First Lines

“Mar­ley was dead, to begin with.”

That’s the open­ing words of Dick­ens’ A Christ­mas Car­ol, and they are, in my judge­ment, as remark­able as they are mem­o­rable. Indeed, the first words of any piece of writ­ing are cru­cial, being as they are, the win­dow, the door, the invi­ta­tion, the induce­ment, call it what you will, to keep read­ing. A weak open­ing is not help­ful. A good one is cru­cial. A fine open­ing is often the key that opens the book, and over time, keeps it open.

“It is a truth uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged, that a sin­gle man in pos­ses­sion of a good for­tune, must be in want of a wife.”

Thus, Jane Austen, for Pride and Prejudice

“Call me Ish­mael.” Moby Dick

“Alice was begin­ning to get very tired of sit­ting by her sis­ter on the bank, and hav­ing noth­ing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sis­ter was read­ing, but it had no pic­tures of con­ver­sa­tions in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “with­out pic­tures or conversations?”

Alice in Wonderland

“In the begin­ning, God cre­at­ed the Heav­en and the earth.” King James’ ver­sion of The Bible.

“In my younger and more vul­ner­a­ble years, my father gave me some advice that’s I’ve been turn­ing over in mind ever since.”

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Many years ago, I read a piece by a writer who wrote for­mu­lae fiction—the Hardy Boys, in fact. He wrote the bulk of the books eas­i­ly, quick­ly. But the first page, he said, he rewrote many, many times. It made a deep impres­sion on me, and over the years, I have labored many an hour over the first page. It’s worth it.

For a fair num­ber of my read­ers I sus­pect the open­ing sen­tence of The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle is a favorite. But it did not come eas­i­ly. I don’t put in the same league as the sam­ples above, but it seems to have stayed in reader’s minds. For rea­sons I don’t recall, I saved the evo­lu­tion of that sen­tence. The writ­ing went like this:

1. Many years ago, I was accused of murder.
2. It’s hard to believe that I was once accused of murder.
3. No one believes me when I say I was once accused of murder.
4. Look­ing back, it’s hard to believe I had any­thing to do with murder.
5. How many girls are ever accused of murder?
6. How could I, a girl, have any­thing to do with murder?
7. Not many girls are accused of mur­der and found guilty at a trial.
8. Few girls of thir­teen are accused of mur­der let alone found guilty.
9. Not every thir­teen-year-old girl is accused of mur­der, brought to tri­al and found guilty.

Did those famous first lines I first cit­ed above require the same kind of evo­lu­tion? I have no idea. It’s fun to spec­u­late. Per­haps genius, is just that, genius.

But to close, here’s a notion: Read­ers, share what your favorite open­ing words might be.