoul of the fleshy lavender lips; Raoul with his great pink hands the size of hubcaps; Raoul who could make damp noisy love even while strumming his nacre-inlaid bouzouki -- Raoul lay before her in the pale snot-textured light, dead as roadkill with Ermintrude's favourite icepick protruding from his left nostril -- and alas, she remembered that it was she herself who, rage-inflamed, had driven the icepick with passion and despair crunchingly into her lover's rubbery nose.

[zingaro]

72. Somehow

the idea of a "favourite icepick" delights me. :)

[Generic Brad]

73. "Fuckity-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck"

The possibilities are endless after that crass attention grabber.

[madeline_con]

74. Excerpt. I don't have a first sentence per say...

"He looked at Jesse sitting there smiling smugly, like he'd just committed the crime of the century and knew he was going to get away with it. He knew that even if he had 50 grand and gave it to the dumb son of a bitch, he'd drift off to some dive down around Belle Glade and call his old pal every time he ran out of money. He wanted to kick him in his nicotine stained teeth. No, this wouldn't end with a one-time pay off. Jesse'd have to be done away with. "Tell you what I'll do. You take the five I've got on me and get me that package, and I'll give you the rest of what's owed to you."

[Mojambo]

75. The first sentence of my self-help book...

"Fat losers are like snowflakes, no two are ever the same."

[WCGreen]

76. So I says to my wife with the wooden leg...

Peg....

This is the beginning of one novel....

She was one of those unique people, I suppose, who can let the stages of life swirl around harmlessly, never changing, always being true to themselves.


And this is the beginning of the next one... It's more than a sentance but here it is...

Cepheus Yadkin was working his well honed survival skills overtime just to try and stay focused on the distant flickering cabin light. It was his beacon, his safe passage home. This far back off the road, that little smidge of light was all there was and dang it all, it moved, danced around the dense forest, catching hold of a branch here, dripping from a bush there, but mainly it just licked the edges, sometime visable, sometime lost for a moment in the shadows of the night.

[qwertyMike]

77. She stood there

Ovulating

I confess I stole that

[CaliforniaPeggy]

78. I'm not writing prose...

How about a line of poetry?


She turned in the water

It sprayed over her

It heated her skin, her mind, her memory...

[Starbucks Anarchist]

79. "John didn't say a word."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=216x4688

[RetroLounge]

82. Okay, here's 2 of mine...

"The two snowmobiles shot out across the frozen lake, their headlights reaching out into the darkness, barely piercing the accumulating snowfall."

and another

"Never underestimate the seductive powers of an unhappy woman who owns a comfortable couch."

:hi:

RL

[PVnRT]

84. The Tajiki man looked at the dead emu,

the Stephen Hawking book and the remnants of ten pounds of cocaine and wondered what to make for his mid-morning snack.

[MrScorpio]

85. Prologue: They called it THE FALL.

Most people thought that it was the end of the world as they knew it. Well, you can’t blame them for thinking that. Because in a way, it was the end of the very world that they’ve come to know and love. Of course, little did they know that it was actually the beginning of a grand new world. And as all new worlds are built on the shambles of the old, this new world was no exception.

The reasons for the upheaval were both simple and complex. In the purest essence of truth, The Fall came because of a loss of faith. Faith in the intricate fabric of civilization. Faith in government and faith in commerce. The politicians and the moguls who supported them became irrelevant. Scandal and bankruptcy had finally taken its toll, and the people had had enough of it. Too many young people had lost their precious lives in meaningless wars in foreign lands, and most of all, loss of hope had blanketed the planet.

Global economic collapse of all the major governments cascaded like a massive tidal wave across the Earth. Markets finally buckled under the weight of massive government debt, malfeasance and excess. The burden of an aging population and decades of disease. wars, terror attacks and retaliation finally took their toll on the fragile body of international commerce and diplomacy and the poor and unprepared suffered horribly. Cities burned and scores of people were slaughtered in a bloody orgy of civil violence and despair.

Well, they can’t say that they weren’t warned.