Best/Worst First-sentences in novels
Best/Worst First-sentences in novels
(OP)
There was a thread we had some time ago about the best and worst first sentences in novels.
(here: thread1010-141376: It was a dark and stormy night.)
I recently re-read that thread and enjoyed it again immensely.
Of course there is also the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with made-up sentences like this one:
She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination. — Chris Wieloch, Brookfield, WI
But I’m always interested in actual novel first-sentences and enjoy reading them.
Do any of you have any favorites?
(here: thread1010-141376: It was a dark and stormy night.)
I recently re-read that thread and enjoyed it again immensely.
Of course there is also the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest with made-up sentences like this one:
She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination. — Chris Wieloch, Brookfield, WI
But I’m always interested in actual novel first-sentences and enjoy reading them.
Do any of you have any favorites?





RE: Best/Worst First-sentences in novels
"High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse."
- Steve
RE: Best/Worst First-sentences in novels
"Now, since I actually thought it up all by myself, without any direct help from other people here at my humble place of gainful employment and besides, this may ultimately turn out to be a really great note scamming, no make that spamming, scheme for me, but more likely in the end only light or frivolous entertainment will pour forth."
John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
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Siemens PLM:
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To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
RE: Best/Worst First-sentences in novels
It was the worst of times......"
Charles dickens
A Tale of Two Cities
“Squire Trelawney, Doctor Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 1750, and go back to the time when my father kept the "Admiral Benbow" Inn, and the brown old seaman, with the saber cut, first took up his lodging under our roof."
Robert Louis Stevenson.
“Treasure Island.”
The first I used once when leaving a job, as an explanation of why I was leaving. My boss was not intelligent enough to appreciate that it was a quotation, which was another reason that I was leaving!
The second I use as a demonstration of how to start a stry, or a report, gets the major characters, the locations, and the theme (treasure) into one sentence.
RE: Best/Worst First-sentences in novels
Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
RE: Best/Worst First-sentences in novels
Thomas Hardy, Return of the Native, a fav because it was used in the Monty Python skeetch "Novel Writing"
RE: Best/Worst First-sentences in novels
Ok.
Pretty much every sentence in the HHGTTG.