It was in a junior high English class that I was first taught to make the opening sentence/paragraph of a story or essay a banger. That it should grab the reader by the back of the neck (or maybe by both ears) and pull them in. The reader can come in slow and easy but, better, the first sentence in particular should hit 'em over the head and yank ‘em in.
It was my freshman year English 101 prof who really drilled that lesson into my head. After our first writing assignment, the class had been scolded for our, across the board, safe, pablum writing quality. The professor seemed to be personally, offended and even a wee bit disgusted with our poor efforts. Our papers were, at best, snoringly dull soporifics.
Next assignment – review/critique a popular magazine. I chose Reader’s Digest. Why? My parents had a subscription so I was familiar with it (as opposed to Golf Digest or Good Housekeeping zzzzz) and it was an easy target. Did I go with just the first line being lit? Fuck no! It was fireworks up and down.
I ripped Reader’s Digest to shreds in the most scathing, disdainful way. // All of the magazine's features were homogenized drek, with any even vaguely sharp edges of reality stripped off and replaced with soft, rounded bumper car foam for the reader’s protection. The humor pieces were beyond lame – barely able to raise a smile on a quokka. // I went on and on – like a wolf surgically carving up a baby bunny.
My classmates were shocked and a bit horrified to the point that no one spoke to me for the rest of the semester. Seriously. This was mid '70s Appalachia – so, still the '50s. My classmates were beige. Very. How did the prof react? He applauded and I got an A. I learned my lesson well.
Now? I don’t pull a banger beginning off every day but I try to keep the snoozers at bay.
In any case, here are some of my absolute favorite brilliant hooks:
Life is beautiful and life is stupid. This is, in fact, widely regarded as a universal rule not less inviolable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and No Post on Sundays. As long as you keep that in mind, and never give more weight to one than the other, the history of the galaxy is a simple tune with lyrics flashed on-screen and a helpful, friendly bouncing disco ball of all-annihilating flames to help you follow along.
~ Catherynne M. Valente, Space Opera.jpg)
A screaming comes across the sky.
~ Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
~ Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
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 .jpg)
I am an invisible man.
~ Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge
He—for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it—was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters.
~ Virginia Woolf, Orlando.jpg)
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
~ William Gibson, Neuromancer
One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.
~ Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
It was the day my grandmother exploded.
~ Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road
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.
~ Paul Auster, City of Glass
Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu.
~ Ha Jin, Waiting _-_Kurt_Vonnegut.jpg)
All this happened, more or less.
~~~~
Listen. Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.
~ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
The moment one learns English, complications set in.
~ Felipe Alfau, Chromos
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
~ Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.
~ Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups.jpg)
How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President
~ Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
~ Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the Chaplain, he fell madly in love with him.
~ Joseph Heller, Catch-22.jpg)
In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
~ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I am so fucked.
~ Andy Weir, The Martian
It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men
~ Mark Lawrence, Red Sister
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