Beginnings

[terioncalling]

Since someone just posted the opening lines from a NIPP (mine are only in perpetual progress cause I keep getting ideas for other bloody stories), here's the opening from one of mine.

A town burned.

It had been a quaint little place, just a small town out in the middle of nowhere.  Everyone there had known each other by sight if not by name and there was little crime.  They’d been content in their lives.

Now they were all dead.  And their killers stalked the streets where they had once walked.

That's my story involving Heaven, Hell, a demon/angel friendship (wherein the angel drinks far too much alcohol), and a 12 year-old girl who's inhabited by a disembodied devil assassin.

Then there's the story I've been working on for...oh, since 2001 or so.  I created a whole thing of vampires, slayer, witches, werewolves, and etc that run around NYC and create havoc.  It's gone under three rewrites as of now (at least the first story has) and has a role-playing message board that's slowly dying a second death except for me and two friends just continuing on with our characters storylines.  Here's the new opening, written from the main character Darien O'Connell's (a 300+ year-old vampire) point of view.

Remember when you were young and your mother always told you a bedtime story?  Princes, castles, dragons, valiant knights, damsels in distress – the general pish and posh.

Or maybe you were one of those rare children who wanted the scary tales; the ones your mother never wanted to tell you and your father wanted to but couldn’t tell a story to save his life.  Y’know – the boogeyman, werewolves, Freddie Krueger, Jason.  The regular scare-the-piss-out-of-you stuff.

You might right now be asking yourself if there’s a point to all of this clatter.  Yeah, there is.  A sharp point lies at the end of this railway tunnel, so get a tighter grip on the rail of the caboose.


That was written after I started reading Dresden.

But back to topic...I suppose the opening line is usually what snags me in a story.  Though its usually the first few paragraphs or so - that's what grabbed me about Fool Moon, first Dresden book I picked up...well, that and it was about werewolves and I LOVE werewolf stories.  But nice catchy opening lines are good.

And what about this opening line?

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.   

[terroja]

What's your NIPP (mines the same way) about?

Two people have used NIPP now. I wonder if that will become a popular term among writers on the internet and I'll know for the rest of my life that I created it. If that does transpire, I hope it's not the most significant achievement in my life!

*inhales*

Anyway, to answer your question, my book is entitled The Plague Of Meaning and is the story of a young thief of galactic renown on a quest to uncover the truth behind the destruction of his entire species at the hands of the human race. All the evidence points to the metacorporation, Sradkur Mediations Inc. and their president, The Exalted--a being of supposedly flawless rationality--being responsible, but if he is, then the question becomes: is one person's revenge worth the probable economic collapse and social upheaval that the death of such an important person would trigger?

The parallel story is that of a homeless beggar with little recollection of his past who discovers, after an attempt on his life by local authorities, that he has both an unquenchable hatred for all living things and the power to do something about it. He goes on a killing spree, murdering indiscriminately with his nearly endless powers.

Allow me a lame tageline:

That which ties their destinies together, may tear their souls apart.

Then, I throw in a giant sentient lizard with a penchant for eating people whole, a samurai, numerous implausibly large-breasted girls and women, a black fog made of pure despair that sucks the ife out of anyone it touches, a faceless creature with an elastic body and fingers sharper than a razorblade, psychics, bounty hunters, cannibals, an array of neat gadgets and drawn out descriptions of the most gruesome deaths my mind can imagine.

And hopefully the whole thing's got heart. I hate reading books without heart.


 


 

 

[weever]

Personally I love NIPPs.  I plan to add it to my vocabulary and throw it at any writing class or group in hopes to be a part creating a new term.

As long as we're on the topic of NIPP openings, I'll throw mine into the mix:
Living on the third floor made life a little more interesting once Jake decided never to use the front door.  A back door would have been convenient, even a fire escape.

The next line, as written, I don't like and currently re-writing.

I would like to read more opening NIPPs.  Post 'em.

[fjeastman]

I wouldn't say this is a NIPP.  More like a NIRP. 

First paragraph:

I thought getting fired twelve times in two years had prepared me for losing my job.  (I had once even managed to get canned twice in less than twenty-four hours.)  No one, however, is really prepared to have their place of work blown down and lit on fire by an angry witch.  Maybe I was better able to handle it than most - at least she wasn’t angry with me.

It is, essentially, "a book I wanted to read, about things I wanted to read about, that nobody has written yet, and which I hope others will likewise enjoy".

--fje

[terioncalling]

I wouldn't say this is a NIPP.  More like a NIRP. 

First paragraph:

I thought getting fired twelve times in two years had prepared me for losing my job.  (I had once even managed to get canned twice in less than twenty-four hours.)  No one, however, is really prepared to have their place of work blown down and lit on fire by an angry witch.  Maybe I was better able to handle it than most - at least she wasn’t angry with me.

It is, essentially, "a book I wanted to read, about things I wanted to read about, that nobody has written yet, and which I hope others will likewise enjoy".

--fje

Sounds like a Dresdenish opening!  I'm intruiged...   

[Mickey Finn]

Ok, everyone write an opening line.. Now. Come on, you wanna.

If there's one thing I've learned over the years, it's that waking up in a body bag just plain sucks…but the first time is the worst.

Yes, that's the opening line for a novel I'm working on.

[Lord Arioch]

Oh... all right...

They say waking up in a familiar place is a good thing.  What they don’t say, is that when you do it, but have no idea how you got there, it is still just as unnerving.  They also don’t mention how bloody annoying the alarm clock is.

[Paige]

Some of these are really great. I wanna play too, but reading what's been posted here, I'm gonna have to try harder from now on.

::sigh:: 

One of these is published the other isn't. Not saying which is which...

   “He’s one of the fallen,” Father Papous said, his thick arms crossed over the belly he’d wedged against the small wrought-iron café table. He looked pinched in the middle like a balloon animal.

   “You think they’ll try to kill me?”
   “Yes.” Zade wouldn’t look at her. His gaze fixed on the street lamp across from Isabel’s bedroom window. The light’s honey glow was a safer sight, by far, than the little witch drifting toward sleep behind him in the dark.

[terioncalling]

*searches out one*

The oddest things always seem to happen in the most normal of settings.  For some reason, Fate or whatever – or whoever, if you want – controls the metaphorical strings of humanity seems to enjoy the chaos that incidents like these cause.

Guess everybody needs some kind of entertainment, right?

Opening lines from a werewolf short story I wrote for my creative writing class and am working on expanding into a novel.

[Dom]

Well, this has already shown up elsewhere as an example, but here it is again:

There's a place in rural Illinois in the cornfields between Chicago and Champaign where if you asked the locals if they believed in the supernatural, they would tell you that they knew a Satanist that made devil's food cake that was positively demonic. And they'd grin a little when saying it.

[Jon]

I rarely make a definite decision on whether or not I'm going to read a book by it's first line. That being said, when I do read a book that has an awesome introduction, I often give a little 'hmph', shift my position, look away from the book for a second, and then dive in. When I'm actually writing, I always take a ridiculously long time deciding on the first sentence and it usually ends up being something really simple, like 'It was raining again."

[Richelle Mead]

I have no idea how I never noticed this topic.  Beginnings that hook me are sooo important, especially now that I have stacks and stacks of books on my list.  I've also had beginnings hammered into me in all sorts of writing classes.  I honestly think Succubus Blues getting an agent was delayed by 6 months because I had a clunky opening chapter.  I cleaned it up and got an agent shortly thereafter.

Jim's books are outstanding in this regard.  Part of what hooked me was when I looked Stormfront up on Amazon and read those first few lines.  I IM'd a friend immediately and demanded, "Why are we not reading this guy?"

Here are the first few lines of SB for those who are interested:

Statistics show that most mortals sell their souls for five reasons: sex, money, power, revenge, and love.  In that order.

I suppose I should have been reassured, then, that I was out here assisting with numero uno, but the whole situation just made me feel…well, sleazy.  And coming from me, that was something.

[becroberts]

I'm another one that rarely pays attention to first lines, with the possible exception of Watership Down. It's not often I remember them and if I decide to give up on a book (rarely happens), it'll be because the first 30 or so pages didn't hook me, not the opening line.

That said, here's one of mine:

It looked like a suicide, right down to the bottle of imp poison on the floor and the suicide note on the coffee table. But the buzzing behind my eyes was telling me different.

[Cathy Clamp]

I don't know that I have stellar opening lines. Some people say yes, others say "ehh."  But here they are, in succession:

Nick's Tavern is in the worst part of town. The front door opens onto a back alley and the back door dead-ends inside another building. The Fire Code wasn't in effect when the building was built---Nick's has been there that long.

The scent of snow on the wind raised the hairs on my skin like distant lightning.

The sweet stench of rotting flesh on the breeze assaulted Antoine's nose, even before the buzzing of flies reached his ears.

I like to set a mood . . . a tone in the opening line that gives you the here and now of the character's moment in time. Sometimes I achieve it, and sometimes not. 

[Athanasia]

I have a poor memory, or rather one that seems bent on remembering tons of  trivia instead of the poems I love and useful data, lol  So when I do remember a line from anything (or its title!), it means something.

In this case it has been years since I touched the book, and yet the moment I saw this topic, among the hundred books I've read, it came right back to me that THIS one had an opening paragraph worth looking around my dusty bookshelves.

Imagine opening the book and coming across the first paragraph, like this.

"Once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And, in a way that bends time, so long as it is remembered, it will indicate the future. It is wiser, in every circumstance, to forget, to cultivate the art of forgetting. To remember is to face the enemy. The truth lies in remembering.

My name is Frances Hinston and I do not like to be called Fanny. I work in the reference library of ...."

Anita Brookner - "Look at me"

A. Brookner is one of these incredible British writers who excel at studying people (I'm not British but I'm biased in their favour, lol. Don't mind me, I like others too   ). Here in a few sentences one has  the gist of the book: a ordinary story on unrequited love, a study in character, and a few times across the book, a sudden plunge into something much deeper where the main character's suffering is never directly expressed but reaches to you in a very quiet and composed voice.

Not only that, but you know from the start not to be fooled, because this seemingly innocuous story on ordinary people is written by someone with a very sharp eye and mind.

Can you tell I was entirely hooked by that beginning?

Athanasia