Nathan Bransford - The Forums

These are all top rate first lines guys!

Here's the one from my most current WiP

"A death in the family is always difficult to cope with, especially when it’s your own."

Nice! The cadence also reminds me of the first line of Anna Karenina (Garnett's English translation, I believe), so bonus points!

miahayson wrote:These are all top rate first lines guys!

Here's the one from my most current WiP

"A death in the family is always difficult to cope with, especially when it’s your own."

I totally love this sentence, it makes me want to read more immediately :D

Lots of good stuff here!

This is from a sci-fi short story in progress:

When they told me that waking up from cryo-sleep was the worst kind of pain, I knew that none of them had ever lost a child.

Interesting how many people are dying or being marked for death in these opening lines. But I don't normally judge by just the first line. I usually give a book at least a few paragraphs for a first impression, though to be honest I tend not to even look at a book unless someone else has told me they liked it, either a friend or a reviewer.

I rather liked Louis Scott's opening with the rising sun, because I'm a sucker for liminal moments and travel.

The opening line for my magical realism romance novel is:

"I awake to the opening notes of my leitmotif, coming from my ex-girlfriend’s speakers."

(Unfortunately, 3 of the first 5 people I got to read my novel didn't know what a leitmotif was.)

I know what a leitmotif is. Death isn't mine, though this first sentence shares a few notes. I just rewrote it after challenging myself to do so. Who knows how it will read tomorrow.

Beyond the low rise lay a place of the dead where the Bull band's winter camp should have been.

I didn't know what a Leitmotif was (although i do now!)

My opening line:

You can always tell who the bullies are; they’re the ones who sit there with a perverse grin on their face as if gathering ammunition to use later.

From the novel I'm editing:
I walked along the misty path, the trees of the woods crowding around me.

From my current WIP:
Not many people can claim to have killed one hundred and twenty-four people on the day of their birth, but I can.

CV

Ooh! Nice! I like the second one especially, Charlee!

Here's mine:

Nathadria, the girl everyone had forgotten, decided to leave Hell.

From the science fiction novel that is now on the back burner, because I've started questioning my setting:

"When you’re traveling at 75% of the speed of light, you have to make decisions quickly."

From the current project's prologue (and this one is working so much better as a WiP):

"He should not have died that way."

Barbara Ducharme coughed herself the color of fabric softener as she dumped another tray of smoking cookies into the garbage bin.

An alien was sleeping in the gutter where Eli slept.

She shook the pen hurriedly trying to get the ink to flow once again, but failing miserably.

Night settled down on its haunches, squeezing the day out to the horizon beneath its star-pricked belly.

What's everyone's opinion on starting with a quote, especially if it's a controversial one and central to the novel's premise?