Opening Sentence

Some time ago I received a link from my friend Melody that appeared in The Atlantic on how much time Stephen King spends on “opening sentences” to his novels. It is also interesting that he concentrates on an opening sentence

I hope some of our keen fiction writers who have not read the article will do so. I have bookmarked it. I am no fan of Stephen King but I read his “On Writing” twice and I am sure I shall find reading it a third time just as illuminating. Interesting how hard famous writers work

The first page of “God of Small Things” by Arundathi Roy gives us a clue to the whole story, I thought it was powerfully written and did not fail to keep one going.

One of the commentators says of opening sentences: “We’re intrigued by the promise that we’re just going to zoom.”

For me first lines are not a problem, it’s the endings I cannot come up with. First lines of some of my short stories the collection:

Floating Petals

“I am ten and my friends smell of fish.”
“It is still dark at predawn. I panic, I look around, can’t find myself.”
“Gods, they were many in our household.”
“When did they break your toes?”

Quite often opening sentences pose problems. “Open a book in the middle of a dramatic or compelling situation, because right away you engage the reader’s interest” says one author but quite often I find a plodding back story starts to unfold after that. And there times too when one reads a great and catchy first sentence or paragraph and the book quietly dribbles into mundane.

I partially agree with a reader who said:
“In my opinion, if an author needs a catchy first sentence to draw his reader in, he’s missing something much more important. (Similarly, if a reader judges a book by its first sentence, that reader must be so lacking in understanding of writing that why the heck would anyone write for him anyway?)
A good book is a good book. A catchy first sentence is the pretty parsley on top.”

Ouch!