How To Write An Unforgettable Opening Line
The opening line in a story may be life or death for whoever picks it up to read. That’s why it’s necessary that you come up with an eye-catching opening line for every single one of your stories. Without that, you may find that people are so instantly bored they are no longer interested in reading what you have written down.
Let’s look at the opening lines from my books and analyze them a bit.
Lot 743 a rare gem worth the money for any collector — Birthright: Acquisition
I think with an opening line like this the audience would instantly wonder what is being auctioned off. It sets up that there’s something rare and it’s up for bidding for a collector. However, it leaves off just enough information that you have no idea what this object might be. Is it literally a rare gem, as in a stone for a piece of jewelry, or is it colorful language to symbolize something else? I believe this line drives people to want to read further to find out what this auction is all about, which in theory should suck them into wanting to get more into the book.
From the horizon of the barren desert known as The Wasteland, came the silhouette of a woman on her last leg. — Birthright: Wasteland
With this opening line there is instantly high stakes involved here. Though it doesn’t say who the woman is or even describe her in any way, there is already a sense of urgency. She’s in a barren desert and it’s called The Wasteland, and that sets up something ominous immediately. Her silhouette appears seemingly from nowhere but she’s obviously in bad shape, on her last leg as it says. From this line you can assume that anyone reading will want to know who this woman is, why she is there, and what her fate may ultimately be.
“This is all I could put together in the time I had with the supplies I could find, they were limited. I’m also not sure the explosion is going to be as controlled as we think it’ll be.” — Birthright: Lost Vegas
Though these opening lines are from a series of books with a continuous plot, I still feel like it’s necessary to open with a line that has some kind of urgency or sense of importance. This line is the start of a flashback from events in the previous book which will definitely catch someone’s eye if they’ve read it. However, I like to write each book in a series so that people can pick up any of them and not be completely confused as to what is going on. I think that this line being said, by one of the supporting characters, shows that something dangerous is about to happen, and it’s going to lead to utter chaos. In my mind, anyone who picks up a book and reads that first line is going to want to at least know about the explosion and the fallout that it will cause.
It wasn’t long ago when he knocked on the front door in the middle of the night looking for work. How he’d gotten past the guards at the gate had been a mystery but it was probably the only reason her father had hired him. — Weapon Of Choice
This is cheating a bit because in all fairness it is two lines but I think they are brief enough that I can kind of squeeze it in as an “opening line”. This line isn’t as harsh as the previous two but it does ignite some intrigue in the reader. Who is this guy? Why is he showing up at doors in the middle of the night? How did he get past those guards? What kind of person would this establish and wouldn’t he be interesting? Personally, I’d want to know a lot more about what was going down with this strange man who could get into a house in the middle of the night without being noticed, while also looking for work. What work? Well, it doesn’t say that either. All of these things would leave a person hanging and wanting more.
It’s not just violent dystopia and mafia thrillers that I write either. There are more tame opening lines that I have written that I believe are just as interesting as these that I have shared here.
Her life had been anything but fun or privileged. She had started at the bottom and barely worked her way to the middle. — Price
Here is the opening line from my novel, Price. Well, opening two lines but once again they are so short that they may as well be one opening line. Not as exciting as the others but it does serve to establish that this person has had a hard life and it has continued to be hard, she’d only managed to work her way up a bit. Not all the way up. It sets up a narrative that you are going to be reading about someone’s struggle and then possible triumph over their hardships in life. Maybe you wonder how she got there, why she is there, or what she’s going to do now.
When it comes to opening lines you want to give just enough information to let someone form an idea of what the story may be about but not too much information that everything is given away. If you give away the situation in the first paragraph then how fun is that story going to be to read? It’s about leaving breadcrumbs here and there. A trail for a person to follow. There is no one right or wrong way to write an unforgettable opening line but if I had to suggest how to do it exactly it would be something along the lines of:
Vague character action + Vague character setting + Some kind of stakes or conflict.
In this way you set the reader up for an interesting story to come to life ahead. They have the clues they need to form ideas about where the story may go, enough to know if they are interested or not, but they don’t have the whole story and will not have the whole story until they have finished the very last page of your book.
