First lines have become a fetish.

Recently, one of my book clubs decided to discuss first lines.  Articles, Videos, proliferating lists, and whole books are written about first lines. Somebody needs to call Emperor’s Clothes on this obsession. I’ll do it.

Celebrated Lines

What makes all the famous “great” first lines so great? Like other celebrities, they’re only famous because they’re famous.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. –Tale of Two Cities, 1859.

Is that great, or what? I say, “What?” First of all, it’s not even a proper sentence but a run-on. I know, grammar is arbitrary; grammar changes over time; great artists can break the rules; la, la, la. Whatever. It’s a comma splice.

Secondly, the sentence starts out horribly with an indefinite pronoun and an existential verb: “It was.” What could be less informative than not even naming your object, and then saying only that it exists? “Hey, Bob, tell me about your new car!” “It exists.”

Also, what is the object of interest that starts off Dickens’s novel? Something flashy, like a new hansom cab? No. The object of the sentence is “the times.” A description of mud would be more interesting than a vague generalization about “the times.”

Ah, but what about that dramatic contrast? The narrator says the times were “the best,” then that they were “the worst.” Wow. That contradiction holds as much dramatic tension as a lead balloon.

This famous “first sentence” by Dickens is famous only because it is famous. We should not try to emulate it. The same is true about most “great” first sentences.

I admit that some first sentences are more fun than others.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. —Pride and Prejudice, 1813.

This sentence is humorous, interesting, sets a context, and reveals the voice of the narrator. Still, it starts out with an indefinite pronoun and an existential verb, and it is cast in the passive voice. It could well be re-written, starting with “A single man.”

How dare I even pretend to suggest that I could improve upon the work of the great Jane Austen! That is another aspect of the first-line fetish: “Great” authors write “great” (= untouchable, sacred) first lines. That’s academic oppression. Any sentence can be edited. We should not be cowed by first lines just because they come from allegedly “great” authors.

Lines Without Context

Most lists of allegedly “great” first lines come from literary works in the canon. The novels and stories represented are well-read and well-lauded. Therefore, it is implied, their first lines are automatically “great.” But if you haven’t read the novel, many of these lines are not so great. Many are not even interesting, and some are cryptic, silly, or trivial.

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. —Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

 It was love at first sight. —Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

 Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

 A screaming comes across the sky. —Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)

We are pressed to accept that these are great first lines because the novels they begin are “universally acknowledged” to be great works of literature. Resist the oppression.

Lessons from Bad First Lines

Some so-called “great” first lines of literature are very much less-than-great. I already dissected one of Dickens’s great firsters and cast doubt upon the goodness of some others, but maybe we can learn something from badness.

In this dream where he was weightless and unalive, where he was a pervading mist of consciousness that seethed and trembled in a vast stretch of dark, there was at first no feeling, only a dim sort of appreciation, eyeless, brainless, and remote, whose singular ability was to differentiate between himself and the darkness. —John Edward Williams, Nothing But the Night

Lesson: Never start with a dream. Few narratives are more mind-numbing than someone else’s dream. Dreams are nonsense! Revised lesson: Don’t put a dream in any part of your story, ever.

It must have been 1963, because the musical of Dombey & Son was running at the Alexandra, and it must have been the autumn, because it was surely some time in October that a performance was seriously delayed because two of the cast had slipped and hurt themselves in B dressing-room corridor, and the reason for that was that the floor appeared to be flooded with something sticky and glutinous.—Penelope Fitzgerald, At Freddie’s, 1982.

I read this novel and the best I can say is that it’s “an acquired taste.” This first line is actually a foreshadowing of the climactic scene, but that doesn’t justify it as an opening line when you cannot possibly know it is a foreshadow.

Lessons: 1. Do not assume the reader is re-reading and can “appreciate forward.” Most people read each book only once, so the first line must stand on its own. 2. Don’t start a first sentence with “it.” It, what? Vagueness is not drama. 3. Doesn’t “glutinous” mean about the same thing as “sticky?” If a liquid is “sticky and glutinous” can it “flood” a floor? Lesson: Stir your first sentence until it flows.

It began oddly. —Philip Roth, The Breast, 1972.

Lessons: 1. (Re-lesson): Do not begin with “it.” 2. The “it” here could refer to the novel of which this is the first line. Is that clever? Not anymore. Post-modern (“pomo”) self-referential writing is so mid-20th century! It’s been done to death. Do not do.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877.

Lesson: Do not start out with a false statement, especially not from a third-person-omniscient narrator who is supposed to know better. If the false statement is ironic, in the voice of a first-person narrator, you might get away with it (as Jane Austen did).

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. —James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

Lessons: 1. Obscurity, like vagueness, is not drama. 2. Word salad is not drama. Fantasy writers are fond of neologisms, another kind of obscurantism. We all know about online word generators. At least Joyce had to formulate his own obscure grammar and vocabulary. Avoid.

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler, 1979

Lesson repeat: Pomo-self-reference is done, done, done. Put a fork in it.

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. —Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier 1915.

All this happened, more or less. —Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 1969.

Lesson repeat: Pomo no-no. These are mild cases of narrative self-reference but I’ll let them pass because these two books are gems that show the novella form at its best.

For a long time, I went to bed early. —Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way, 1913.

Lesson: After dreams, the next most boring thing you can write about are body functions, like going to sleep, waking up, and brushing of teeth. Everybody is embodied. We all know the drill. Do not describe body functions, especially not in first lines. They are only fascinating to readers under eight. I make an exception for blues songs, a remarkable number of which begin, “I woke up this morning…”.

It was the day my grandmother exploded. —Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road, 1992.

Mother Died Today. –Albert Camus, The Foreigner (aka The Stranger), 1942.

Lesson: Do not start out with calendar games. I think they teach writers in MFA programs nowadays to begin stories with close descriptions of times and dates. I can’t count how many (bad) stories I’ve read that begin with something like “It had been two months and four days since anyone had seen Bob.” Two months and four days? Really? What’s important is that Bob is missing. What is not important is the exact calendar specification. Do I overreact? I hate this kind of self-conscious opening.

The examples above commit the sin of temporal obsession. However, the Camus line could be considered “great” because of the line that comes after it: “Or maybe it was yesterday.” But nobody remembers second lines.

 I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho’ not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call’d me. —Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 1719.

Lessons: 1. Do not begin with biography. That’s backstory info-dumping. Weave it in. If you must do biography at all, do not start with date of birth. Being born is not a remarkable event. Everybody was born. If your intention is to set the historical time period, there are better ways to do it than with a birth announcement. I do give Defoe a break, though, because 1719? Had paper even been invented? 2. Don’t try to do too much in the first sentence. Breathe! Most bad first sentences are bad because they’re too long. The average sentence length in English is seven words. The average reader’s memory span is seven seconds.

Really Bad First Lines

The most egregiously bad first lines we see sprinkled around in articles about first lines are “fake” in the sense that they were written expressly to illustrate a bad first line.

Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories. –Sue Fondrie, winner of the 2011 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

The Bulwer-Lytton contest (www.bulwer-lytton.com) invites writers to submit “an atrocious opening sentence to a hypothetical bad novel.” Reading entries is fun for five minutes until the relentless atrocities become a river of ridiculousness.

Bulwer-Lytton was a real author who began a real novel with the words, “It was a dark and stormy night…” If you read the entirety of that first line, you might think, as I did, that it’s not really that bad except for being too long.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. —Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford, 1830.

Here’s one more lesson, derived from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton: Do not open with weather. That’s almost like opening with a body function. Everybody lives in some kind of weather at all times. It’s boring.

In general, can we learn anything from the really bad examples? I couldn’t. Maybe others can see useful lessons in them.

Meanwhile, I think the best advice to writers, about first lines, is to not worry. All first lines are manufactured after the draft. Just start writing into the sunset and don’t pay any attention to your first line until you’re all done with the story. Lesson: First lines are never written first.