First Lines Again

I have a series that compiles first lines (see here) as well as last lines (see here) so it was with rapt attention that I read The Kill Zone this morning and saw a post on first lines over there.

It's a fun post to read, among the best passages is this quote from Stephen King:

“[A good opening] is not just the reader's way in, it's the writer's way in also, and you've got to find a doorway that fits us both. I think that's why my books tend to begin as first sentences -- I'll write that opening sentence first, and when I get it right I'll start to think I really have something."

Then P.J. Parrish says of many crime novelist openings:

I mean, don't you get a little tired sometimes reading the tortured openings some writers give us? Crime novelists might be the worst offenders because we are led to believe that we have to shock and awe in the opening graph or the story is DOA. As a reader, I hunger for books lately that open in a lower gear. As a writer, I am trying hard to follow the lead of King (and the King of Hearts) and just begin at the beginning.

I have been thinking the same thing. I remember when I was a judge for the local novel writing contest (see here) I was constantly being assaulted by the action oriented opening.

Then Miss Parrish provides the four openings from her favorite books, and boy is there a doozy or two in there. What I think is the best is this one:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." 

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides