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Some people test books by reading the first sentence. Some prefer opening them at random or to a certain page they like to use as a test (I use page 119, or page 70 if the book is very short.) Some buy without testing at all. But everyone has to read the first sentence sooner or later, and if it isn’t good, they may never get around to any of the other sentences.
The first sentence will pull readers in, push them away, or be neutral enough to allow some to proceed with suspended judgment and others to put the book down, because they weren’t grabbed and a world full of fascinating alternatives to that book awaits, such as other books, TV, or sex.
So even if you don’t have time to make sure that every single sentence in your entire book is perfect, it is well worth your time to make sure that the first one is. In fact, I would make sure that every one in the entire first chapter is. Or at least in the first page. Besides, if you do that, you will learn what a perfect sentence is and how to write one, and that will up the percentage of perfect sentences in your work as a whole.
This does not mean that the first sentence needs to contain a narrative hook like this:
The shaman came to town near sunset, riding a dead horse. (Mark Sumner, Devil’s Tower.)
It may contain a subtler narrative hook, like this:
The Earl of October drove into my life in a pale blue Holden which had seen better days. (Dick Francis, For Kicks.)
It may, at first glance, seem to have no relationship to the plot at all, but merely set the scene:
The primroses were over. (Richard Adams, Watership Down)
Or it may not even do that:
Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? (Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet.)
You can grab the reader by the shirt-front and yank her inside, like Sumner’s sentence does; you can lean in the door and beckon, like Francis’ does; or you can crack open the door and let the enticing scent and shimmer of light draw the reader to peer inside, like Adams and Waters do. But somehow, you have to get the reader in.
(I am going to ignore the issue of prologues for now, as some people skip them, except to note that about the only thing I’ve ever agreed with Orson Scott Card about is that you should consider cutting off your fingers before writing one.)
A first sentence always does two things: it establishes tone, and it is a sample of the author’s ability to write prose. There are lots of other things it can do, but those two happen whether the author intends it or not. (If the first sentence is something like “’Oof,’ or “Breathe,” the second sentence will do the work of the first, unless the whole thing is in one word sentences, in which case the first three will establish that I, at least, do not want to read the book.)
First sentences may also set the scene, set the genre, introduce characters, establish point of view, and kick off the plot. But they don’t have to.
The shaman came to town near sunset, riding a dead horse. (Mark Sumner, Devil’s Tower.)
The prose in Sumner’s sentence is acceptable, not spectacular. What it does brilliantly is establish the tone of the book, which is that staple of a certain type of horror, the razor’s edge between creepy and funny.
It also has a great narrative hook: the shaman is riding a dead horse? What? Why’s he come to town? What will he do?
And it establishes genre: a fantasy Western that will use the clichés of the standard Western (like a man riding into town) in weird and fantastical, sometimes horrific ways.
The Earl of October drove into my life in a pale blue Holden which had seen better days. (Dick Francis, For Kicks.)
Francis has two clichéd phrases— “seen better days” and [came] “into my life”— but the sentence has a good rhythm that makes up for it. (Dick Francis frequently writes excellent first sentences, but I picked this mid-level one because it’s a good example of certain traits.) The tone has a noir-like quality, echoing Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. One suspects the narrator is a tough guy, though it could (if you weren’t familiar with the author) also be a tough woman. (The book is, in fact, a mystery-thriller with a noir influence, narrated by tough guy Daniel Roke.)
The plot has begun, though not with a bang. Still, one wonders who the Earl of October is, why he’s driving an old car if he’s an Earl, and how he’s going to alter the life of the narrator. We also learn that the time is, more or less, the present, and we might guess that it’s England, though we’d be wrong about that.
The primroses were over. (Richard Adams, Watership Down)
Adams’ sentence has the best prose, and is one of my all-time favorite first sentences. It’s simple but evocative, and has a lovely rhythm. It tells us that summer is over, but uses a specific detail to do so, which is almost always much more interesting than a generality. We know the end of the summer is important because it’s the first sentence. Why would that be important? If we had no idea what the genre of the book was (and the sentence doesn’t tell us) we might guess that the holidays are over (wrong fact, but right track) or that hard times are coming (correct, but not because of the weather.)
The primroses are over, and we’ll later learn that this is important because it’s a metaphor: the salad days are over, times have changed, and the characters will lose their innocence and their cushy home, and go on a very difficult journey. The other thing the sentence suggests is that not only is the setting the English countryside, but (because a description of it starts the book) the setting is important. In fact, not only is it the most vividly evoked setting since Middle Earth, but the entire book revolves around land: losing it, getting it, defending it, living off and with and within it.
Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? (Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet.)
You can’t tell what genre the book is in from that question, but you can read a playful tone in the way the narrator directly addresses the reader, and in the content of the question. Because it’s not immediately obvious, as it is in the other examples, what the context is, the reader is invited to look for a double meaning in the question. (Obviously, very few readers would stop there to ponder that, but their subconsciouses are probably working like gangbusters.) If you already know anything about the book, you know that it’s a historical lesbian picaresque, a coming of age via sex and romance, and if you don’t know that but did look at the cover, you’ll have seen two near-nude ladies on swings. The question gains a suggestive undertone, from the now-naughty “tasted” to the symbolism of the oyster, which has long been considered an aphrodisiac and can symbolize a woman’s genitalia. The oysters do turn out to be real shellfish, but they’re metaphorically loaded ones.
The other thing first sentences can do is to reward re-readers. Waters clearly expects at least some readers to re-read her books, and they may read quite differently after you already know how it all comes out: if you didn't read a double entendre into the first line of Tipping the Velvet the first time you read it, you sure will if you read the whole book, and return to those oysters with the knowledge of what the phrase "tipping the velvet" means. The last sentence of Watership Down echoes and inverts the first: the seasons have turned, and new life is born as the old year—and old heroes—pass into death and legend. The last sentence of For Kicks more subtly echoes the first, creating a satisfyingly conclusive bookend to a story whose last scene opens up a whole new world for the hero, one which he would have never known but for the Earl of October.
The first sentence is the door into your story. Make us want to open it and come inside. Make us plan our return before we even leave.
The first sentence will pull readers in, push them away, or be neutral enough to allow some to proceed with suspended judgment and others to put the book down, because they weren’t grabbed and a world full of fascinating alternatives to that book awaits, such as other books, TV, or sex.
So even if you don’t have time to make sure that every single sentence in your entire book is perfect, it is well worth your time to make sure that the first one is. In fact, I would make sure that every one in the entire first chapter is. Or at least in the first page. Besides, if you do that, you will learn what a perfect sentence is and how to write one, and that will up the percentage of perfect sentences in your work as a whole.
This does not mean that the first sentence needs to contain a narrative hook like this:
The shaman came to town near sunset, riding a dead horse. (Mark Sumner, Devil’s Tower.)
It may contain a subtler narrative hook, like this:
The Earl of October drove into my life in a pale blue Holden which had seen better days. (Dick Francis, For Kicks.)
It may, at first glance, seem to have no relationship to the plot at all, but merely set the scene:
The primroses were over. (Richard Adams, Watership Down)
Or it may not even do that:
Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? (Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet.)
You can grab the reader by the shirt-front and yank her inside, like Sumner’s sentence does; you can lean in the door and beckon, like Francis’ does; or you can crack open the door and let the enticing scent and shimmer of light draw the reader to peer inside, like Adams and Waters do. But somehow, you have to get the reader in.
(I am going to ignore the issue of prologues for now, as some people skip them, except to note that about the only thing I’ve ever agreed with Orson Scott Card about is that you should consider cutting off your fingers before writing one.)
A first sentence always does two things: it establishes tone, and it is a sample of the author’s ability to write prose. There are lots of other things it can do, but those two happen whether the author intends it or not. (If the first sentence is something like “’Oof,’ or “Breathe,” the second sentence will do the work of the first, unless the whole thing is in one word sentences, in which case the first three will establish that I, at least, do not want to read the book.)
First sentences may also set the scene, set the genre, introduce characters, establish point of view, and kick off the plot. But they don’t have to.
The shaman came to town near sunset, riding a dead horse. (Mark Sumner, Devil’s Tower.)
The prose in Sumner’s sentence is acceptable, not spectacular. What it does brilliantly is establish the tone of the book, which is that staple of a certain type of horror, the razor’s edge between creepy and funny.
It also has a great narrative hook: the shaman is riding a dead horse? What? Why’s he come to town? What will he do?
And it establishes genre: a fantasy Western that will use the clichés of the standard Western (like a man riding into town) in weird and fantastical, sometimes horrific ways.
The Earl of October drove into my life in a pale blue Holden which had seen better days. (Dick Francis, For Kicks.)
Francis has two clichéd phrases— “seen better days” and [came] “into my life”— but the sentence has a good rhythm that makes up for it. (Dick Francis frequently writes excellent first sentences, but I picked this mid-level one because it’s a good example of certain traits.) The tone has a noir-like quality, echoing Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. One suspects the narrator is a tough guy, though it could (if you weren’t familiar with the author) also be a tough woman. (The book is, in fact, a mystery-thriller with a noir influence, narrated by tough guy Daniel Roke.)
The plot has begun, though not with a bang. Still, one wonders who the Earl of October is, why he’s driving an old car if he’s an Earl, and how he’s going to alter the life of the narrator. We also learn that the time is, more or less, the present, and we might guess that it’s England, though we’d be wrong about that.
The primroses were over. (Richard Adams, Watership Down)
Adams’ sentence has the best prose, and is one of my all-time favorite first sentences. It’s simple but evocative, and has a lovely rhythm. It tells us that summer is over, but uses a specific detail to do so, which is almost always much more interesting than a generality. We know the end of the summer is important because it’s the first sentence. Why would that be important? If we had no idea what the genre of the book was (and the sentence doesn’t tell us) we might guess that the holidays are over (wrong fact, but right track) or that hard times are coming (correct, but not because of the weather.)
The primroses are over, and we’ll later learn that this is important because it’s a metaphor: the salad days are over, times have changed, and the characters will lose their innocence and their cushy home, and go on a very difficult journey. The other thing the sentence suggests is that not only is the setting the English countryside, but (because a description of it starts the book) the setting is important. In fact, not only is it the most vividly evoked setting since Middle Earth, but the entire book revolves around land: losing it, getting it, defending it, living off and with and within it.
Have you ever tasted a Whitstable oyster? (Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet.)
You can’t tell what genre the book is in from that question, but you can read a playful tone in the way the narrator directly addresses the reader, and in the content of the question. Because it’s not immediately obvious, as it is in the other examples, what the context is, the reader is invited to look for a double meaning in the question. (Obviously, very few readers would stop there to ponder that, but their subconsciouses are probably working like gangbusters.) If you already know anything about the book, you know that it’s a historical lesbian picaresque, a coming of age via sex and romance, and if you don’t know that but did look at the cover, you’ll have seen two near-nude ladies on swings. The question gains a suggestive undertone, from the now-naughty “tasted” to the symbolism of the oyster, which has long been considered an aphrodisiac and can symbolize a woman’s genitalia. The oysters do turn out to be real shellfish, but they’re metaphorically loaded ones.
The other thing first sentences can do is to reward re-readers. Waters clearly expects at least some readers to re-read her books, and they may read quite differently after you already know how it all comes out: if you didn't read a double entendre into the first line of Tipping the Velvet the first time you read it, you sure will if you read the whole book, and return to those oysters with the knowledge of what the phrase "tipping the velvet" means. The last sentence of Watership Down echoes and inverts the first: the seasons have turned, and new life is born as the old year—and old heroes—pass into death and legend. The last sentence of For Kicks more subtly echoes the first, creating a satisfyingly conclusive bookend to a story whose last scene opens up a whole new world for the hero, one which he would have never known but for the Earl of October.
The first sentence is the door into your story. Make us want to open it and come inside. Make us plan our return before we even leave.