First Lines

[sleigh]

I noticed on amazon that they pulled a line out of A MAGIC OF TWILIGHT and put it underneath the title. Which got me to wondering...

How important is the first line of a novel to a reader? I would think that it's not as important as the first line of a short story, since readers tend to be more 'patient' with a novel. But does the first line of a novel matter? Do you expect to be hooked from line one?

I'm curious...

Just for grins, here are the first lines from each of my novels (in no particular order). Which one makes you most inclined to read on? And most importantly, why? Here they are:

Thunder arrived as a stunning burst of light.

The lioness slipped through the tall, dry grass surrounding the house, her muscular haunches down as she stalked.

He woke up... somewhere.

McWIlms never let his hand stray far from the sheathed dagger's hilt.

She had a name, but she would not let it enter her thoughts.

Hell screamed behind them, a nightmare of fire and death.

Pause. And shiveringly inhale.

Jemi pushed the welding equipment into the navigational compartment.


Raw power smeared red and purple across the night sky, held captive in the glow of the mage-lights...

MUSIC UP:

"Talk about jumping out of the frying pan..."

Wednesday had to be the most depressing night of the week in any nightclub.

CosTa's belly ached, her stomach muscles drawn taut from lack of food over the last three days.

The autumn day was as hot as any in recent memory.

The pines nearest Torin Mallaghan sighed in the wind as if weary of holding up their branches.

The stone was a gift of the glowing sky.

If a city can have a gender, Nessantico was female.

SStragh stepped unsteadily from the floating stone into moonlit darkness, her bones aching from the cold, her nostrils full of the sharp smell of ozone from the time storm, her neck raw and torn from her fight with the Gairk Klaido.

"Hey!" Aaron shouted.

Green Town sweltered.

For that matter, which one doesn't grab you, and why?

Or, for another game entirely, can you tell me which line belongs to which book? :-)

Comments

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

First paragraphs are expected to catch my interest. First lines don't have to be stunning, but if they are bad then I require something else (a recommendation, a really good hook page in front, the author is my friend or someone I'm going to interview, etc) to keep me reading. The ones you posted:

>Thunder arrived as a stunning burst of light.
awful.
I don't know what thunder is, since it's clearly not what I normally think it is, but I still don't know what. So I'm confused, which is uncomfortable. I just want it to go away.

>The lioness slipped through the tall, dry grass surrounding the house, her muscular haunches down as she stalked.
Too many words. Has the core of a good beginning, but "muscular haunches" in particular is telling me about it instead of showing it to me. "Tall, dry" also has too many adjectives.

>He woke up... somewhere.
I am in fact, intrigued, even though I can tell the author wants me to be. Nicely concise.

> McWIlms never let his hand stray far from the sheathed dagger's hilt.
*yawn*

> She had a name, but she would not let it enter her thoughts.
trying to hard. Sudden tension, DRAMA! and I don't care about the character yet, so I'm not happy about being so worried about her already.

>Hell screamed behind them, a nightmare of fire and death.
So, um, what else is new about Hell? Is it hot, too? Or was that allegory? I would not keep reading.

>Pause. And shiveringly inhale.
Nice. Here, I like the ambiguity. And the poetic consistency of doing the pause. With punctuation.

>Jemi pushed the welding equipment into the navigational compartment.
Hasn't turned me off, hasn't gotten my attention. Would keep reading.

>Raw power smeared red and purple across the night sky, held captive in the glow of the mage-lights...
I'm hoping this is not the first book in a series. Not sure why. Yet this is not a bad beginning.

>"Talk about jumping out of the frying pan..."
Seems to be trying to catch my attention. Instead, I'm a little bored.

>Wednesday had to be the most depressing night of the week in any nightclub.
Nice. I've already got a sense of atmosphere, with a little suggestion that something's gonna (has to) change/happen soon.

>CosTa's belly ached, her stomach muscles drawn taut from lack of food over the last three days.
I would trim this and leave the "last three days" for another sentence. the reference to stomach muscles throws me into speculation as to the effect of hunger on stomach *muscles* as opposed to the parts of the stomach that actually process food. "drawn taut" is such a strong phrase I actually stopped there for a minute, which I think is maybe not what the author wanted.

>The autumn day was as hot as any in recent memory.
Is this a global warming novel?

>The pines nearest Torin Mallaghan sighed in the wind as if weary of holding up their branches.
Would have liked a better lead-in sentence just before this one, so/or I could be on a first-name basis with Torin by now.

>The stone was a gift of the glowing sky.
Fine. very good. What's next? I want to read it. *squints eyes.. maybe I did already* anyway, good. short, sweet, interesting, unusual, yet internally consistent and melodious.

>If a city can have a gender, Nessantico was female.
Already feeling thrown by a bit of a change of tense.

>SStragh stepped unsteadily from the floating stone into moonlit darkness, her bones aching from the cold, her nostrils full of the sharp smell of ozone from the time storm, her neck raw and torn from her fight with the Gairk Klaido.
I like this one too. Tells enough, not too much. intrigues.

>"Hey!" Aaron shouted.
what.ever. would probably keep reading though.

>Green Town sweltered.
Again, like it. Sense of atmosphere, something to wonder about, but I'm not uncomfortably confused.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Wow -- thanks for the extensive feedback! But -- would you really stop reading after one line, or would you give the novel at least a few paragraphs?

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

It really depends on the context. If it was something I had casually picked up in a bookstore or at a seller's table, I might very well stop there.

Depends on how invested the cover or name of the author had me. I tried to approach these lines as though I didn't know they were yours- just knowing it was your book, or someone else's whom I know, I might give it a few paragraphs or even a few pages - or sometimes if the first part doesn't grab me, I'll leaf through to see if another part does.

If, on the other hand, someone had given me the book, it would definitely take me more than a first line to put me off from continuing to read.