A busy and harassed judge/editor/agent
reads so much that anything that makes them notice you has got to be good. Compelling,
gripping, intriguing, it has to get the reader interested.
I went back to some of my favourite examples
taken from the top 100 of a recent poll of all-time great openings.
* 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. —Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred
Years of Solitude
* It was a bright cold day in April, and
the clocks were striking thirteen. —George Orwell, 1984
* 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
* I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible
Man
* Someone must have slandered Josef K.,
for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
—Franz Kafka, The Trial
* 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. —J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the
Rye
Each one draws you into the story right
from the off. Do that and you have given yourself a great chance of success,
assuming your story lives up to the promise of the opening lines, of course!
John Dean
No comments:
Post a Comment