Create a novel's first sentence that will definitely keep people reading

[Rabrrrrrr]

Here's mine:

"If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have ended up in steerage with three Canadian Mounties on my way to Saigon to pull anal beeds out of Buckminster Fuller for three months."

[saltpoint]

1. "Now, Dubya, damn it all. How many times do I have to --

-- tell you that ain't what the pool drain's for?"

[Floogeldy]

2. Here's mine

Out of the darkness a hobo exclaims, "I am entitled to my fears. What is the color when red is burned, you damn dirty ape?"

[ccinamon]

3. mine

The quiet, dark night had a distinctive creepy feeling as I doggedly climbed the stairs to my second floor apartment.

[Reverend_Smitty]

4. She awoke from her slumber all wet and sticky...

it was then that Jessica decided that it wasn't a very good idea to fall asleep in a kiddie pool full of jell-o

[RevolutionaryActs]

5. I wrote a book last fall, this is the first sentence, tell me if its good:

"By a brook in a forest just outside the city of Avenmoore, sits a girl throwing stones at the far shore."


Um.. it gets better after that I promise...... x(

[saltpoint]

7. Hell, Rev_Acts -- it's pretty good right now.

Nice stuff.

[RevolutionaryActs]

9. Aww thank you! You made my night!

:7

I worked so much on my book, and I really hard on it, so its nice when people say they like something about it. :)

[saltpoint]

14. I feel you gave me the picture, the image --

-- to read on, and even more, to invest in the young woman right away.

Also I like the phonetic variety and the feeling of being windswept into a place of more possibilities.

I'm serious -- nice work.

[RevolutionaryActs]

21. Holy cow, I'm going to blush if you're serious....

and then I'm going to hug and kiss you, because you are way too sweet!

[pres2032]

6. ok, here's mine:

"Some things are taken, some are earned, but every so often a gift is given which changes a life in that shove it down your throat with a bright beam of light in your eyes kind of way.

[BlueJazz]

8. "As He slowed down the Time Machine, He couldn't believe..."

....................

[Bok_Tukalo]

23. ... people still built the superfluous fireplace into their homes

<eom>

[BlueJazz]

57. ...And George W Bush the 4th was President.. AAGGGGHH!!

[Mabus]

10. Bill realized he had come a long way,

from that scrawny little rich kid outside of Levittown to a grown man with a pet loofah.

[HeyManThatsCool]

12. ROFLMAO

Well... loofah or falaffel

[blondeatlast]

47. LOL! The unfictionalized fiction of Bill O'Reilly.

Now for real laughs, read "Those Who Trespass," his utterly wretched novel. Think of the awful, icky soft-core porn written by a Heritage Foundation collective and you've got it.

I was dared to read the first chapter by another library assistant where I work, and I managed. She bought me dinner.

But my literary experience is forever changed, and NOT for the better.

[Mabus]

50. Well I was trying to mimic his style

overly dramatic, poorly written and based (sometimes very) loosely on reality.

[WCGreen]

11. "You know, I write those letter, the forum really, the one's in Penthouse"

she Laughed and then, pausing to look me up and down, stuck her bottom lip out just so.
I knew tonight was going to be a whole lot different than I expected.

[kodi]

13. it wasn't really fresh meat, but it sure beat eating his other foot

.

[Rick Myers]

15. The sky was the color of a tv, tuned to a dead channel.

???

[roguevalley]

16. The red stain of his blood, glistening in pools at my feet reflected

the surly scowl on my face, a face that had seen it all and had secrets.
Many many secrets. (Two sentences. No anal beads)

[stpalm]

17. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Wait, people will fall asleep four pages into that! (like I did) dont use that one.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

18. She slid into the room like a salamander in heat.

You're dealing with a Bulwar-Lyton award winner here. I do bad good!

[KittyWampus]

56. Shouldn't That Be 'Salamander INTO Heat'? And Your Opening Line

warrants a follow-up.

:thumbsup:

[RagingInMiami]

19. here's mine

"Your job is to put some truth in that urban legend by whacking the first person you see driving with their lights off," Mario told Jose as he handed him a loaded uzi.


EDIT: Typo

[Rabrrrrrr]

29. If the rest of the novel is about one man's jihad against AOL assholes

and other dickwads who forward urban legend emails as though they're gospel truth and who live in fear that some day someone's gonna turn the headlights off and steal their kidneys while the gov. charges them a nickel for every email they've sent, then I'm gonna read it for sure!

That's the kind of utter bloodbath I could get into.

[Bok_Tukalo]

20. OK

Doug was irritated that after seven hundred years of cleverly evading the constabulary, a freelance with a new hobby would find his sig in a second tier brothel outside Oort City West.

[Rabrrrrrr]

28. LOL! I'd read that one, for sure!

[LordshipLadyship]

22. Who can blame me

for what I did to them, clothed only with my own shame?

[mikehiggins]

24. Nothing is so sad, really, than stumbling across a dead child.

It goes on from there...

[Taverner]

25. "Ohfuckohfuckohfuck!"

[Little Wing]

26. The broken hasp caused her dress to fall to the floor.

[NightTrain]

27. Six weeks ago, I killed someone.

That's the first sentence of DEADWAX, my murder mystery set in the record-collecting world.

[nuxvomica]

30. "The abandoned car, the laughing man, the rain of toads --

it all made sense to her now and she wept as she recalled the tiny white envelope left in her mailbox only a week earlier."

[Left Is Write]

31. Inside...

"Artie stood on the sidewalk in front of the seedy-looking flophouse, its red neon sign proudly proclaiming it the Hotel Bagnio."

[TheCentepedeShoes]

32. "Pops Bunnypants stepped through

the wide front door of his stone ranch house, propped a booted foot on the aspen-log porch railing, and gazed out over the verdant Amerigo Valley."

[DS1]

33. The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory.

[neweurope]

34. self delete

------------------------



Bush to The Hague!

[Rabrrrrrr]

35. Ah, that's too bad you deleted it.

I liked it!

But I can understand your want to delete it.

[neweurope]

36. Thanks :) I liked it myself and I have no qualms.

I just thought some of you might have, and since I'm a guest here...

:hi:


---------------------------

Remember Fallujah

Bush to The Hague!

[More Than A Feeling]

37. The man who planned the Kennedy assassination strolled

up behind me and put a gun to my head.

[HEyHEY]

38. She took of her pants and said, "Come and do me."

[RetroLounge]

39. Here's a few of mine, from Short Stories.

One of which was published.

"The first time that it came over me, I was walking South on Michigan Avenue, which is not in itself unusual except for the fact that I had just come from a particularly stressful lunchtime session with my therapist — the fifty minute miracle, I call it — and should have been walking North, back to work, but like I said, I was walking South"

"He was tired of moving, yet here he was doing it again"

"Alex climbed the semi-winding staircase, the oak railing stained with the dark oils of a thousand human hands pulling him upward, the well-worn boards straining beneath his feet emitted a faint creaking sound, more like a moan that rose up to his ears in an ominous, warning tone, slightly musical, yet dissonant, the pungent smell of sandalwood incense mixed with her own vanilla and sweet almond oil perfumes wafting into and around his nostrils."

RL

[Tom_Foolery]

59. I like all three, but I REALLY like the last one. n/t

[Orsino]

40. "Somewhere in this book is the location of buried treasure." n/t

[Schema Thing]

41. It was a stark and dormy night, and the coeds were taking the "stark" part

seriously indeed....

[OldLeftieLawyer]

42. "I can't get it out."

I've tried three different times to get that opening line past my agent and my publisher, and so far, they've thrown it back at me every time.

[fluffernutter]

43. His warm arms twitch around me then, and I am awakened;

floating down again into my body, into a world where it has become impossible to kneel down and outstretch my arms.

[Spider Jerusalem]

44. "I stuck the knife in and twisted the blade...

watching the evil bastard's face as it clenched with pain and surprise and then went slack as his blood pumped out in a warm, sticky jet over my hand."

[Rabrrrrrr]

45. ..and dripped on the only existing hand-written copy of the Necronimicon,

in fulfilment of prophecy."

Sorry for adding to your sentence - it was just begging for something a bit eldritch...

:-)

[Mabus]

53. That's where it went.

Can I get that back?

[AngryAmish]

46. I'm always suprised what a table leg does to a person's head.

BTW, a guy I went to high school with had his father beaten to death with a table leg. It was a mob thing.

[blondeatlast]

48. "Dark and warm down there, " Matilda scowled; "and what is with the

softly glowing, purring fuzz?"

[Butterflies]

49. Even though it was after midnight she pulled off the interstate to

use the rest stop ladies room.

[KitchenWitch]

51. The woman's body was meticulously posed, like a fashion model.

[Mabus]

52. Ann,

hopped up on cheap chardonay and meth, gently rubbed her adam's apple against Hannity's as the two exchanged rumors of Hillary Clinton's sexuality, which always excited the silent Alan who remained in his dark and dank corner pleasuring both himself and Ollie with Ashcroft's leftover crisco oil.

[Rabrrrrrr]

58. ROTFL!

That was frickin' genius!

[Tweed]

62. HA! This is great!

[Mabus]

64. But would the two of you read the rest of the book?

:shrug:

[Tweed]

54. It was a great day for President Kunicich.....

[name not needed]

55. Ashley signaled her desire by removing her...

:7

[Rabrrrrrr]

60. She was nothing but a cheap whore in her teenage years, the kind that

would let a guy do whatever he wanted, facials, cigarette burns, whips, the whole works, for 5 bub and a hit of meth, until she found a patron who straightened her up, sent her to school, and she became Lady Penelope Wilson, wife of the Prime Minister, whom she talked into detonating 16 nuclear warheads in the Vatican, plunging the world into the chaos we've known for the last thirty-five thousand years.

[MisterP]

61. I put the headphones down, but a nasty buzz continued to be heard from

them, like a large, angry bee.
"I hate the O'Reilly tapes too," the man said amiably.

[MrScorpio]

63. Here's mine:

"Just when I restored my faith in mankind, the President of the United States destroyed it with a nuclear holocaust."

[Cooper]

65. "Hey boys, watch this . . . "