Sorry, this one just doesn't resonate with me. It seems like he's back-slid from the last few first lines I've cataloged in this space (here and here).
In the dark and secret heart of Washington, there is a short and very covert list. It contains the names of terrorists who have been deemed so dangerous to the United States, her citizens and interests, that they have been condemned to death without any attempt at arrest, trial or any due process. It is called the kill list.
It is just so trite and to the point. For some reason as I read it I thought about a fourth grader trying to write a novel and emulating his favorite thriller authors. Not a fitting first line for such a terrific author and what is turning out to be such a good book.
As NaNo is right around the corner, and as we've been discussing opening lines and scenes these past few posts (here and here), I thought that posting this from The Write Life seemed apropos.
The Worst Way to Begin Your Novel Advice from Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino gives some terrific bullet points for authors from the literary agent's point of view. Some of them are things most of us have seen and heard and dislike on our own.
“A sci-fi novel that spends the first two pages describing the strange landscape.” - Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary
or “A cheesy hook drives me nuts. They say ‘Open with a hook!’ to grab the reader. That’s true, but there’s a fine line between an intriguing hook and one that’s just silly. An example of a silly hook would be opening with a line of overtly sexual dialogue.”
- Daniel Lazar, Writers House
Both of these are terrific in my view but the one that stopped me cold came up regarding too much flowery prose, if only cause it intersected so well with my own series of posts on descriptions of mornings (here).
“The [adjective] [adjective] sun rose in the [adjective] [adjective] sky, shedding its [adjective] light across the [adjective] [adjective] [adjective] land.” - Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary
It's so close to Roger Lawrence's comment on my post Doubter's Take Note:
It's because mornings are so much more vital. After you've said, "the evening sun cast an ochre smear over the dying sky", or something like that; what more is there to say.
It's well worth reading. Some of them are really quite good if the rest of the book is meant to be funny. I chose four of my favorites just as an amuse-bouche to help you decide to click the above link and invest the five minutes it takes to read them. Hearing about what sex after fifty is like with Rachel makes the return on the investment well worthwhile.
She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.
Chris Wieloch
On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained.
Rephah Berg
As an ornithologist, George was fascinated by the fact that urine and feces mix in birds’ rectums to form a unified, homogeneous slurry that is expelled through defecation, although eying Greta’s face, and sensing the reaction of the congregation, he immediately realized he should have used a different analogy to describe their relationship in his wedding vows.
David Pepper
Sex with Rachel after she turned fifty was like driving the last-place team on the last day of the Iditarod Dog Sled Race, the point no longer the ride but the finish, the difficulty not the speed but keeping all the parts moving in the right direction, not to mention all that irritating barking.
Dan Winters
Again, . . . well worth the time. Definitely adding this post to the series.
This caught my attention. Lit Reactor has an article up by Christopher Schulz called Founder of Book Genome Project Calls Self-Publishing A Literary "Darknet" that is interesting in terms of understanding how meta-data is hindering the ability to truly know what genre's and types of books are being self-published and how that is similar to the Darknet.
But that's not what caught my eye. What caught my eye was the description of one of these self-published books that Schulz references the fact that the article he is referencing references "a particularly unsettling trend of incest and bestiality books that enter the marketplace completely unchecked." To prove the point he brings up Daddy's Invisible Condom (I'm not linking to it) and at least has this positive aspect of that book "On the plus side, books such as these don't seem to sell well."
It's an interesting few minutes read and the article it references too is worthwhile for anyone interested in self-publishing and the trends among the self-publishing ranks.
So I ran across a first line that I really liked the other day by way of my writing group. This is from an unpublished (and perhaps unfinished) work, so don't nobody go around advertising it or the next thing you know Michael will want a royalty for my using it on a pay per visit basis, and I'd hate for him to realize that it would only add up to a nickle at most . . . total (not a knock on his work . . . rather a knock on my ability to drive views to my site).
Agnes Sanders hadn’t eaten any of her meal because she was dead .
Michael Sirois - Everything's Okay at Restful Pines
I don't know . . . I kinda like it. Is it a bit "in your face?" a tad "amateurish" . . . perhaps, but had you had the benefit of reading the rest of the work I think you would have liked it too.
Yet one more for my last lines series. This time it's Solo by Jack Higgins. I posted the first line just a few days ago, so that should say a lot about my reading speed or the length of the novel (in this case choose the latter).
When he reached the top of the stairs leading down to the main foyer, there was no sign of her. He went down them two at a time and straight out through the glass doors. Behind him, orchestra and chorus and the entire audience broke into the glorious strains of ‘Jerusalem.’ It was raining hard, the road jammed with traffic. As he went down the steps, Ferguson came to meet him, holding an umbrella over his head. ‘Congratulations, Asa.’ ‘What you wanted, wasn't it? I knew that from the beginning. We both did. Just the same old bloody game, like always.’ ‘Neatly put.’ Morgan gazed around him widly. ‘Where is she?’ ‘Over there.’ Ferguson nodded across the road. ‘I'd hurry, if I were you, Asa. But Morgan, darting between the traffic through heavy rain, was too late for as he reached the other side, she had already moved past the Albert Memorial and disappeared into the darkness of the park.
Again, I'm not too sure I should continue this series, I'm just not seeing too much insight into humanity, writing or the world through author's messages in the last lines. But, that being said, and maybe I'm jaded because I felt so much like I was reading a James Bond novel as I read this work, but this last line probably does more to argue against dissolving this series than any of the others that have come before it.
I ran across a really nice chart today. I have several posts in the past few years on self-publishing (see here) so it's nice to see many of the things I've talked about displayed graphically.
Gary McLaren's Ebook Aggragators Comparison Chart is not bad for anyone considering self-publishing and trying to see the difference between all the choices there are for formatting and distributing their book.
The only problem that I have with this article is that it is way too short. I want more information. Guess I'll have to spend some time tooling around the blog.
Last week I wrote about the last line that I read, so naturally today I have yet another first line for the compilation I'm collecting (here).
The Cretan turned in through the gate in the high, brick wall surrounding the house near Regent's Park, stepped into the shrubbery, merging with the shadows. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. Ten minutes to seven, which meant he had a little time in hand. He was wearing a dark anorak from one pocket of which he produced a Mauser with a bulbous silencer on the end of the barrel. He checked the action and slipped it back into his pocket. The house was imposing enough, which was only to be expected for it was owned by Maxwell Jacob Cohen - Max Cohen to his friends. Amongst other things, chairman of the largest clothing manufacturers in the world, one of the most influential Jews in British society. A man loved and respected by everyone who knew him. Unfortunately, he was also an ardent Zionist, a considerable disadvantage in the eyes of certain people. Not that it bothered the Cretan. Politics were a nonsense. Games for children. He never queried the target, only the details and in this case he'd checked them thoroughly. There was Cohen, his wife and the maid - no one else. The rest of the servants lived out. He took a black balaclava helmet from his pocket, which he pulled over his head, leaving only his eyes, nose and mouth exposed, then he pulled up the hood of the anorak, stepped out of the shrubbery and moved towards the house.
Irrespective of the fact that I've never heard of a balaclava being called a "balaclava helmet" it's not a bad few opening paragraphs. In many respects it's much like the book in that it's slow to get to the point but when it does the pace picks up tremendously.
A while back I read an article about the importance of first lines in novels so I started compiling and tagging all the first lines I came across (see here). I also created a compendium of last lines (here) and since I saw so many allusions to the morning I aggregated them (here) as well. I meant to make one for middle lines, but have yet to begin that work.
Nevertheless, I've come to the point where I don't know if last lines are worthwhile anymore. Here is the most recent.
“You know,” said Devereaux, as McBride reached the door, “if there’s one thing that thirty years in this agency has taught me, it’s this. There are some levels of loyalty that command us beyond even the call of duty.
But again, we have an epilogue here. That last line of the text is pretty good. In fact it could be among the best last lines I've collected (which really says more about the other last lines than about this one). Still, for some reason all I could think about as I read that antagonist's name, Devereaux, all I could think about was the Silver Streak movie. McBride was still looking in the mirror, but he seemed to see two young GIs, rat-assed on beer and wine, laughing in the warm Saigon night, and a white Petromax lamp hissing, and a Chinese tattooist at work. Two young Americans who would part company but be bound by a bond that nothing could ever break. And he saw a slim file a few weeks earlier, which mentioned a tattoo of a grinning rat on the left forearm. And he heard the order to find the man and have him killed. He slipped his watch back on his wrist and flipped his sleeve back down. He checked the day-date window. September 10, 2001. “It’s quite a story, son,” said the Badger, “and it all happened long ago and far away.”
Does the Prologue's first line count as the first line of the book? If so, this one makes the reader read on to find out. Here's the most recent first line I have in my "first lines" group.
It was the seventh time they had pushed the American boy down into the liquid excrement of the cesspit that he failed to fight back and died down there, every orifice filled with unspeakable filth. When they were done, the men put down their poles, sat on the grass, laughed, and smoked. Then they finished off the other aid worker and the six orphans, took the relief agency off-road, and drove back across the mountain. It was May 15, 1995.
Hard to believe, but the description of this act only gets worse as the reader continues reading.
Chapter 1's first line made me think of my own book, Toe the Line for the mentions of the Triathlon.
He leaned into the gradient and once again fought the enemy of his own pain. It was a torture and a therapy. That was why he did it. Those who know often say that of all the disciplines the triathlon is the most brutal and unforgiving. The decathlete has more skills to master, and putting the shot needs more brute strength; but for fearsome stamina and the capacity to meet the pain and beat it, there are few trials like the triathlon.
Note to self, when faced with the choice of a first line about triathlons or about murder of children in a cess pool, choose the murder. Forsythe does and it makes you want to know more.
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