Opening Lines For A Story (Great, Effective & Bad Examples)

What’s great & effective? What’s downright bad?
Real Examples From Real Writers.

Recently, we ran a competition soliciting opening lines or sentences from real writers, with a small prize available for the winner. We’re going to look at some examples drawn from that competition… along with my own (hyper-picky) comments about what’s really good, and really effective. And what’s just a bit… not so good.

Before we plunge into our sentence surgery, three quick comments.

First, the examples that follow are drawn from writers writing real novels (or short stories). They are, like you, serious aspiring writers, but not yet published. For the most part, we were looking at works-in-progress, so these examples were all subject to change anyway.

Second, opening sentences don’t matter all that much. The opening paragraph of the novel I’ve just handed to my publisher ran, in its entirety, as follows:

‘Rain.’

Was that a good opening line for a novel? Well, no one asked me to change it, but does that sentence hook a reader in? And hook them into a story set in Wales, where the presence of rain hardly merits much discussion? I don’t think so.

The fact is that the process of hooking a reader usually takes longer than a sentence and writers shouldn’t obsess unduly about the stuff above and to the left of the manuscript’s first full stop. There’ll be plenty more full stops to come.

And last: I’m horrible.

I mean, yes, I’m nice to widows, orphans and stray dogs, but I’m horrible to slightly iffy sentences. I’m very picky and my standards are high. So if some of my could-do-better commentary below depresses you – well, forget it. It’s not you. It’s me. But if you want to learn how to write opening sentences, then you probably want to look at what follows…

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How To Write A Good Opening Line:

• Full stops are your friends. Short, clear sentences will grab your readers’ attention.
• Use language that will add weight to your sentences.
• Use your verbs correctly, and your adjectives sparingly.
• Opening lines don’t have to be loud, subtlety is just as effective.

Opening Lines To Novels / Short Stories: Examples

So much for the preamble. Now for the sentences. (No authors are named because very few of the sentences I had had named authors on the page.)

Example #1

‘There were just three things that Samine was certain of in her life; first she was dangerous; second, she was never allowed to leave her room and, third, the spirit of a dragon lived inside her.’

Not bad, though it’s a little too close to Stephenie Meyer’s now famed three-part quote from Bella Swan in Twilight. Still, you can see what the author is wanting to do and the idea itself is fine. Here’s one way of tweaking things without altering anything too much (though it brings it still closer to Stephenie Meyer’s phrasing):

There were just three things that Samine knew for certain. First she was dangerous. Second, she was never allowed to leave her room. Third, a dragon lived inside her.

That’s shorter, clearer. It’s also better weighted. The key word in the first part of the writer’s sentence is “certain”. The addition of “in her life” doesn’t add much meaning but it does de-emphasise “certain”. My formulation is that bit clearer about where the interest of the sentence lies.

One other thing, I’m not sure if this is the place to reveal that Samine can’t leave her room. The middle of one of the three certainties doesn’t tie obviously to the other two and feels a bit different. (#1 and #3 feel like existential statements; #2 feels like a simple, known fact.) But if the middle of those three statements goes, then the whole opening needs reconsideration.

Example #2
‘The most ironic thing about your first impression of me – I looked like butter wouldn’t melt.’

Interesting. I almost like this.

My only real worry is that “the most ironic thing” bit. It feels a bit like a teenage use of ironic, which is perhaps not correct given the context, but in any case, I do wonder if there aren’t simpler, less laboured ways of doing the same thing. Suppose, for example, we just said this:

Your first impression of me: I looked like butter wouldn’t melt.

That is surely strongly suggesting that that first impression might be way off base, yet it conveys that impression by making the reader do most of the work. As a rough guide, the more the reader feels they’ve made a deduction, the more powerful that conclusion will feel.

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Example #3
‘He’s stalking behind the disused factory, waiting for the flapping of wings to alert him to where you are.’

You remember when I said I’m pedantic?

To stalk is a transitive verb, that is, it requires an object. I stalk you, etc., I don’t just stalk in the abstract. So that first clause feels a bit uncomfortable.

And “alert him to where you are” also feels a little bit strained. Wouldn’t “alert him to your position” read better? And the double participle (waiting for the flapping) seems a bit needless here. But you only need a little tweaking and this is a strong, engaging opening:

He’s searching you out behind the disused factory, waiting for a sudden flap of wings to reveal your position.

That’s better.

(Oh, you want to delete the word “sudden” from that? Yes, that’s probably better.”)

Example #4
‘The house had something American Gothic about it, though nothing it was minded to share.’

Excellent!

Nothing to pick at, except that me personally I’d probably sooner say “had something of the American Gothic …”. But it’s a great, subtle opening. I like it a lot.

Example #5
‘What do you pack when you have four minutes to leave your husband?’

Again, that’s great opening line.

Oh, and you want to know why that sentence works as well as it does? It’s because it makes you do a double-take. The first part of the sentence makes you think, “oh, this is a question about packing…”

The second part makes you go, “whaaaaaat?!” It’s that mid-sentence pivot that gives it wellie.

It’s also nice, because it instantly launches the reader into two important story-questions. Not just “why is this woman leaving her husband?”, but “why does she only have four minutes?”

Of those two questions, it’s the second one that has the greater bite. Marriages collapsing are (unfortunately) a rather everyday occurrence. Marriages that collapse and give the wife just one minute to get away – well! We want to know more.

Example #6
‘My mother’s shroud was a grubby net curtain and her coffin was a gun case.’

You like that, don’t you?

Yes, and it’s almost terrific.

But I don’t like that word “grubby”, at all. It pulls attention away from “net curtain” and the use of a net curtain for a shroud is quite striking enough irrespective of whether it’s grubby. Just delete the adjective. The sentence gets instantly stronger. (Incidentally, all the prose-correction techniques we’re dealing with in this post are covered in much greater detail via our creative writing courses. Those courses are designed to give you practical and actionable tips to improve your writing, immediately.)

Also, I hope this writers is about to tell us how come the gun case was big enough to fit a mother. I mean, that’s a very large case, or a remarkably small mother. So long as the author explains that niggle sometime soon, that’s fine, and (once you’ve deleted that “grubby”) it’s a good opening line.

Example #7
‘It was not a good day to bury a child, let alone ‘The Chosen One’, and the more Thomas Cowper tried to console his mother the more she sobbed, ‘Fear not, Mary… Blessed art thou amongst women.’

Hmm.

I’m afraid I don’t rate this as an opening line. It’s almost good, but gets itself into a tangle, then trips over itself.

And the thing is, the best bit of this sentence is the very opening and the longer it goes on the more the writer overwrites that clean and striking opening.

Some full stops would help:

It was not a good day to bury a child, let alone ‘The Chosen One’. The more Thomas Cowper tried to console his mother the more she sobbed. ‘Fear not, Mary … Blessed art thou amongst women.’

That’s already a lot better. Even so, I’m not completely happy. That opening line now has real merit and launches plenty of story questions (why is this a bad day? Why is a child being buried? Why is this child The Chosen One?)

So if it were me, I’d leave the reader dangling a bit more, before starting to answer the questions they really cared about.

So I’d run with the first question (why is this a bad day?), and just answer it with a description of winds and rain. Mourners getting soaked. Rain on the preacher’s Bible. That kind of thing.

And this approach would work because I’m pretending to answer the questions I opened up with my first sentence … but not the ones the reader really cares about. It’s like the reader is yelling at me, WHY ARE YOU BURYING THIS CHILD? and all I’m doing is explaining why the day is a bad one. I’ve basically created suspense already, and my description of the weather is just keeeeping that suspense going for longer.

Example #8
‘Deano’s hair was still wet from the pool and he swept his palm over his scalp trying to chase off the cold. ‘Come on, cock-snot. Pick up. Please.’’

Okay, I very much like the dialogue.

I like the contrast with the more formal opening line. The writing itself is fine. Just… I don’t quite believe the gesture you’re telling us about.

When people get out of the pool their hair is normally already very flat and smoothed from the water. You definitely can’t chase cold away by palming your already flat hair and it’s not even a gesture most of us feel tempted to make. If he’s cold, he grabs a towel, or moves into the sun, or does something other than what you tell us he’s done.

Picky? Yes. But getting those kinds of details utterly convincing from the off is part of what gets a reader into the story. Here, you do get the reader in, but you’ve done so with a tiny – and needless – stutter upfront.

Example #9
‘The hands on the clock didn’t seem to move, unlike mine as I drummed and fidgeted on the table.’

Hmm, this is okay, but it’s not quite good.

The hands-not-moving-on-the-clock isn’t a cliche exactly, but it is a very familiar idea. Likewise fidgeting hands: also a very standard way of conveying impatience. Further into a novel, those kind of issues dissolve a little bit. Sometimes it’s just quicker and cleaner to reach for the familiar, so the novel can hurry onto wherever it’s heading. But in an opening sentence, I think any whiff of cliche threatens a reader’s trust, and you need to extirpate it completely. As I say, there isn’t an out-and-out cliche here, but I do think you’re cycling a little too close to the edge.

My verdict? Rethink this sentence from scratch.

Example #10
‘The cat barked.’

Everyone will want to read on to see what follows. Purrfect. That’s a terrific opening line.

Example #11
‘The fucking train is cancelled. Again.’

Yep, good – cancelled trains as a sign of commuter distress is well-used, however, so I hope the writer has an interesting way to develop the incident. I would be disappointed in an opening page that just rehearsed the various woes of the commuter – but we’re on sentences here, not pages, and the sentence itself is fine.

And finally:

Example #12
‘I had not been awake long, when I heard the knock on the door, I opened it and saw Sheriff Dennis Munroe on the porch, he stood a little over five foot six, but gave the appearance of being almost cubic he weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds and had arms like a bear, thick, powerful and covered in coarse black hair.’

Here’s one of those ‘sentences’ which is begging to be carved up. A few full stops instantly make this a mile better:

I had not been awake long, when I heard the knock on the door. I opened it and saw Sheriff Dennis Munroe on the porch. He stood a little over five foot six, but gave the appearance of being almost cubic. He weighed over two hundred and fifty pounds and had arms like a bear, thick, powerful and covered in coarse black hair.

That’s a relief already, only a few remaining niggles really.

Using Munroe’s full name doesn’t seem right, since the narrator clearly knows the guy, and we don’t think of people as know as Title Firstname Lastname. Yes, you may want to give us Munroe’s full name in due course, but you don’t have to do it here.

Secondly, that last sentence has four ands in it. That feels awkward, especially so early in the book.

Third, how does the narrator know what Munroe weighs? I mean, the sheriff is clearly a fellow who likes his meat and potatoes, but that’s different from knowing someone’s measured weight. I’m not convinced.

And finally, a minor thing, I have a hesitation about ‘I opened it’: it’s just that you’re narrating every tiny incident, even those we take for granted. Better to take a slightly less blow-by-blow approach.

Something like this, maybe:

It was early, when Sheriff Munroe came calling. He stood at my door, five feet six and almost cubic. He must weigh close to two hundred and fifty pounds, and he has the arms of a bear: thick, powerful and profusely hairy.

I know that last sentence still has three ands, but the restructuring helps the rhythm, at least to my ear. And it’s so much shorter! It has the exact same content as the first sentence, but compresses it into a much shorter space. Result: much more energy per pound – and a much more compelling story.

Best Opening Lines: The Winner

There, we’re all done. If I must pick a winner, I’ll go for:

‘What do you pack when you have four minutes to leave your husband?’

Or:

‘The house had something [of the] American Gothic about it, though nothing it was minded to share.’

I like both of those. The second is a bit more literary; the first is a terrific opening line for a psychological thriller, or something of that sort. They’re both excellent.

And One Last Comment On Story Openings

The thing to remember?

That your opening line it doesn’t really matter. The opening sentences for my five Fiona Griffiths novels are:

#1: Beyond the window, I can see three kites hanging in the air over Bute Park.

#2: It’s a Friday afternoon.

#3: I like the police force.

#4: Rain.

#5: ‘Well?’

None of those are good opening sentences (though none of them are terrible). And, in most cases, it doesn’t take long to get something that puts a scrap of meat on the reader’s dish. The opening paragraph to my second Fi Griffiths novel, for example, goes like this:

Example: Love Story, with Murders
It’s a Friday afternoon. October, but you wouldn’t think so. High clouds scudding in from the west and plenty of sunshine. The last shreds of summer and never mind the falling leaves.

That last sentence already advertises a certain strength and confidence. The reader feels immediately placed in the mood of the story. Because the writing has that confident tone, the reader trusts me.

It’s as though they’re thinking, “OK, this is supposed to be a crime story. Nothing much seems to be happening yet, but I can tell this author knows what he’s doing, so I’ll stick with him and see what develops.”

An opening paragraph can do more if it wants to, but it really doesn’t have to. Notice that this opening para sets up nothing interesting about the character, the situation, or, indeed, even the weather. It just sets a scene and does so with confidence.

If your manuscript does that then, no matter how unshowy that opening sentence, you’re doing just fine.

Oh, and if you need a little more inspiration for your opening lines, check these out.

More than ready to get the ball rolling with agents, but just need a little push? Or perhaps you’ve had a few rejections but aren’t sure why? Our Agent Submission Pack Review gives you detailed professional advice on how to perfect your submission and increase your chances of securing an agent.

Happy writing – and happy editing!