TIM MALEENY

First Lines—An Exercise for Writers

TIM MALEENY is the award-winning author of numerous short stories and four bestselling novels, including Stealing the Dragon, which was recently optioned for film, and the comedic thriller Jump. He lives in New York with his family.

 

 

Bang.

How will your story begin? One of the most important decisions you’ll make as a writer is how to grab your reader at the top of the page and never let go. As a novelist, I’m constantly rewriting, editing, and cutting and pasting until I have a draft that feels right, but first lines are an obsession. Some of my favorite opening lines appear in this article, words that have inspired me to rework that first sentence until it sings. Before any of my books go to press, I’ve probably rewritten the opening paragraph no less than forty times, agonizing over every word.

It’s a lot of work being me.

—DON WINSLOW, The Winter of Frankie Machine

Is your first line a hook sharp enough to cut through the distractions, disinterest, and white noise buzzing around a potential reader’s head? Before you answer, take a moment to consider the following sobering statistics. More than 270,000 books were published in the United States last year. Almost a thousand video game titles were released, along with a couple hundred major movies, not counting the DVD issues of the previous year’s films. Enough newsweeklies, fashion magazines, and daily newspapers to create a tsunami of words that would take a lifetime to read. And that doesn’t even begin to take into account the millions of websites and videos lurking on everyone’s laptops, e-readers, and phones, each one a siren calling for our attention, promising entertainment and escape.

The cop climbed out of his car exactly four minutes before he got shot.

—LEE CHILD, Persuader

The question goes beyond storytelling, though as we’ll see, the answer lies at the heart of that craft. One reason you want to open with a bang is that your words might be perused by someone standing at a random table in a chain store, your book sitting alongside a hundred other titles whose first chapters are about to be scanned. Or perhaps a curious online shopper selects “Look inside” for your book and jumps to the first page. They’re hungry for a great read and want to taste the flavor of your writing. You get one shot, and if you miss, another book is just a click away.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

—CHARLES DICKENS, A Tale of Two Cities

Now hold aside the grim reality of today’s publishing world and relax for a moment, because the challenge is nothing new. Engaging your audience has always been at the heart of great storytelling.

Once upon a time—four simple words that instantly transport you to another world. A verbal cue to sit back, relax, and open your imagination. A phrase that has worked across centuries because it does the one thing any storyteller must do. Craft a great opening line to set things in motion.

In the bar, Karen drinking vodka-tonic, Ray on brandy to calm his nerves, she told him how people react to death and a stick-up in pretty much the same way: shock, disbelief, anger, acceptance.

—DECLAN BURKE, The Big O

Try thinking of your book as a film. Watch any of your favorite movies, especially stories of mystery or suspense, and study the opening scene. Nine times out of ten, the camera is already in motion when the first image appears on screen. Most important, something was happening before the story begins.

Call me Ishmael.

—HERMAN MELVILLE, Moby-Dick

Great opening lines, like great stories, don’t start at the beginning. They start in the middle and dare the reader to catch up.

As the writer, you are the eyes, ears, and nose of your readers. You hold the camera. They might find themselves gliding through the ocean, cutting through a crowd, panning across a landscape, zooming in on a couple sitting in a restaurant. The camera might stumble into a heated conversation or witness a murder, and suddenly they’re right there, unable to look away. The train has left the station and they’re on it, no turning back.

That’s the kind of momentum you want to build with your opening lines.

The scream tore through the building like a pregnant nun on her way to confession.

—TIM MALEENY, Jump

Writing is movement. Dialogue, description, even character development all stem from actions, motivations, choices, and conflicts. Tension that must be released. Words vibrating with potential energy. Think of your writing as a catalyst for something about to happen, a chemical reaction that generates heat between your characters and the person turning the pages.

Now sit down and write that first sentence. Make it a good one, and keep writing.

EXERCISE

1. Write an opening line or paragraph that transports the reader to a time and place:

Five hours’ New York jet lag and Cayce Pollard wakes in Camden Town to the dire and ever-circling wolves of disrupted circadian rhythm.

—WILLIAM GIBSON, Pattern Recognition

2. Introduce a character from another character’s perspective, delivered with plenty of attitude:

If you didn’t look at her face, she was less than thirty, quick-bodied and slim as a girl.

—ROSS MACDONALD, The Drowning Pool

3. Open on something so abrupt and unexpected that it demands you keep reading to find out more:

Louie pulled off his bra and threw it down upon the casket.

—NICK TOSCHES, In the Hand of Dante

4. Write a complete opening paragraph that not only sets things in motion but also captures the flavor of your voice, so readers get sucked in, and know what to expect once they start turning the pages:

The last line of security was a big Basque built like a coke oven. He wore a familiar face behind picador sideburns and a dozen-odd rivets in his eyebrows, nose, and the deep dimple above his lip. In another Detroit, under a different administration, he’d specialized in kneecapping Republicans. When the market went soft in ’94, he’d scored work in show business, playing a succession of plumbers, janitors, and building superintendents in Spanish-language soap operas. I couldn’t approach him without glancing down at his chest for a subtitle.

—LOREN ESTLEMAN, Poison Blonde

5. Write a first chapter, then edit it three different ways. Start with a description of the scene; then edit the chapter to open in the middle of an action sequence, or try beginning with a disconnected line of dialogue. Which version works best? Why?