It was a dark and stormy night ...

Some novels take 40 or 50 pages before the story actually gets moving. The Outlander (Diana Gabaldan) was like that. Some stories never come together. I remember reading three-quarters of Sidhartha (Herman Hesse) before finally facing the fact that it wasn't going to get any better. (I know the book was highly touted, but that doesn't mean it was good.)

When you write for kids, you don't have the luxury of waiting for readers to warm up to the story. You have the first paragraph -- maybe a whole page if you're lucky -- to grab your readers' attention. Otherwise they're off doing something else.

So opening sentences are very important. They have to hook readers immediately -- and hold them. That's not to say that books aimed at adults shouldn't try to reel readers in early too. Many do. In fact some first lines have such punch that they are well-known even by people who haven't read the books. Consider:

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

—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."

—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

"Call me Ishmael."

—Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."

—Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

"Where's Papa going with that ax?"

—E.B. White, Charlotte's Web (1952)

One opening line is so well-known, it has become a cliche and is cited by some would-be authorities as how NOT to begin a story.

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

—Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

Of course there are a multitude of fabulous opening sentences that aren't as well-known, but that doesn't make them any less brilliant. A few I came across while researching this blog are:

"Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person."

—Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

"Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure."

—Albert Camus, The Outsider (1942)

"I planned my death carefully; unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it."

—Margaret Atwood,  Lady Oracle (1976)

"A girl always remembers the first corpse she shaves."

—Caitlin Doughty,  Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (2014)

So what makes an opening sentence effective? I'd say for the most part, strong opening sentences arouse a curiosity in readers. That can be achieved any number of ways, but the bottom line is that a good opening sentence provides readers with incomplete information, so that they want to know more. And that means they keep on reading.

Here are a couple of opening sentences from two high interest/low reading level books I wrote for young adults. Because the audience for these books are reluctant readers at the best of times, strong opening sentences are especially important. The third example is from a middle grade novel.

"We had the top down on our old LeBaron and the sun was beating on us from a sky that was nothing but blue. It was my mom's turn to drive. I was stretched out in the passenger seat, watching Saskatchewan slide by and thinking there must be a couple dozen different ways for a guy to kill himself."

—The Hemingway Tradition (2002)

(Admittedly, this is a whole paragraph and not just one sentence, but as I mentioned at the beginning of the blog, young readers will give you a paragraph.)

"Flying in a Beaver floatplane is like being deaf -- only louder."

—Cabin Girl (2014)

"I swear on my baseball glove -- Kelly and I had nothing to do with that fire."

—Cairo Kelly and the Mann (2002)

Now that I'm working on an adult historical novel, the fact that I have no word count limitations has made me as giddy as a kid in a candy store. I can explore scenes in depth that writing for kids never allowed me to do. I am finally writing something my daughter will deem 'long enough'. But old habits die hard, and even though adults will give me more time to get into the story, I still want to hook them early on in the novel.

"Long before Jane Dawe was born, the poor of London had been pushed into the east end of the city, to an area so bleak and devoid of hope that survival there hinged on expecting little from life and settling for less."

—Lady of Bethnal Green (work in progress)

What opening sentences have stuck with you? Let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading. Talk at you next month.