Great First Lines

Nothing hooks a reader like a great first line. Here are a few examples of first lines that made books must-reads.

• My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. Lovely Bones/Alice Sebold

• “Let her hang until she’s dead!” “Take her out and hang her now! I’ll do it myself!” Bam! Bam! Bam! Judge Otis L. Warren wielded his gavel with such fury I thought he might smash a hole in the top of his bench. Trial/James Patterson

• One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten. The citadel of the Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But, no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts. No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates…no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret. The Darkness that Comes Before/R. Scott Bakker

• On the night that I was born, my paternal grandfather, Josef Tock, made ten predictions that shaped my life. Then he died in the very minute that my mother gave birth to me. Life Expectancy/Dean Koontz

• Mr. Dunworthy opened the door to the laboratory and his spectacles promptly steamed up. “Am I too late?” he said, yanking them off and squinting at Mary. “Shut the door,” she said. “I can’t hear you over the sound of those ghastly carols.” The Doomsday Book/Connie Willis

It’s easy to see, when reading great first lines, why a reader becomes hooked. After your manuscript is concepted and written, polish your first line. Like a handshake, it will invite the reader into your world and send them to the cash register, novel in hand.