Famous First Lines: How to Hook Your Reader from the First Sentence

with practical tips and a guided writing exercise

This piece is the second of three practical articles on kickstarting our stories. The first was Getting Started Is Easier Than You Imagine. This one’s about first lines, first paragraphs and how to hook our readers right from the beginning. I hope you find it useful!

‘The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.’ Blaise Pascal

Once upon a time . . . I have to admit this is my all-time favourite story opening and it’s probably the most famous, most familiar and most loved story opening of all time. Those words are a signal that we’re about to be transported into a story. Step on the magic carpet they tell us, make yourself comfortable, suspend your disbelief, open up your imagination and allow yourself to be carried into the world of the story, wherever and whatever that may be.

The Function of First Lines

The opening lines that go down in history are ones that, just like Once upon a time, arrest the reader in some way and transport us immediately into the story.

• Anna Funder’s novel, All That I Am, has a memorable opening line – ‘When Hitler came to power I was in the bath.’ It’s arresting and intriguing, providing a startling contrast between the warm comfort of a bath and the cold shock of a terrible moment in history.

• Then there's Jane Austen's famous line from Pride and Prejudice, 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.' This humorously asserts a 'so called' universal truth and in doing so, beautifully establishes the narrative voice and tone of the novel.

• ‘I write this sitting in the kitchen sink,’ is the first line from Dodie Smith’s novel, I Capture the Castle, and immediately signals both an unusual story and an eccentric first person voice.

• In Peter Pan, J.M.Barrie opens with ‘All children, except one, grow up.’ An emphatic statement, a bold exception and a curious introduction to the main character.

• In The Outsider, Albert Camus establishes the literary genre, the existential mood of the story and the detached voice of the protagonist in just one line, ‘Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.’

Initially my second novel Flight opened with this sentence:

'It had been days, possibly weeks, since Fern had ventured out of her attic.'

However, about halfway through the novel I went back to the beginning and wrote a Prologue which opens with:

'I came early, slithering into the outside world and into safety, or so I hoped.'

The Prologue and Chapter One are clearly distinct in tone and voice so in a sense these are both opening lines. Both of them allude to danger, and both raise questions. Why is Fern stuck in her attic? What is the danger? And then there’s the incongruity around finding safety outside the womb and the strangeness of using the first person voice of a baby . . .

Like most story elements, openings have a number of functions which it’s useful to be familiar with when starting a story. Openings need to do some or all of the following:

• generate questions the reader needs/wants answers to (hooks)

• establish pace

• establish tone/style

• establish the genre (often linked to pace)

• introduce a character/voice

• reveal the physicality of the world of the story

• position the story in time and space – where, when, what (but the why and the how come later)

• reveal the point of view

How to Hook Your Reader

Needless to say, we all want the perfect opening line, something that catches our readers attention right from the beginning, something that transports them into the story and holds them there. However, the perfect opening line loses its power if the paragraphs and pages that follow don’t fulfil the promise of the first line. Opening pages also need to be intriguing, they need to seduce us, startle us, make our spirits lift with anticipation or make us sigh with their beauty.

We can start with a narrative description, as in Arundhati Roy's, The God of Small Things, or with a shocking action scene, as in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code, or with a profound philosophical statement, as in Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. We might start with a strong character voice in the form of a monologue, as in J D Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, or with a narrative summary as in The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx. Regardless of our individual taste as readers and writers, these are all superb examples (in their respective genres), of opening pages that raise questions and draw the reader in.

Depending on the genre and the requirements of a particular story, there are a number of ways to begin a story:

• with a vivid description of place and or character.

• with a narrative summary that leads us to the point of action

• with a profound philosophical statement

• with an intriguing statement, which might appear to contradict itself

• with action

• with dialogue/monologue

• with conflict/contrast

• with character interactions

• with a wide angle and a gradual zoom-in to a particular character or scene

• with a close focus and a gradual zoom-out to establish the context and world of the story

The Power of a Good Edit

While you might be lucky and find the perfect opening line immediately, it’s rarer to get the opening pages right on the first draft. I stayed with the initial opening line for Flight, but the opening pages were much more difficult to get right. I knew the themes I wanted to work with and I also had an opening image in my mind, but I had no idea what happened next. The only way I could find my way in was to write and write, page after page until the story and the characters found me. As a result, when my publisher at HarperCollins first read Flight, although she loved it, she was insistent that the opening chapters needed cutting back. Drastically.

Unconvinced, I reluctantly returned to my desk, where to my surprise I quickly discovered that much of the early material was superfluous because I’d written my way into the story. In the end I reduced the first four chapters to a single chapter and cut around 20,000 words from the first third of the novel. It felt surprisingly good doing all this cutting, and in the process no thematic depth was lost, nor was the richness of setting or the credibility of the characters reduced. In fact, the novel was far better for being heavily pruned. Instead of slowly meandering towards the beginning of action it began at the point where action was imminent, which increased the pace and made the story more compelling.

When we start a story, a novel, a non-fiction piece, we haven't yet found our voice or the style and tone of the piece, and it’s highly unlikely that we’ve got to know our characters. We might also be fumbling our way towards understanding what it is we’re setting out to express. As a result the early writing is often more wooden and less confident than later pages. There are so many elements that need fine tuning in these early pages: pace, style, establishment of character, setting, plot, motives. . . We often give too much away, or conversely, say too little. We might meander towards the story or plunge in without giving the reader time to commit to the story. And finally, for some reason we usually become most sentimentally attached to our early pages probably because it feels so miraculous just to have started! It's always hardest to 'kill our darlings'.

Rosie

PS: Let me know if you want to do a deep dive into any of the material I’ve discussed here. I’m thinking of breaking some of the functions down further and elaborating in a future piece.

A Guided Writing Exercise

Playing with story openings is a great way to create a more flexible approach and let go of the fear around starting.

Firstly, choose a simple fairytale, such as The Ugly Duckling and think about all the places where you might start telling that story. Would you open with the nest filled with small eggs and one very big one and show the mother duck puzzling over it? Would you open later when the Ugly Duckling is being bullied? Or later still when he runs away? Then moving back in time after the opening to fill in the reader on the back story.

How would you open it? Would you describe the world of the story? Offer a philosophical statement that references the theme? Plunge into an action scene?

Now close your eyes, and think about the story you’re working on or want to start. If you don’t have one, then work with the fairy story you chose. Draw in your mind the parameters of that story, or at least as much as you currently know. Think about where and how you might start it. What would be an intriguing opening line, paragraph, page?

Take another look at the list of ways you can open a story. Choose one and write an opening paragraph or two.

Read it over and then go back and look at the list of functions a strong opening has. Ask yourself what dot points your opening ticks. Is there something else you could add to give the reader more clues about your story? If so, give it a rewrite.

Now, start again and repeat the process. Write an alternative opening for your story/anecdote – starting at a different place and/or using a different approach.

You can do this as many times as you like, until you find a place and an approach that feels right.

I’m Dr Rosie Dub, a novelist and non-fiction writer, as well as a creative writing teacher, mentor and developmental editor. My PhD research explored the purpose and function of story as an evolutionary tool for individuals and societies. I’m also the creator of the Alchemy of Story workshop series.

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