Not only can this snap you out of your writer's block, but it's also a useful exercise if you're just looking for writing inspiration and insight:
- Go the
library, pick random books, read the first paragraph.
- Think about the choices the author made knowing that this paragraph was the key to whether or not the reader
would continue to read. Look at how these openings are constructed and think about why they are effective. Consider how they introduce the author's narrative style. Pay particular attention to the first line.
You don't have to start with classics like A Tale of Two
Cities by Charles Dickens:
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, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to
Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so
far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on
its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of
comparison only.
Any book will do. For example, Dead Men
Scare Me Stupid by John Swartzwelder is not considered classic literature, but it still worth reflecting on it's opening paragraph and first line:
Well, they found Amelia Earhart. That’s the good news.
Unfortunately, they found her in the trunk of my car. Boy was my face red. I had a lot of explaining to do there. And after I had explained everything, they didn't believe me! You probably won't believe me either, come to think of it. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.
Until you get to the library, here are the openings from a couple of dozen notable books:
Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there's nothing to compare it to now.
Paradise - Toni Morrison
They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time. No need to hurry out here. They are seventeen miles from a town which has ninety miles between it and any other. Hiding places will be plentiful in the Convent, but there is time and the day has just begun.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - 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.
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted
Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of
substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to
possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see
me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as
though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they
approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their
imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas - Hunter S Thompson
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when
the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like "I feel a bit lightheaded maybe you should drive. . . ." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?"
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
It was a pleasure to burn.
Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found
himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his
hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he
could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top
of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off
completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest
of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the
Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all ther was to read about in the papers -- goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corne and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerve.
1984 - George Orwell
It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were
striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort
to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory
Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from
entering along with him.
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster
It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three
times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone
he was not. Much later when he was able to think about the things that happened to him, he would conclude that nothing was real except chance. But that was much late. In the beginning, there was simply the event and its consequences. Whether it might have turned out differently, or whether it was all predetermined with the first word that came from the stranger's mouth, is not the question. The question is the story itself, and whether or not it means something that is not for the story to tell.
A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village
that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the
river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water
was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house
and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees.
The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and
we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves,
stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road
bare and white except for the leaves.
Red Wind – Raymond Chandler
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of
those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl
your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that
every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the
carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can
even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had
overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting
through a Dumpster. It was just after dark. A blustery March wind whipped the
steam coming out of the manholes, and people hurried along the sidewalks with
their collars turned up. I was stuck in traffic two blocks from the party where
I was heading.
Five Hours with Mario - Miguel Delibes
After she has closed the door behind the last visitor,
Carmen leans her head slightly against the wall until she feels the cold touch
of its surface and blinks several times, as dazzled. Her right hand is sore and
her lips are swollen from so much kissing.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams
The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a
lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
The Talented Mr. Ripley - Patricia Highsmith
Tom glanced behind him and saw the man coming out of the
Green Cage heading his way. Tom walked faster. There was no doubt the man was
after him. Tom had noticed him five minutes ago eyeing him carefully from a
table as if he weren’t quite sure, but almost. He had looked sure enough for
Tom to down his drink in a hurry, pay, and get out
The Witches - Roald Dahl
In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black
coats, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy-tale. This is
about REAL WITCHES.
Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie
All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy know was this. One day when she was two years old she was plying in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs. Darling put her hand to her heard and cried, "Oh, why can't you remain like this for ever!" This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy know that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless
Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an
emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
The Ghost Collector - Allison Mills
Shelly’s grandma teaches her about ghosts, how
to carry them in her hair. If you carry ghosts I your hair, you can cut them
off when you don’t need them anymore. Otherwise, ghosts cling to your skin, dig
their finger in under your ribs, and stay with you long, long after you want
them gone
The Princess Bride - William Goldman
The year that Buttercup was
born, the most beautiful woman in the world was a French scullery maid named
Annette.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a
mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten.
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
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.
A River Runs Through It - Norman Maclean
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and
fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in Montana, and our
father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies
and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we
were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on
the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen, and that John, the favorite, was a
dry-fly fisherman.
Back When We Were Grownups - Anne Tyler
Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had
turned into the wrong person.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and
I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all
I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my
hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I
dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and
Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom.
Everyone else in my family is dead.
All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in
the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he
shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboard creaked under his boots. In his black suirt he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutglass vase. along eh cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly know to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down at the guttured candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the wam wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funer cloth, the yellowed mustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.
The Martian - Andy Weir
I'm pretty much f***ed.
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I know really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K.Rowling
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
And how 'but those first lines? Goosebumps, huh?
A screaming comes across the sky.
It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
All children, except one, grow up.
I'm pretty much f***ed.
Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.
Well, they found Amelia Earhart.
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
OK. Now go put some words on paper.
