How many times has the first line or paragraph of a novel persuaded us to buy the book right away?
First impressions do count, so it is important that the writer nail the start of a story from the get-go. Who can forget these immortal openings, four of which are referenced from the excellent Oxford Royale Academy site.
1. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (1949)
The first sentence of George Orwell’s masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, sets a tone through its jarring use of the number thirteen. Not only is thirteen associated with bad luck, it suggests that something is off with the world, since traditional clocks have only twelve numbers. This creates a sense of anxiety in the reader that persists throughout the entire novel and keeps us turning the pages.
2. “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.” A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (1859).
Dickens’ use of contrasting clauses in the opening of his historical novel, A Tale of Two Cities, balanced by the repetition of ‘it was’, ‘we had’ and ‘we were all’, prepares us for the back-and-forth conflict that occurs in London and Paris prior and during the French Revolution—essentially a struggle between good and evil. The tale is rooted in the particular and the general, and this makes it a truly timeless and universal story.
3. “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, Jane Austen (1813)
Here Jane Austin‘s somewhat satirical tone establishes the author’s posture towards the social norms of the day. The line, we later discover, is associated with Mrs. Bennet, a persistent woman who is determined to marry off her six daughters come hell or high water. We secretly enjoy Austen’s subtle but somewhat cruel social and cultural critique, and this keeps us wanting to read more.
“A great first line serves as a secret fountain to our story, allowing us to drink from it when all other sources dry up.”
4. “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” The Hobbit, Tolkien (1932).
The unassuming simplicity of this line is precisely what makes it work so well as an opening salvo, harking back to countless fairytales. Furthermore, we are immediately intrigued by the word, ‘hobbit’. We ask ourselves, what kind of creature is a hobbit? And why does he live in a hole in the ground? We seek answers to these questions and so we keep reading.
And lastly, if I may be permitted the presumption of intruding upon such illustrious company:
“WHEN I was a young man and my life was bursting through like a newly sprung carnation, I thought about time as a phenomenon flowing from the equations of physics, something to be answered by the math; but now that I am older and given to bouts of melancholy during my ambles along the shore, time and space have become a longing and the equations have been tamed by syrup poured over waffles baked to a golden hue.” The Nostalgia of Time Travel, Stavros Halvatzis (2015).
Here, the narrator’s romanticised sense of nostalgia about his youth immediately betrays itself through the phrase ‘newly sprung carnation’. It also characterises him as something of a dandy. His initial belief in the equations of physics has been ‘tamed’, ironically enough, by time itself. There is something touching, however, about his failure to solve the intractable mathematical equation that has consumed his life, a sentiment bolstered by words such as ‘melancholy’, ‘ambles’ and ‘longing’. The impression that we are left with is of a once brilliant man in decline, forced to spend his time reminiscing about the past over ‘waffles baked to a golden hue’.
