October 18, 2024 My Thoughts

Why is the opening line of a book so important?

As a voracious reader, one of the best things with the advent of the internet was the explosion of reading material. And to say the variety of genres is endless would be an underestimation.

If you put your faith in the order books are listed on Amazon and other sites, you will miss some great works by independent authors and small presses. So, I love to search for lightly reviewed works in the genre I’m currently reading. How can one possibly get through all the works that catch your attention? Simply said, you can’t.

Though, there are a few things that I’ve found that work for me.

• The cover art catches my eye, prompting my cursor to hover over the image for a closer look. It should tell me what the reader will find within the book’s pages. I will illustrate this with one of my book covers.

Here, we see a girl with long hair blowing in the wind. She’s probably young.

With her heading away from the viewer into a dark and scary forest, we’re left to think she’s probably running away from something or someone.

This raises the question: Why is she running, or what is she running from?

And there, backlit by the full moon, there’s a dragon!

• The marketing blurb. Now that I’ve clicked on the thumbnail of the cover, the next most crucial element is that the marketing blurb should motivate me to look inside. Therefore, the phrasing should be relevant to the questions raised by the cover images. Let’s not forget that the elevator pitch isn’t just for agents.
• The opening line can be the most essential part of the entire book. This is where the reader will, in all likelihood, decide if they’ll continue or move on and look for something else. This is your opportunity. So, what should an opening line achieve?

Engage the reader to read the following line and ultimately keep turning pages. Generally, if I’m intrigued enough to reach the next page, I’ll click “Buy Now.”

What do I look for in a first line? Here’s an example of what would put me off. This first line comes from Grave Wrong by Kate Allenton:

                —Ryley stared out the window at the passing dark buildings where even the moonlight was afraid to venture.—

Let’s break it down; —Ryley stared out the window.— The author hasn’t specified where Ryley is looking out the window from; she could be anywhere—a store, her home, any place with a window, including a car.

Let’s continue; —Ryley stared out the window at the passing dark buildings.— Yikes, how fast were those buildings traveling? The sentence could be rewritten; —Ryley stared out the window as they passed a series of dark buildings.— This would fix both problems by making it obvious she was riding in a vehicle and they were passing dark buildings, not the other way around.

The final part of the sentence; —Where even the moonlight was afraid to venture.— I quite like that part of the sentence; it imparts a sense of danger. Unfortunately, because of the moving buildings, it doesn’t work. How’s this? —Ryley stared out the window as they passed a series of dark buildings, where even the moonlight feared to venture.—

Let me finish this section by saying that while this opening line put me off, the cover art and the marketing blurb kept me reading. I’m on book four in this series and have been thoroughly entertained.

While this may not be a perfect example of how an opening line can keep you, as an author, from making a sale, it was fun breaking down the first sentence.

Given that, it seems only fair that I discuss a new beginning I wrote for a novel I plan to co-author with a close friend.

                 Twelve bodies and no accountability! How could the justice system have gotten it so wrong? Detective Gideon Key, grizzled on a good day, sat at the back of the courtroom looking more like a vagrant than a decorated homicide detective.

Let’s break it down; —Twelve bodies and no accountability!—  Notice that this doesn’t end with a question mark. There’s a reason for this. As a statement, it imparts a sense of outrage to the reader. We’ve all experienced outrage, to some degree or another, during our lifetime.

The second sentence; —How could the justice system have gotten it so wrong?— This sentence ends with a question mark: why is that? Where’s the difference? Because it makes it personal and poses a question that must be answered over the fullness of time.

Moving on; —Detective Gideon Key, grizzled on a good day— introduces our main character and paints a picture, in part, of who he is without going into an overly long and ultimately dull description down to the color of the whiskers on his chinny chin chin.

Next; —sat at the back of the courtroom.— The reader is now placed in the scene; we all know what a courtroom looks like with the judge on high, twelve jurors, and lots of dark wood.

Finally; —looking more like a vagrant than a decorated homicide detective.— Again, this will tell the reader so much about who Gideon Key is. Grizzled suggests hard-boiled, maybe cynical. He looks like a vagrant, implying he’s not there to impress and doesn’t care what people think. As a decorated homicide detective tells us, he cares about getting justice for the victims.

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