Drawing the Line

Drafting a First Line That Drags Readers Into Your Story

Happy November 11th, dear reader, a day for solemnly honoring our veterans and also purchasing mattresses at bargain-basement prices, two things that definitely go together in a logical way. We are now two weeks to the day out from Thanksgiving. Shelf Life will publish on Thanksgiving. Shelf Life stops for no holiday.

Today’s article is about crafting an incredible first line for your story whether it is a 500-word flash fic or an epic novel. Even as I’m conceptualizing what this means and what will go into this essay, I realize it will be chockablock with contrary, unpopular, or downright bad advice and opinions. That’s what you read for: If it was the same advice you see everywhere else you would just get it everywhere else.

Forever and a day ago I wrote about strategies to get your reader to invest their attention in your book. You want the reader to make it all the way to the end of the story. You have to grab their attention and keep grabbing it the whole time. Attention spans are short and readers will stop reading and go do something else if the text doesn’t keep them engaged. The absolute best and most logical place to get your claws into their attention is obviously the very first line.

A lot gets made of great first lines in literature. There’s a lot of lists. A lot of these lists are populated with about a fifty-fifty mix of what I think of as functionally great first lines and aesthetically pleasing but not very functional first lines. What I mean is, sometimes a text has a first line that is beautifully crafted and deeply meaningful and memorable but it doesn’t do anything to drag me into the story I’m about to read. Here is the most famous example I can think of right off the top of my head:

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Anna Karenina)

If you see a lot of variations on this it’s because it’s translated from Russian a lot of different ways. Every translator wants to put their own spin on this iconic line. It’s the written equivalent of stage actresses saying, “A handbag?” Everyone wants their version to be the most notable. I used the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation because it is very simple. Like Judi Dench, they didn’t overdo it.

This is often regarded as one of the finest first lines in all of literature but it doesn’t tell you anything about the story you’re going to read. Obviously Tolstoy is correct, and further, he is saying—“This is a story about unhappy families because why would anyone write about a happy family that would be boring.” Also correct. But I don’t know, maybe it’s me, but when I read this line my response is, “Yes, that’s true, but I don’t care.” Then you read a bit more about how a man’s bad behavior is disrupting his family life and that confirms my initial assessment, “I don’t care.” I’ve read all the way through Anna Karenina and I did not care about any of those characters for a single second. “This story features an unhappy family”; that is the least informative and interesting first line you could have come up with.

I’m coming around to why this is important. Had Anna Karenina not already been a classic when I got around to reading it, I would have started and then put it down shortly thereafter. A reader beginning Anna Karenina today goes into it knowing that this book has stood the test of time, that readers in the 19th century liked it enough to make it popular and then that popularity became an enduring one. 

I do not think this book would have become an enduringly popular classic if it had come out in the 21st century. The taste of the reading public has changed drastically in 200 years. It changes all the time, in fact, like popular taste in clothing styles, music, television, and everything else. 

Today we look at the first line of Anna Karenina and, because it is well-written and illuminates a universal human truth, we are able to recognize it as one of the best first lines in literature. But we’re only reading it today at all because it’s attached to a classic. If that were the first line introducing a brand-new book today with no history attached to it, I don’t believe this book would swim. I think it would sink. I think readers would be bored by the end of the first page—I think many readers are bored by the end of the first page but keep reading because “it’s a classic so I can learn something from it.”

The books we recognize as classics today are classics because they were the popular stories of their time. Classics are the fossil record of literary trends. Say what you want about Twilight but you know who was entertaining that same demographic audience in the 19th century? Jane Austen. The Andy Weir of the 19th century was Charles Dickens, putting out popular fiction in serial chunks before Wattpad was even a thing. The Dan Brown of the 19th century was Arthur Conan Doyle, with his insufferable know-it-all mystery-solving protagonist.

They were not the highbrow literature of their day. They were the popular literature of their day. That’s how they got famous enough to be remembered.

Some other lauded first lines of this ilk are

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. (Pride and Prejudice)

And

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

That’s nice, this is very poetic and beautiful, but these lines do not drag me kicking and screaming into the text ahead. Your reader today has a cell phone and a laptop and a tablet in easy reach when they sit down to read your story—if they are not reading it on their tablet. Jane Austen and Zora Neale Hurston simply did not have to contend with the attention deficit readers have today.

Perhaps I, Catherine, have the shortest possible attention span. Perhaps I am the lowest common denominator. I guess it’s possible. But I write one of these two times a week whether I feel like it or not so how bad can my attention span actually be? My track record of making myself do stuff is pretty good. 

Life’s too short, there are too many books on my TBR list, and there are too many other available entertainment options for me to force myself through a book that isn’t grabbing my attention.

Not all classics have this kind of first line. For example, another famous first line that routinely makes best-of lists:

“Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. (Charlotte’s Web)

This is a nice example of the guidance I’m going to give because it contains dialogue, and in that dialogue a character is asking a question. Dialogue is great but questions are the best. It doesn’t have to be a character asking a question but a first line that makes the reader ask a question, makes them want to know something more, is always a good move.

Where is Papa going with that axe? Why is Papa out for violence before breakfast? Why are Fern and her mother calmly setting the dining room table while Papa’s out doing a murder? Who names their kid Fern!?

Meanwhile, this first line is also introducing the reader to a character’s voice. If you’ve read Charlotte’s Web, then you know it’s told by a fairly neutral third-person omniscient narrator who uses the same voice to describe everything that occurs during the story. The reader gets access to different characters’ spoken words and thoughts through this narrator, and those characters have distinct voices, but the narrator’s own voice is intentionally bland. This first line gives the reader a taste of character voice while it invokes several questions, all of which they must read on to answer.

Another example from a mid-century classic:

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

Thirteen, you say? But sir: Clocks only go to twelve! What, pray tell, is going on here?

A contemporary example of similar:

I shouldn’t have come to this party. (The Hate U Give)

This first line puts the reader right in Star’s head and begs them to ask, “What’s going on at this party that the narrator has a bad feeling about?” Parties are supposed to be fun, why is she feeling regretful?

Another contemporary example:

Carolyn, blood-drenched and barefoot, walked alone down the two-lane stretch of blacktop that the Americans called Highway 78. (The Library at Mount Char)

There is a lot going on here: I have several questions that need answering. I will definitely read on to find out what the heck is going on. There’s a fine line between confusing your reader enough that they want find out more so they can get comfortable in your story and confusing your reader so much that they can’t get comfortable quick enough and they bail out. I’m still thinking on where that line is and how to tread it; a subject for an upcoming Shelf Life.

One more:

As soon as the door to my new dorm room closed, I went to the window, scanning across the quad for him. (Never Saw Me Coming)

For who? Who is “him”?

You’re probably not going to knock out the perfect first line during your first draft. That’s okay—probably there are not many perfect lines of any ordinality in a first draft. During the revision process there’s a lot of rewriting to do as you reshape your story and the language you use to tell it.

As you’re crafting and recrafting that first line to make it beautiful and memorable, make sure you also make it function: Make sure it does the heavy lifting of drawing your reader into the text by giving them a hint of something they want to know more about. 

Reading, at its most fundamental, is about acquiring information. Maybe you’re absorbing a story or maybe you’re reading a how-to article to learn a skill like how to draft a great first line for your story—either way you’re taking someone else’s words into your brain to get information from them. That’s what reading is. 

Writers in different eras have different challenges. That shows in the way books from earlier eras are written and styled. One of the contemporary writer’s biggest challenges is to keep the reader engaged in that text until the end. Our obstacle in that pursuit is the ubiquitousness of distractions. Don’t use up all those precious words making a lofty, poetic statement with the intention of landing on a list of best first lines in literature 100 years from now. The more pressing order of business is getting the reader to the second line.

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