First Line of Attack

The most powerful “hook” in a book is the first line. A first line should encapsulate the core message without giving plot secrets away. It must capture the imagination of the reader with the tantalizing promise of revelations to come, while hinting at the main thread of the storyline.

Steven R. Boyett’s best selling novel Ariel starts with, “I was bathing in a lake when I saw the unicorn.” After reading that first line, who could put the book down? This one simple sentence makes it clear that the hero is a boy…not a man. He is innocent, not guilty…pure not corrupt, and faces a world that is a crucible of experience destined to strip away childhood. All this is conveyed in less than a dozen words, the first words in the first line of a brilliant literary work.

            “Man,” said Terl, “is an endangered species.”

This is the first line of L. Ron Hubbard’s classic Battlefield Earth. After reading that sentence, I devoured the first half of the book in one fell swoop, practically without breathing. Why was humanity an endangered species? Who was Terl? What had humankind done to set the feet of their descendants on such a fatal course? Perhaps, my opinion is skewed by my love for fantasy and science fiction, but I believe this single sentence is one of the best first lines ever written.

Hugo and Nebula award winner Orson Scott Card wrote a landmark book titled Ender’s Game. “I’ve watched through his eyes, I’ve listened through his ears, and I can tell you he’s the one.” What does this first line do to your heart rate? If your heart doesn’t speed up, your mind doesn’t gear up and your imagination doesn’t steam up, you’re probably dead! What a great “hook,” and what a wonderful first line.

In my paperback copy of Life Expectancy, Dean Koontz autographed the word, Boo!  And, then, he signed his name. This is my favorite of all of Dean’s multitudinous works, because the entire storyline is foreshadowed in the first sentence. “On the night that I was born, my paternal grandfather, Josef Tock, made ten predictions that shaped my life.” The predictions were more nearly curses and our protagonist had to survive each impossible event to carry the story forward. What a brilliant book! What a great first line!

From classical first lines like, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…” to contemporary first lines such as, “My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down,” the first sentence of a book is the very real “hook” that allows an author to reel the reader in. How do successful writers come up with these first lines? Where do they get their inspiration? Through intuition and clarity.

You don’t have to know each twist and turn of your story to be aware of its karmic value. Some writers plot out the storyline, while others make it up as they go along. Both have a general direction, an inner compass that points the way to fate, to challenge, to the adventures through which their characters must pass to reach safe haven. If you are really in love with your story, with your characters, with writing, the first line will come to you. It may not come clear until the entire tale is on the page, but when it does it will “hook” your reader, and open doors of wonder to reader and writer, alike.