In the beginning was the word. Inspiration from opening lines

In my previous blog about novel endings, I suggested that these are rather like the finale of a musical or an opera. A good ending will send you out of the theatre whistling a catchy tune and, hopefully, the tune will remain in your consciousness for a long time. The opening of a novel serves a similar function in reverse. It gives the writer an opportunity to hook the reader by offering him/her a tasty morsel. This morsel can tempt us to find out more. It can offer us a glimpse into the theme of the book. Good morsels can also set the tone, set the story in motion and dare the reader to take another bite. Here are some examples from well-known novels and one from a not-so-well-known novel. Can you guess where these 6 beginnings come from? If not, can you guess the name of the writer? The pic below will help you with one author.

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul."

"Now they were there again... They were in the seventh and last flight, and the city, as they came over it, was no longer a city but a lake of orange fire. There were the bright beams of searchlights and the tracers rising in a flowing dome against the darkness. There were the swift, scudding shapes of the other planes. In the sudden glare that filled the cockpit Martin Ordway could see the face of his co-pilot, Riggs, bent tensely over the instrument panel. He saw the yellow down on the cheekbones, the boy's blue eyes, the tiny pulse throbbing in the tight line of the jaw."

"Call me Ishmael."

 "In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees."

"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."

"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."

 

 

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[Christopher Goddard]

Number one - Lolita; number 3 Moby Dick; number 6 Cien Anos de Soledad.

[robert john goddard]

Plus: The White Tower, Tale of Two Cities, and A Farewell to Arms