For my first post, I figured it would be elegant to write about great openings to stories. The best ones capture your entire attention, often in a single line. And those lines sometimes tell an entire story themselves.
Some accomplish greatness with an exquisite description and delivery of emotion that cradles the entire novel:
Some accomplish greatness with an exquisite description and delivery of emotion that cradles the entire novel:
| "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - Neuromancer, by William Gibson. |
Some catch your attention with juxtaposition of matter-of-fact statement with a shocking visual or a striking absurdity:
| "It was the day my grandmother exploded." - The Crow Road, by Iain Banks. "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink." - I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith |
Or retrospective that kindles an eagerness to learn how things ended up as stated:
| Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. - One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez |
The unusual or out-of-place captures the mind with a dissonance that it must mend by reading further:
| "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." - 1984, by George Orwell "It was a pleasure to burn." - Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury |
As there are countless ways to tell a great story, there are countless ways to write a powerful opening. These are only a handful of the sands from that shore.
Here, I offer up some beginnings I'd like to see, and one day might write stories to finish them off:
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