The Importance of Your Opening Sentence

Evaluated by Editor Rebecca Heyman

Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, choose a great topic, give it a great beginning, a great ending, and you’re half way there. A solid opening line hooks the reader’s interest and establishes the reliability of the narrator.

Professional editor Rebecca Heyman walks us through a series of first sentences, sharing her thoughts on whether they are successful, and/or how they could be better.

Opening lines have 2 basic parts: the idea you’re choosing to open with, and its execution on the page. It’s OK if you don’t agree 100% with all of the editor’s feedback. There are many reasons readers may have different gut responses.

The important thing is that the opening line appeals to your target audience, and that they keep reading.

Concrete, Strong Sentences

Even when you’re being abstract, it helps to be concrete.

• Start with a strong idea. Maybe an intriguing universal idea or an unusual happening to make a connection with readers.

• Strong, clear, focused language. Be sure your language has just one clear meaning to avoid confusion.

• Add feeling, movement and/or music to the line, if possible.

• Be specific!

Optional exercise: Take a favorite opening line OR an opening line you feel can be improved, maybe something you’ve written. Then try to make it more compelling.

Memorable 1st Lines

“Your line was always: ‘give me a reason.’ Always.” —Flux by Jinwoo Chong, 2023

“In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier's greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini.” —The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, 2000

“Why is the measure of love loss?” —Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson, 1992

“What’s it going to be then, eh?” —A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 1962

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.” —Catcher In the Rye by J.D. Salinger, 1951

“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 by Jane Austen, 1813

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” —Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, published in installments 1875-1877

“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family possessions of the Buonapartes.” —War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy, 1863-1868

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” —Genesis 1:1