What Makes A Great Book Opening Line?

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.

I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

There’s nothing like opening a book and falling in love at first line.

What is it that draws you in or makes that first line so powerful or effective or irresistible?

I’m thinking, Grant, of first lines like, it was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking 13. You know, the first line of 1984. It just makes me want to keep going.

Or even, where’s Papa going with that axe? Oh! From Charlotte’s Web, right?

Mm— and I’ve been puzzling lately over what makes a great first line, and I think that the writer Alice McDermott has a really good answer.

In her book of essays called What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction, she says that the one thing great first lines have in common is authority.

What all these memorable first sentences convey in all their variety is confidence. No equivocation, no building up to the good stuff.

Listen, they say. I have a story to tell. I know how to tell it. Trust me.

And Grant, I’ve been looking over lots of great first lines, and I think that that authority factor is really, really key.

I think you’re right.

Or how about this one?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.

1813.

1813.

A classic line.

And that one sentence sets up the entire book.

Exactly.

And you know what you’re in for.

The whole book is laid out in one sentence.

Right.

With that air of authority.

You just want to just relax into the storytelling.

McDermott makes the same point about Moby Dick in Call Me Ishmael.

I mean, what he could have said was, I suppose you could say I’ve gone by a lot of different names in my life.

I was picked on as a kid.

You know, but Call Me Ishmael.

There’s something about grabbing that microphone, being authoritative, having that confidence that I think is just really compelling.

And how can you not go to the next line?

Especially compared to the rest of the book where he doesn’t have that kind of economy of words.

Not at all. Not at all.

It’s time to read that again.

Marth and I would love, absolutely love to see your favorite opening lines from books.

Be they classics or modern fiction or anything.

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