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Some say that a snappy first line is the best way to snag a reader, be it the first line of the story or the first line of a chapter. Of course, some may believe this more than others, but let's face it: Sometimes just looking at opening lines is damn fun.

So how 'bout it? What are your opening lines? Which is your favorite? Which is your least favorite? And what are some of your favorite opening lines from books you've read?

And, of course, just feel free to discuss opening lines in general. How important do you believe they really are? How much time do you put into them? In your experience, has an opening line ever been pivotal for the development of a story/chapter?

"Meanwhile, the readers fanned themselves and wished the first sentence would end."
/snark (Though who am I to talk? C.S. Lewis's Caspian was "Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, Lord of Cair Paravel, Emperor of the Lone Islands, also called Caspian the Seafarer." I even seem to recall his title being shortened to "Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, etc." But his name was never the opening sentence of a book. Not that any of it matters. /tangent)

Favorite lines I've read:
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
--C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (And if you look at the other opening lines of the series, you'll see that this one is really a cut above the rest.)

"It was a dumb thing to do, but it wasn't that dumb."
--Robin McKinley, Sunshine (The rest of the book, however...ehhh.)

"All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, the way Wendy knew was this."
--J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

And I second the opening line of The Name of the Wind. Admittedly, I had completely forgotten the name of Kote's inn. sweatdrop

Incidentally, I can recite the entire opening paragraph of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Peter Pan, and Waste of Time, which just goes to show exactly how much extra time I have on my hands. I ought to use that brainspace for memorizing poetry instead.

Shoot. I should have brought my thumb drive to the cafe with me so I could give you all a taste of the really horrendous opening lines I used to come up with. I think one was something along the lines of, "When in blazes is this bloody circus going to start?" xd

Some that I do have on hand, however:
"When they first told me about Earl, I didn't believe them. I mean, what kind of self-respecting ghost has a name like Earl?"
--"The St. Claire After Ten"

"Mallory, Nora, and Vicky turned down Mallory’s parents offer to carpool on the way down to Nashville."
--"Polonius Says"

Let's see, the old opening line for MOSI was:
"All was silent, save for the sound of dripping water."
And I saw that line every time I opened the document for upwards of four years. Which is probably part of the reason why I now keep each chapter in its own file. I only have to look at the most recent opening line. >>; If I really wanted to torment myself, I'd use that line to open a chapter about Lower Trimore.

The original MOSI chapter two was:
"Jericho was taking the opportunity to get a good look at their surroundings."
Blaaaaand.

Original MOSI chapter three:
"Jericho had his hands full as he and his companions made their way back the way they had come."
Why all the focus on Jericho all the time? Oh yeah, this used to be omniscient.

And the other thirteen original chapters seem to be elsewhere (read: thumb drive).

Current MOSI opening lines:
"The city slept later than perhaps it should have, but after the previous night's revels most of the inhabitants felt that the world would forgive them if they spent a few extra hours in bed."

"Their train was late."

"Had Sabine been making her journey to Emanon twenty-four years earlier, the journey would mostly have been by boat." (What was that, Officer Lockstock?)

"Silence settled over the crypt, thick and dry as the dust, as both parties waited for an explanation neither seemed able to give."

"Vitae did not, to his knowledge, have amnesia."

And a story about a time when an opening line was crucial:
When I set out to re-write MOSI last semester, the opening line was, "It was the morning after May Day, ..." and then some commentary on how lovely the rain was and blah blah blah. It did absolutely nothing for me. I could do nothing with it. I was stuck. So, in a moment of bitter rebellion, I changed the opening line to, "It was the day after May Day, and it was miserable." And from there, the entire chapter fell into place. Later I changed it to, "It was the day after May Day, and gray clouds darkened the sky," and eventually to the current one, which was the second line of the second paragraph, because several sources told me it would work better as an opener. Which just proves that even if it helped me write the chapter, the first line is not necessarily godly. I don't think it's even really there anymore. The fact that it's the morning after May Day is just insinuated.

Long post is long. Sorry, guys. sweatdrop

Rae, you're a freak.

A creepy, mind-reading freak, because I was just thinking the other day about a thread for first lines. Though I was more thinking WORST first lines, for which I was going to use... the one that irian-andaluv supplied.

Goddamnit. I am redundant. sad

EDIT: My favorite first line ever is "Sylvie had an amazing life, but she didn't get to live it very often." From The Great Good Thing, by Roderick Townley.

I liked The Great Good Thing, though it was a little slow at times. And it really didn't make a lot of sense, but that was okay. Also I've just looked it up, and apparently there's a sequel called Into the Labyrinth in which their book is uploaded onto the internet. Huh. I kind of want to check that out.

Actually, after more out-checkage, it's a ******** trilogy. The third book involving their book going into outer ******** space.

I don't even know what to say. So moving onto more thread-relevant... things:

Winner for vaguest, trippiest first line ever: "In watermelon sugar the deeds were done, and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar." From In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, who is trippily awesome.

I love the entire first chapter of the first Harry Potter book, but here's the first line: "Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

I hate first lines that are dialogue, or "The first time I... " or "I remember when... " or especially onomatopoeia.

My favorite types of opening lines tend to be ones that directly involve action, instead of a thought or an observation. Generally there has to be some sort of motion going on or I'm disinterested -- floaty, observational beginnings, like Rae mentioned, tend towards me putting the book down before I give it a chance.

I honestly can't think of many favorites off the top of my head. I'd have to go poke at some of my better-liked books.

There's a book by Clive Barker, Mister B. Gone, that isn't one of his better ones, but opens with the line "Burn this book." That was pretty fun.

And there's way too much onomatopoeia hate in this thread. I am all about the comic book sound effects in writing if they're not raped to excess.

My works tend not to have particularly epic opening lines. Heh.

My good lines tend to come in the second or third sentence, my first lines tend to be set-up for the better lines. So, I guess I don't put much weight on the first line, but rather the first paragraph/page.

First lines:

Untitled:

"El Rio was the sort of place any suburban parent would tell their kids not to walk around at night."

Almost Nymphet

"'Tell us about James Harris.'"

Hunter

"I stopped crying when I was nine years old."

My favorite opening lines are from two of my shorts, actually:

Red, Red! RED.

"Sway hips, flushed cheeks, black dress, red lips."

In the Mind of Boys

"It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it first."

And now for more sucky lines from the original draft of MOSI!

Chapters 4-16:
"The horizon ended."
"Yinda did not, in fact, stay with Vitae for very long."
"The morning sun shone futilely through a thick, high canopy of clouds; the proverbial light hidden under a bushel."
"Vitae found it difficult to sleep that night."
" 'They'd been traveling together for three months before Yinda got the urge to drag Jericho over to meet the family.' "
"By Jericho’s calculations and a map he had bought in Greynaught, they were nearing the border between the Western and Southern nations."
"The sun hung high in the sky over the courtyard outside Nathan’s workshop."
"The group paused just inside the cover of the trees and Sabine passed around the tin of lemon balm Nathan had given her."
"While Jericho staggered off to find a place to sleep and Nathan rushed back to his workshop, Sabine was already in the infirmary."
"Yinda and Leste arrived sometime during the afternoon, escorted by a Border Guard search party."
"When the group awoke the next morning, Nathan was nowhere to be found."
"Apart from the initial joy over Nathan’s success, there really wasn’t much to celebrate."
"At Jericho’s insistence, they once again boarded the very last passenger car on the train."

Some of these lines, robbed of context, sent my mind motorboating through the sewer.

I SUCK AT OPENING LINES. I will now proceed in an attempt to provide entertaining examples.

"Though it seemed an obscenely cruel thing to at the end of a particularly bloody quest in which our three main protagonists had spent most of their time scuba diving through hepatitis infected moats just to get into a rotting castle infested with a prolific army of acid spewing zombies, Danielle woke up with perfect hair."

"If you thought about it, it wasn't all that surprising how quickly things went wrong."

"Having spent a good deal of his life in boarding school, Julian had learned to appreciate his alone time."

"School had already started, and camping, Taylor argued, wasn't really in the schedule anymore."

"It wasn't the first time Ash had ever woken up in the hospital; it was, however, the first time he'd ever woken up in such an incredible amount of pain." You can just imagine the horrible, horrible things I did to him from then on.

Here's a different story with a slightly different, earlier version of Ash...
"Finally deciding to die had made Ash feel... well, ironically festive for the first time in months."

"The air in the shuttle was cold. It was quite a bit above the almost absolute zero of the space just outside the hull, but it was cold enough so that when Henri spoke, his breath misted over the small, round window and Conor had to palm it away in order to see outside."

"It was summer again, and all the windows in their crumbling, third floor apartment had been wound wide open; a feeble invitation to any wayward breeze that might have gotten lost in the suffocating inner-city heat."

I kind of want to cheat on these and show a bit more. If you disprove... just read the first lines.
“'You really wished for this?' Molly asked, looking down the length of 16th street. Now completely devoid of the usual pedestrians, it was somehow eerie-- like the husk of a cicada, never really alive, but now very, very dead."

"The thing about working in such a large and busy hospital was that on any given day, there were thousands of things to clean, and, if he ever got around to it, plenty of people to feed. Part of the problem with feeding the patients, however, was that getting shipments of anything from the outside world was incredibly rare, and these interesting delights were always split and devoured among the staff, which, funnily enough, didn't actually need the food."

"Days like today were not particularly unusual for Molly. It had started well enough-- well, if you 'started' the day at midnight, anyway, it had started pretty damn well." ((Different Molly character, lol))

"There was a peaceful melancholy about an October dusk that really got to Charlie. It was yet early in the month, and the vague smell of warm asphalt still swirled around the porch, settling as the temperature dropped with the sun. She lifted her cup to her lips slowly, smelling the alcohol, letting the scent bully its way through her senses before she took a long swallow and reflected on how perfect a cocktail she had picked-- whiskey and pineapple."

The rest I went through were all so mortifyingly, embarrassingly bad that I refuse to show them.