Best Opening Lines of Books Ever

Chad Huskins is the EVVY Award-winning author of Zero Star and The Sol Ascendancy.

I got inspired recently to write up a list of the opening lines in novels that have stuck out to me be the most.  So here they are, in no particular order, with an explanation of why these are so great.

1.  "Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet." - Robert E. Howard, The Phoenix on the Sword (the first Conan story)

This one is famous among fans of the "sword and sorcery" genre.  It sets the stage perfectly for the story that is about to unravel, a story told by Howard's brutal imagery, his wondrous worlds, and his driving narrative that revealed barbarism as something potentially redemptive in Man, and not something to be shunned or hated.  Howard had a strong belief in the masculine, in the iron will to forge one's own path, as Conan does.  This opening line basically says, "Here comes a badass, and you'd do well to get out of his way."

2.  "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."  - Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice

From the masculine, we go to the feminine...and the witty.  Like any good opening line should do, Austen's presents a general premise without trying to divulge plot-plot-plot all at once.  Some people miss the humor in the opening line, thinking Austen is dead serious.  Far from it.  She means it in the sense that people have accepted that a single man who is rich must be searching for a wife, particularly in the world she's established.  The people in her story (and of the Age she lived in) care for nothing more than to have their daughters married well off, hopefully to the advantage of the rest of the family--i.e., her husband is rich and can help pay everyone's bills.

3.  "Call me Ishmael.  Some years ago--never mind how long, precisely..."  Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Though I don't have the room to thoroughly go through Melville's entire opening, it all stems from this line, which immediately establishes a familiarity between the reader and the narrator.  And yet there is also great ambiguity right off the bat, for Melville basically says "Just call me by my first name," doesn't bother with a last name, and then just says "this happened a while back, but it doesn't matter just how long ago."  Familiarity coupled with ambiguity...kind of like an old friend you've not seen in a while, returning to tell you about a thing that changed him forever while he was gone.  The reader is invited in.  We've been invited to the pub, where a lonely man named Ishmael sits, perhaps alone, with ale in hand, to tell us a story.  Let's have a seat with him, and hear what he has to say...

4.  "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."  - George Orwell, 1984

This one is haunting because...well, we the readers happen to know that that's NOT how clocks work.  This begins the story of a world that has gone terribly, terribly wrong.  In this book, which famously created the terms "Big Brother" and "double-think," we find ourselves in a world where lies are truth, truth are lies, the government controls the narrative strictly, the freedom of the press has been dismantled, and Big Brother is always watching.  If it is not the original dystopian future novel, then it is, without a doubt, the reigning champion by which all others are judged.  And from the opening line, we already know that something is wrong...

5.  "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."  - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

Dickens decided to put the reader into the mood of his setting, but, like he says at the end, the "time" he's referring to is EXACTLY like whatever era the reader happens to be in when they're reading it.  He suggests that nothing ever changes, in that all times can be described as the worst, or the best, and that people will often describe whatever era they're living in as both.  It depends on where you are in life, what privileges or station you have.  These things determine how good or bad you view the current era.  And, as he says, the "noisiest authorities" seem intent to only be able to make their arguments for their current period being the "best" or "worst" by using comparisons.

6.  "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."  - Stephen King, The Gunslinger

This line cuts right to it.  It says "Here's your story."  Of course, there's still plenty of mystery.  We don't know who either of these men are, or why one is chasing the other, but we're immediately fascinated.  An old adage among writers is to "Start your story in the middle."  Kind of like how the first Star Wars movie begins with us seeing the Rebel starship already being chased by the Imperial ship.  We're learning who Darth Vader is while the story is on the move, almost like we came in the middle of a TV series and missed the whole first half.  It's an excellent way to get readers invested right away, and have them salivating for the details that explain why these characters are doing what they're doing.  Much better than describing them at length at the beginning, and then getting us to the chase around Chapter 4.  Stephen King himself has expressed that he believes this opening line is his most solid work.

7.  "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."  - H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulu

H.P. Lovecraft is considered by most people to be the greatest horror writer of all time, and he never even wrote about an ax murderer, or described the sight entrails overly long.  No, Lovecraft made a career by inventing a new style of writing--he would describe all the things that the "monster" DIDN'T look like, or would be so vague in his description, and yet all the while summoning imagery, that he encourage the reader to think up something even more dreadful on their own, something that defied all known geometry, physics, and biology.  The true horror for Lovecraft was the idea that some things might be forever beyond the ken of Man, and what might happen if a human being witnessed, with their own eyes, the things that they were never meant to see?  That's what this opening line is all about.  Lovecraft would consider it a "mercy" if the human mind could simply go on not understanding all the horrors it had seen...especially after the narrator of this story reveals to you the truth terrors he has witnessed.  He wants to forget.  More than anything, he wants to be oblivious again.  Ignorance is bliss...

Pay the Writer

It's a strange world in which we live that I even have to say this, but pay the damn writer!

I and other writers that I know have often spoke about this at great length, and the fact that it keeps coming up means that it persists.  It's the habit of many different people in many different industries to refuse to pay a writer for his/her work.  Now, I'm not sure exactly what causes this, but I have a few theories.

Reason #1
First, I'll go with Harlan Ellison's theory, that amateurs frequently shoot themselves and the professionals in the foot by offering their work for free.  The vain hopes here are that you will get noticed.  There's that whole notion of, "Yeah, sure, maybe I don't get paid, but at least I get my name out there!  That's gotta mean something!"  Bottom line: No, it means almost nothing.

Short of offering deals here and there for limited time offers, offering what you've done for free only devalues your work, and frequently means that nobody wants it so you have to give it away.  Have you ever tried to give away a seminar for free?  Almost nobody attends it.  Have you ever tried to give away a movie?  Everybody assumes it must suck, so there are no takers.

And if anybody does accept your free offer, guess what?  They expect the next one to be free, too.

So, after you've given some editors and publishers free articles, guess what?  THEY DON'T EXPECT TO PAY YOU FOR THE NEXT ONE!!!  I know, shocking, right?  Not only that, but whenever a real professional comes along and offers them a stellar piece, and the professional writer asks to be paid, the editor looks at you all doe-eyed and goes, "Pay?  But everyone else is doing it for free."  Thus, the pro never gets paid, and neither does the amateur, and it's all the amateur's fault.


Reason #2
Quite simply, most people don't think writing is all that hard.  Despite the fact that NOT ONE of them could write a narrative to save their lives, despite the fact that NOT ONE of them knows exactly what narrative means, and despite the fact that NOT ONE of them cares to even look it up, everyone just assumes writing is easy.  They say to themselves, "Well, I can't do it, but it can't be that hard, right?"

Wrong.  Writing is hard.  If it was so easy...why aren't you doing it?

If you want proof that people think writing is easy, ask any writer how many times a friend or coworker has said to them, "Hey, I've got this great idea for a book.  Now, it's my idea, but you can do all the writing, and we'll split the money 50/50."  I bet I get this offer once every couple of months.  This just goes to show that many people believe (they actually BELIEVE) that writing a book is no more difficult that just having the initial spark of an idea, that 50% of the work is done once you have the idea.

This is just one reason why people don't think twice about not paying a writer.


Reason #3
"We'll just rehash something we've already done."  These are the words of an editor or a publisher that has given up on all original thought, and has decided to just follow what everybody else is doing, and just wants to put out the same old, same old.  Not because it means screwing the writer over (although that doesn't hurt this kind of editor's feelings at all), but because it's just easier than looking for fresh content and finding a market for it.

In short, it's laziness.  Find someone barely making any money as a writer and have him or her just rehash either their own work (if it once made any kind of splash), or the works of others, and pay them a lousy fee because, hey, writers are starving and will take anything.  This limits the number of writers an agency or publisher needs and makes it so that new, up-and-coming writers will try anything to get themselves published--including giving their works away for free for meaningless exposure (see Reason #1 above)--and thus the vicious cycle continues.


Conclusion
If writers want to get paid, they had better start demanding to get paid.  It really is that simple.  The more you work for free, and the more think of free labor as "paying your dues," then the more you're going to be taken advantage of.

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Pet Peeves in Fiction Writing (Part 1: Prophecies)

When it comes to reading fiction or watching some nice fiction on TV, there are few things that make me more frustrated than hearing about a prophecy.  Prophecies tend to crop up all over fiction, especially if there is any level of fantasy involved, often to the detriment of the overall story.

Do not confuse prophecy with foreshadowing.  Foreshadowing is one of the oldest and most effective tools in storytelling, and when done best it is subtle, an item or sentence introduced in a way that fits so perfectly into the back of the reader's/viewer's mind that it goes entirely unnoticed on the conscious level, and, like a bomb perfectly planted, detonates to create a more perfect explosion at the foundation of the audience's understanding, releasing a slew of revelations and reinterpretations of the story they've just experienced.

Prophecy is different.  Prophecy just says what's going to happen.  There's no mystery (not really), and no work necessary on the part of the writer to actually build a character up.  Prophecy just tells you that this character is amazing (i.e. the Chosen One).  It tells you, "Hey, watch this guy, he's really going to be something."  And that breaks one of the critical rules of storytelling: show, don't tell.

In short, prophecy is lazy.  Most of the time.

The way I see it, there are generally two kinds of prophecies: the good one and the bad one.  The Good Prophecy is a foretelling of some darkness that is coming, but there is hope that a hero will emerge, usually with some defining birthmark and a trusty Sword of Truth, and he will cast down the Dark One.  The Bad Prophecy kind of starts by telling of a Dark One first, someone who will rise up and cover the whole world in a thousand-year darkness--in this case, we may not be told about the hero, but we know the story can't just end with a thousand-year darkness, so we (the audience) are left thinking, "Okay, so, who's gonna stop this from happening?"

The next chapter, or scene in the movie, is usually an introduction to the hero.  (You know what comes next.  If you don't, just refer to the prophecy, which explained everything.)

In either case, the writer has essentially already told you what's going to happen.  You're waiting for the hero with the right birthmark to show up, and you know that, no matter what happens to him, he will make it and defeat the Dark One.  There's no guessing, no suspense, no maybes or surprises, he's just going to make it.

Also, do you like spoilers?  I don't.  So, if you're like me (and I think most people hate spoilers), and you don't like people telling you the end of a story and every detail in between, then why the hell would you want some soothsayer in the movie telling you what's going to happen?

Here's how it goes, and stop me when this sounds familiar:  You hear about an interesting movie, you go with your friends to see it, maybe pay for your girlfriend or kids to get in, you go sit down, listen to some fortuneteller on the screen tell you all about a prophecy of a "white-haired man, dark of skin, with eyes blue as the sea" who will come and vanquish all evil...and then you watch exactly that happen.  It's no different than just having read this paragraph with me telling you, only now you owe me $10 for admission, $20 if you paid for someone else to get in, $35 if you paid for food and drinks while reading it, and $40 if you read this paragraph in 3D (I have to charge you for the glasses).

In other words, you pay to watch someone's prophecy unfold.  You paid for the movie and the spoiler in one go.

What's worse about the prophecy, no matter if it's a Good one or Bad one, is that it makes it so that the character doesn't even have to try.  He (or she) is just going to make it.  No matter what.  They couldn't fail if they tried, because the prophecy says they won't.  This, in my opinion, invariably leads to an underdeveloped character, and characters that are not at all real or complex.

Now, I have to say right now that if you don't like real or complex characters, such as those in George R. R. Martin's superb Song of Ice and Fire series, then prophecy probably seems okay to you.

"But Chad," you're probably saying, "Martin does use prophecy in his writing!"  To this, I say, "Not really."  By that, I mean he uses mostly what I would call foreshadowing, and if there is a prophecy it's usually so twisted that no one could make hide nor hair out of it (think of what Daenarys saw in the House of the Undying, those images were so strange they might've been anything, but it turns out she did see a couple of important events foretold).  George R. R. Martin is the exception that proves the rule, that rare voice that shows how prophecy ought to be done if you're going to do it at all (again, if you enjoy surprises, no spoilers, and complex characters that might become evil or good or, as real people become, somewhere in between).

Prophecy eliminates a character's ability to be multifacted beings, as real people are, and instead pigeonholes them, makes them either this or that, and, worst of all, it tells us the end.

So, to recap, if you don't mind spoilers, and if you don't mind simplistic, predictable characters (and I'm not insulting you if you do, for there is no accounting for taste), then this article probable makes no sense to you.  This next bit may make even less senses, so...here we go!

Another problem is when so much importance is placed on a prophecy that there's no way the story can live up to it.  For this reason, prophecies often become so convoluted that they rarely even make sense.  Watch the last two seasons of Battlestar Galactica, and you'll know what I'm talking about.  So much importance placed on a prophecy about a child in an opera house...and then it went nowhere.  I mean, absolutley nowhere.  The whole prophecy just led up to the kid walking into the flight command center (which was an opera house in the visions for...ya know...reasons), and...that's it.  That's like if you had a dream about being a kid running through an abandoned warehouse and sticking a stick through a keyhole in an old decrepit door, and somehow that foretells you sticking the gas nozzle into your car tomorrow.  Yeah, that prophecy was that mundane.

The last thing I will say is that I understand the argument of the archetypal hero.  I know that it's classic, that it's been repeated down through the ages and blah blah blah, I've heard it all.  I'm not saying you have to hate it, I'm saying great stories, such as the Original Star Wars Trilogy, was told entirely without prophecy, and look how amazing it was.  Then watch the Prequel Trilogy, with all its Chosen One talk, and...yyyyyyeah.

(to be continued in Pet Peeves in Fiction Writing (Part 2: Super Quippy Dialogue, AKA the NCIS Dilemma)

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