Part I: Half a Dozen of My Recent Stories
Part II: from Some of My Favorite Stories
After giving close reading to a dozen first sentences, half mine and half others, I’m ready to make a list of things that a first line can do (although probably no first line should try to do all of them).
- Include a mystery the reader wants to solve by reading the next sentence.
- Set a fast reading pace.
- Foreshadow the story.
- Establish the basics the reader needs to move on with the story.
- Create relationships between reader, character and narrator.
- Quickly encourage readers who are interested, and discourage those who would rather read something else.
- Most importantly, the use of A) diction, B) grammar, C) imagery and D) punctuation in order to establish X) character, Y) setting, and Z) mood.
Or, in abbreviated graphic form:
What else do you think they do?
You could argue, I suppose, that voice is not separate from character—even if the character in question is a third-person omniscient narrator—but I have always found it useful to think of them as distinct, and the first line often establishes voice.
Also (somehow I always gravitate to musical analogies when talking about this stuff), first lines set what I experience as a kind “key signature” for the piece, which for me includes, whether we’re talking about poetry or prose, the music of the piece, the sound of the language in and of itself.