First Line Friday
Posted by annastan on February 24th, 2012. Filed under: First Line Friday.If you have a minute, pop over to the Mixed-Up Files where I’m interviewed as part of a post on being a debut middle grade author. If you comment, you’ll be entered to win my book along with four other great MG novels.
Today I’m launching what I hope will be a recurring feature on this blog: First Line Friday. I don’t know about you, but I love coming up with first lines of stories. Even if those lines never turn into anything more, I still like stretching my brain to create them.
Last night on my train ride home, I started jotting down some first lines and I thought it might be fun to share them with you guys. And…
I want to hear your first lines!
So go ahead and put a first line or two in the comments (either from projects you’re working on or just fun ones you came up with). I’ll pick a few of my favorites and highlight them next week.
Okay, ready? Here are mine, in order from normal to dark to bizarre.
1. I could make anything out of clay–anything except the one thing that mattered.
2. It’s surprising how much a human head weighs even after the brain’s been removed.
3. If only Uncle Teddy had stayed dead, this never would have happened.
4. Our motto was simple: “You’re either in or you’re dead.”
5. If crocodiles could buy hats, I’d be a millionaire.
Now it’s your turn. Go!
February 24th, 2012 at 8:23 am
Awesome! #2 is one of the best lines I’ve ever read.
Here’s one of mine:
“Well, Samuel, we’re looking to place you with a family,” Ben, The Counselor, says.
February 24th, 2012 at 8:25 am
“Think they’ll let me tie-dye a bra this year?”
February 24th, 2012 at 9:26 am
Ooh, yeah. #2 is just creepy. Love that!
Here’s mine: The first time it happens I’m six years old, sitting on the playground next to a severed Barbie doll head.
February 24th, 2012 at 9:31 am
LOL. I’m working on a blog post about this very topic. I’ll play.
From my MG WIP:
In the fairy world, it’s a given that Teeth is what everyone wants upon graduating the Academy.
February 24th, 2012 at 9:33 am
Love these first sentences! I come up with far more first sentences than actual books… LOL
February 24th, 2012 at 9:45 am
Anna,
I love how I can feel a tone of each story begin to click with each of your first lines. Interesting that three of them are about the dead. Read a few too many zombie stories, perhaps?
Here are two of my favorites from all my scribbling over the years:
1) “My little sister, Talia, was born on a Monday; my dad once told me nothing good ever happened on a Monday.”
2) “Aunt Macy had planned out everything she needed for my Uncle Herbert’s funeral–except how best to kill him.”
This was a fun idea.
Thanks!
February 24th, 2012 at 10:17 am
This first line is one of many that I can’t seem to settle on for my mg novel…
“I would save every last purple Skittle if I knew it would bring my mother back.”
February 24th, 2012 at 10:31 am
The first line of my novel that comes out in August is a two-line-first-line. Is that cheeting? It’s:
My father’s dream brought us to America. My mother said only a fool believes in dreams, but she knew Papa, so she packed our bags.
What I’m working on now:
Lots of people say I’m lucky, the way I stumbled into my job at the Holbrink Detective Agency, but that just shows how wrong a lot of people can be.
And a favorite that’s in the drawer:
Joey Fletcher, former future rock star, sat alone in the garage, listening to the silence.
February 24th, 2012 at 10:56 am
I love reading first lines. Anna, number 3 cracks me up. Thanks for sharing yours! Here are a few of mine:
The temporarily emancipated version of me, an angry hornet, and a scorching Texas July morning converge in the center of a labyrinth.
I snagged a sweatshirt from my bedroom floor and pulled on my rain boots as soon as I saw Eric’s status update – because I was an excellent girlfriend and he obviously needed my help.
February 24th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
Anna- you are so generous. I consider first lines the most precious treasures I have, and can’t bring myself to share any unless I have had a chance to have a go at them and develop them.
Here’s one I’ve had my turn with:
Norma Cavendish has a terrible secret. I’m not sure I should even tell it to you.
February 24th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Yours are so much fun, Anna! I’m not working on anything new, but here are some from things I’ve already written:
- You can call me Lee.
- The man looked as beautiful as a pharaoh lying on the bed.
- Mom drove. Dad navigated. (Two sentences is cheating, I know. I should have made that a semi-colon).
- I roll the chalice between my fingers, considering the blessed sacrament lovingly as I insert it.
- He watched the grey mist fall languidly off the glassflat surface of the cold, dark lake, its twisting vapors the only thing that moved in the silence.
- The gelatinous mass shambled down the tunnel with alarming alacrity.
February 24th, 2012 at 4:45 pm
She would have given anything to ride a bus to school like other kids, now that she’d witnessed the businessman slip off the platform and fall onto the third rail.
February 24th, 2012 at 9:08 pm
Awesome idea, Anna! I thought yours were hilarious.Thanks for sharing!
Mine, from current and recent WIPs:
1) “Beyond the thinnest layers of air, before the boundless ocean of space, lay a sphere of energy known as ‘The Pass.’ Aria had feared it all her life.”
2) “This is the story of a girl who didn’t belong anywhere, who slept in the velvet curtains of an old theater and danced over steam grates.”
3) “Once, I had memories.”
4) “‘The mountains near Kisseldown are unlike other mountains,’ Journeyman Lash repeated to himself, staring at a horizon that lurched upward into dark smoke, the morning sunrise bleeding through and painting enormous black silhouettes within.”
-Mandy
February 24th, 2012 at 10:01 pm
Lol! I loved your second and fifth first lines! I love crocodile hats!
Here are some of mine!
1. I watched the wax drip down my birthday candle and into the nooks of my waffle, rubbed the morning crust out of my eyes, leaned my scabby elbows on the table, and thought about my wish.
2. Abby scooped a giant spoonful of peanut butter out of the Skippy jar and started spreading it on her sister’s head: it was time to get that rotten St. Bernard once and for all.
3. The Mayor tiptoed to the end of the diving board, adjusted his tie, and leaped off, landing upside down in a pool of foam.
February 25th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
Here’s the first line from my current WIP:
“My whole life changed that night by the taco truck.”
And below is a first line from a later chapter:
“Nothing shuts your urethra like feeling the back of your skirt sink into the toilet bowl.”
February 27th, 2012 at 1:54 pm
“The summer I lost my two front teeth I became the first girl ever to win the Watermelon Thump seed-spitting contest.”
“When Mundar the Magnificient disappeared—this time, for good—he left his top-secret vault of tricks and illusions to one person only…his son, Beck.”
“At the back of Frankensweet’s Candy Shoppe, under the last box of sour gumballs, there’s a trapdoor.”
February 27th, 2012 at 3:31 pm
Here’s the first line from my book that releases in October:
There are four Captain Stupendous fan clubs in Copperplate City, but ours is the only one that doesn’t suck.
February 27th, 2012 at 10:35 pm
“It was his own grandmother who fed Henri-Pierre to the Cabinet of Earths, long ago when he was only four.”
I would like to learn more about the crocodiles!
February 28th, 2012 at 7:34 pm
This is a fun idea, Anna! Here’s one from one of my current WIPs….
“Now behave, baby bunnies,” said Mother Bunny.
….