If you are interested in promoting your book and growing your community on a stable author platform you might also enjoy this LinkedIn article, where I have outline the foundation for your book selling platform.
Stephen King's phenomenal writing career continues to show no signs of slowing down, with the prolific author selling over 350 million copies of his many books thus far.
He thinks that the first sentence of a book is so important, that he spends weeks, months, even years on it!
“The best first line I ever wrote is the opening of ‘Needful Things.' Printed by itself on a page in 20-point type:
You've been here before.
All there by itself on one page, inviting the reader to keep reading. It suggests a familiar story.”
When I'm starting a book, I compose in bed before I go to sleep. I will lie there in the dark and think.
I'll try to write a paragraph. An opening paragraph.
And over a period of weeks and months and even years, I'll word and reword it until I'm happy with what I've got. If I can get that first paragraph right, I'll know I can do the book.”
So it’s clear “the King” thinks the first sentence is crucial. But so does amazon, they have invested millions of dollars in the “Look Inside” feature. (the double edge sword).
The “Look Inside” feature allows readers to check out the first few pages…
People get to read the first sentence of ANY book, before they read it.
HINT – Create a killer opening line for your novel so extra tips here.
But meanwhile… here is my list of my favorite 13 opening sentences, I hope they will inspire you!
Paul Clifford
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
“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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)
Gabriel García Márquez
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
Speedboat
Renata Adler
“Nobody died that year.”
Middlesex
Jeffrey Eugenides
“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”
“This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”
James Baldwin
“‘You are full of nightmares,’ Harriet tells me.”
“Balthazar’s Marvelous Afternoon”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“Here is a weird one for you.”
“The Slap”
Stephen Millhauser
One September evening when Walter Lasher returned from the city after a hard day’s work and was walking to his car in the station parking lot, a man stepped out from between two cars, walked up to him, and slapped him hard in the face.”
“The Girl Who Raised Pigeons”
Edward P. Jones
“Her father would say years later that she had dreamed that part of it, that she had never gone out through the kitchen window at two or three in the morning to visit the birds.”
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers
“In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.”
Naked Lunch
William S. Burroughs
“I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station.”
“Dialogue with the Mirror”
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
“The man who had had the room before, after having slept the sleep of the just for hours on end, oblivious to the worries and unrest of the recent early morning, awoke when the day was well advanced and the sounds of the city completely invaded the air of the half-opened room.”
The Gunslinger
Stephen King
“The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”
Paradise
Toni Morrison
“They shoot the white girl first.”
If you are interested in promoting your book and growing your community on a stable author platform you might also enjoy this LinkedIn article, where I have outline the foundation for your book selling platform.
What's your last first sentence?
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