What are the best opening lines of a novel?
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
The Gunslinger, Stephen King
“The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”
“Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.”
1984 by George Orwell
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
If you really want to
hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know
The Jane Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
My father had a face that could stop a clock.
This is Stephen King’s favourite opening line posted on facebook 26 March 2016
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“The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.” - Stephen King's IT
John Fagan looks at two authors and compares the best opening lines from:
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens vs It by Stephen King
It’s said by many that the opening paragraph, even the first sentence, of a novel is crucial in pulling the reader into a story. If a writer gets that right, they’ve won the first battle.
There are many different ways to open a novel. You can start with the hero’s point of view, from the perspective of another character, or even just setting the scene with a shot at the setting. What’s most important is that it strikes a chord with the reader. They are offering to invest their time in the story, so it should be an appealing invitation from the start and this is not easy to achieve.
We can look at two of the most successful writers of all time, Charles Dickens and Stephen King, and their most memorable novel openings to see how this can be achieved.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Dickens' most famous opening is a 119-word sentence that marks the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities. Published back in 1859, it’s a story set in London and Paris as the French Revolution is beginning to erupt.
Long sentences are risky as they tend to bore the reader but Dickens gets this one perfect. It’s poetic, contrasting opposites of the people caught up in the French Revolution, and sets the tone of what’s to follow.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
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The opening works because the prose melts with ease into your memory. When thinking about the opening of novels, it is one that many people know, even those who have never read it. And that’s not by accident. There is a feeling of chaos as you enter the story and it pulls you down into its poetic sinkhole.
Dickens loved to show the polar opposite sides in his Victorian fiction, mainly the poor working in the filthy factories and those who lorded over them. In A Tale of Two Cities, all it took was one long, meandering sentence to set the scene to perfection and the two polar opposite sets of people are portrayed.
'It' by Stephen King
Published in 1986, It is one of King’s most famous novels about a group of kids who are terrorised by an unknown evil that takes the disguise of a clown. The opening sentence is 39-words long, far less than Dickens’, but is equally as powerful.
“The terror that would not end for another 28 years, if it ever did, began so far as I can know or tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.”
King admits that he worked on that opening line countless times to get it just right. And it’s one of the most memorable in all of fiction. Why? Well, you instantly want to know more about this story. What is this unknown terror? Why will it not end for another 28 years or longer? We are out in the rain beside a gutter and there’s a child’s boat. It gives out a feeling of uneasiness and like Dickens’ takes us into a world that has our curiosity.
King says the opening should say to the potential reader:
“Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”
However, this hook, for want of a better word, has to be honest. There’s no point in writing an amazing first sentence or paragraph that has nothing in common with the rest of the novel. The writer is making a promise to the reader and they have to uphold that promise or they will disappoint them in their expectations.
The opening is only one battle. The war is the story itself. But there’s a lot of power in an opening line when a novelist gets it right, like Dickens and King have, and captures the reader in one single sentence.
Come and Meet John Gerard Fagan
A Scottish writer and Creative Writing Assistant Professor. He writes in both English and Scots and in a number of genres, including Japanese historical fiction and crime noir. He moved back to Scotland in late 2019 after being in Japan for the last decade.
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Reader’s Favourite first lines from Stephen Kings novels
Kelly La Rue, I'm a voracious reader “Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.”—The Shining
“If you liked being a teenager, there’s something really wrong with you.”
“Humor is almost always anger with its make-up on.”—Bag of Bones
“When it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.”—Joyland
“Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.”—On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“Reading a good long novel is in many ways like having a long and satisfying affair.”—Skeleton CrewWhat makes a great opening line in your
first chapter?
So let’s talk about opening lines. The first paragraph, and especially the first sentence, is one of the most important things in your book. Whole classes are dedicated to it. You need a hook in the first line, on the 3rd sentence or at the end of the first paragraph, and one at the end of page one. When a potential buyer is in the book store they are attracted to your cover and your title. Then they turn the book over and read the back cover. It better have a killer back-cover blurb. If they like that, they will begin to read the first page. You MUST hook them right then or they will put your book back on the shelf and go on to the next book. It can mean the difference between a sale or a no sale.
Here are 12 tips to help you write a great beginning.
1) Resist the temptation to start too early. Telling us about your character waking up, taking a shower and eating breakfast is not compelling reading. If your heroine is going to attend a party, begin the story as she enters the party not getting ready in front of a mirror combing her hair. Start the page at the first moment of conflict. Jump into your tale midstream.
Also, avoid telling us what the character is wearing or eating or drinking unless it is important to the story or to character development. No one really cares, especially on the first few pages.
2) Choose a natural starting point and write your way into the story. A complicated tale may have many places it could start so pick the most interesting facet to begin. You need to hook your reader right to get the sale. If your story is about a man who is going to rob a bank, start with him handing the note to the teller. Don’t start with his problems in high school and how he married the wrong woman and how he recently got fired from his job and what let up to his decision to rob this bank. Those details are important and will flesh out your character, as well as show his motivation, but work them in a little at a time as back story. Avoid info dump; that is, flooding the reader with details all in one lump.
3) Choose your tense and point of view. Most readers are not aware of tense and POV but editors/agents are. Keep your writing smooth and consistent and try not to jump around. Although you will see well-known authors writing that way, they know what they’re doing. You want your readers to see the least amount of stitches in the fabric, so create as few seams as possible.
4) Don’t disappoint the reader by starting out with a bang and then going nowhere. You must fulfill your promise to the reader; the promise you gave him in that first sentence and paragraph. If this is purported to be a funny book, make it funny to the end. Don’t let it lose momentum or you’ll lose your reader.
Also, if your opening is strange or misleading, you will have trouble living up to the expectation. Never cheat the reader.
5) Don’t get ahead of the reader. The story has to flow with a natural sequence. You know the neighbor is a vampire but you haven’t clued the reader in yet so they may get confused. Few readers will continue a story they can’t follow.
6) Don’t start out with overt terror or overly gruesome details. Feed gore in your story in little pieces. A little goes a long way here. If you start off strong, you will have to stay strong and most people won’t be able to stomach 80 thousand words of bloody mess and heart-stopping fear.
7) Avoid writing long setting descriptions. This is a common error for new writers. Describing the sky and the clouds and the sunset is not going to grab your reader. Save all that for the poetry books. Fill in the necessary information and get on with the story.
8) That goes double for starting off with a dream sequence. If the reader gets involved with the story and then finds out none of it was real, it was all a dream, he will feel cheated.
9) Start out with a strong character. First time novelists often try to lure the reader into the story by holding back the main character. Establish your main character’s situation right away. If you manage to get your reader to care about your hero/heroine, the story line really becomes secondary as the reader will follow those characters wherever the story takes them. Beloved characters can turn one book into a series.
10) Keep the reader guessing from the start. While you don’t want to confuse your reader, giving them a puzzle or unanswered question is very effective. They will keep reading to find the answer.
11) Avoid starting out with pages of dialogue. You must build a relationship between your character and your reader. That’s difficult to do through cold dialogue on the first page when the reader really doesn’t know the heart of who is speaking. Dialogue mixed with a bit of narrative works well as it reads quickly, and readers like white pages but not in the very beginning of your book.
12) Once you reach the end, revisit the beginning. The original story line often changes as the tale unfolds. A new opening line may be necessary to fit the revamped story.
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