home.social

#openinglines — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #openinglines, aggregated by home.social.

  1. Some books hook you from the very first line. Whether it’s a chilling observation, a bold statement, or just something so strange you have to keep reading, a strong opening can set the tone for everything that follows.

    Head to the 🔗 link in our comments for some of the best
    #openinglines 📚 #bookstodon

  2. (I have always thought that the first sentence of James Leslie Mitchell’s SPARTACUS is up there with some of the great opening lines in literature …)

    #Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #HistoricalFiction #Rome #AncientRome #Spartacus #OpeningLines #LewisGrassicGibbon

  3. "The main thing to remember in autobiography, I have always thought, is not to let any damned modesty creep in to spoil the story. This adventure is mine, Albert Campion's, and I am fairly certain that I was pretty nearly brilliant in it in spite of the fact that I so nearly got myself and old Lugg killed that I hear a harp quintet whenever I consider it."
    Opening paragraph of The Case of the Late Pig by Margery Allingham
    #books #MargeryAllingham #Campion #FirstLines #OpeningLines

  4. "The main thing to remember in autobiography, I have always thought, is not to let any damned modesty creep in to spoil the story. This adventure is mine, Albert Campion's, and I am fairly certain that I was pretty nearly brilliant in it in spite of the fact that I so nearly got myself and old Lugg killed that I hear a harp quintet whenever I consider it."
    Opening paragraph of The Case of the Late Pig by Margery Allingham
    #books #MargeryAllingham #Campion #FirstLines #OpeningLines

  5. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me."
    fivebooks.com/book/rebecca-by-
    #OpeningLines

  6. Some #books hook you from the very first line. Whether it’s a chilling observation, a bold statement, or just something so strange you have to keep reading, a strong opening can set the tone for everything that follows.

    Read on for some of the best #OpeningLines. 📚

    Booknotification.com | Get notified. 🛎️

    🔗: tinyurl.com/v6amy2zu

  7. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2024 winners have been announced! Some of these are hilarious!
    If you don't know what this contest is: "Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels." The novels do not actually exist.
    bulwer-lytton.com/2024
    #BulwerLytton #Writing #Fiction #OpeningLines #blfc2024

  8. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2024 winners have been announced! Some of these are hilarious!
    If you don't know what this contest is: "Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels." The novels do not actually exist.
    bulwer-lytton.com/2024
    #BulwerLytton #Writing #Fiction #OpeningLines #blfc2024

  9. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2024 winners have been announced! Some of these are hilarious!
    If you don't know what this contest is: "Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels." The novels do not actually exist.
    bulwer-lytton.com/2024
    #BulwerLytton #Writing #Fiction #OpeningLines #blfc2024

  10. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2024 winners have been announced! Some of these are hilarious!
    If you don't know what this contest is: "Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels." The novels do not actually exist.
    bulwer-lytton.com/2024
    #BulwerLytton #Writing #Fiction #OpeningLines #blfc2024

  11. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2024 winners have been announced! Some of these are hilarious!
    If you don't know what this contest is: "Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels." The novels do not actually exist.
    bulwer-lytton.com/2024
    #BulwerLytton #Writing #Fiction #OpeningLines #blfc2024

  12. It was a dark and stormy night, the inky pools of shadow in the sparsely furnished room punctuated only by jittery flashes of lightning and the throbbing #065a8f rather than #006699 blue background and glowing scroll of resolute white text and flirtatious lime green links as styled by the Modern Dark theme (for it is on Metafilter.com that our scene lies) emanating from the sleepless reader's laptop screen.

    metafilter.com/205160/2024-Bul

    #Bulwer #BulwerLytton #DarkAndStormyNight #Lytton #OpeningLines #prizes #winners

  13. It was a dark and stormy night, the inky pools of shadow in the sparsely furnished room punctuated only by jittery flashes of lightning and the throbbing #065a8f rather than #006699 blue background and glowing scroll of resolute white text and flirtatious lime green links as styled by the Modern Dark theme (for it is on Metafilter.com that our scene lies) emanating from the sleepless reader's laptop screen.

    metafilter.com/205160/2024-Bul

    #Bulwer #BulwerLytton #DarkAndStormyNight #Lytton #OpeningLines #prizes #winners

  14. It was a dark and stormy night, the inky pools of shadow in the sparsely furnished room punctuated only by jittery flashes of lightning and the throbbing #065a8f rather than #006699 blue background and glowing scroll of resolute white text and flirtatious lime green links as styled by the Modern Dark theme (for it is on Metafilter.com that our scene lies) emanating from the sleepless reader's laptop screen.

    metafilter.com/205160/2024-Bul

    #Bulwer #BulwerLytton #DarkAndStormyNight #Lytton #OpeningLines #prizes #winners

  15. It was a dark and stormy night, the inky pools of shadow in the sparsely furnished room punctuated only by jittery flashes of lightning and the throbbing #065a8f rather than #006699 blue background and glowing scroll of resolute white text and flirtatious lime green links as styled by the Modern Dark theme (for it is on Metafilter.com that our scene lies) emanating from the sleepless reader's laptop screen.

    metafilter.com/205160/2024-Bul

    #Bulwer #BulwerLytton #DarkAndStormyNight #Lytton #OpeningLines #prizes #winners

  16. It was a dark and stormy night, the inky pools of shadow in the sparsely furnished room punctuated only by jittery flashes of lightning and the throbbing #065a8f rather than #006699 blue background and glowing scroll of resolute white text and flirtatious lime green links as styled by the Modern Dark theme (for it is on Metafilter.com that our scene lies) emanating from the sleepless reader's laptop screen.

    metafilter.com/205160/2024-Bul

    #Bulwer #BulwerLytton #DarkAndStormyNight #Lytton #OpeningLines #prizes #winners

  17. @DocCarms @bookstodon

    KARÁCSONY, Benő: Napos Oldal [The Sunny Side]

    „Azóta, hogy szélnek eresztett az élet, mint egy darab fölösleges sajtpapírt, persze másként nézem a dolgokat meg a gyárigazgatókat.”

    *rough* translation:

    "Since life blew me away like a piece of unnecessary cheese paper, of course in a different way I look at the things and the factory managers."

    @bookstodon #books #literature #writing #OpeningLines #bookstodon

  18. @mikebaarda @DocCarms @bookstodon I think you have a point, but it's kind of context-dependent. Personally, when I read that line, sure my interest is piqued a little, but I'm also immediately primed to be looking for an explanation of the things you mentioned, and I'm not likely to have a good time reading the story until I start getting that explanation (or at least some justification for why I need to wait for it, like if the POV character is trying to find out). So it's kind of a high-risk high-reward maneuver: an opening line that introduces mysterious terms for story elements (such as, but not limited to, characters) can backfire badly if the rest of the story doesn't deliver details at the right pace.

    It's also definitely possible to overdo it by throwing so many unfamiliar terms at the reader so fast that they get turned off. Not the case here, of course, but other books definitely do it.

    </non-expert-opinion>

    #Writing #OpeningLines

  19. @DocCarms @bookstodon

    Even in her own genre the claim seemed ... implausible. And outside of it, well.

    Julian Barnes's Metroland:

    There is no rule against carrying binoculars in the National Gallery.

    #OpeningLines #bookstodon

  20. @DocCarms @bookstodon “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” — One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 👌

    #OpeningLines #bookstodon #books #GabrielGarciaMarquez #OneHundredYearsOfSolitude

  21. @DocCarms @bookstodon #books #literature #writing #OpeningLines #bookstodon

    There had been something loose about the station dock all morning, skulking in amongst the gantries and the lines and the canisters which were waiting to be moved, lurking wherever shadows fell among the rampway accesses of the many ships at dock at Meetpoint.
    -CJ Cherryh, Pride of Chanur

  22. okay, I'm already here for this. "When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere." #monsterdon #amReading #TheDayOfTheTriffids #OpeningLines

  23. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

    The Nellie, a cruising yawl, sung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. And then the dragons arrived.

    #HashtagGames #TheDragonsArrived #OpeningLines #AmReading #reading #books