Novel beginnings I cannot resist
May 7th, 2005 by Bill
I came across the blog Crime Fiction Dossier and found a posted titled Grabbing readers right from the start and felt compelled to post two of my favourite openings to novels. By the way, the idea of an opening that grabs a reader is applicable to all fiction.
Anyway, here are two of my favourites:
Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on.
The Cunning Man (Robertson Davies)
Should I have taken the false teeth? In my years as a police surgeon I would certainly have done so; who can say what might be clinging to them, or in the troughs that fit over the gums? I would have been certainly within my rights. But in this curious situation, what indisputable rights had I?
By the way, Robertson Davies was one writer who urged any writer to work on a good opening. (I read an interview with him years ago where this was one of his key points.)
Of course, it’s easy to confuse a compelling opening with a gimic. You don’t need a gimic, you don’t need explosions, death, sex or who knows what. You just need something curiously interesting that makes a reader want to continue (like, what’s with the guy and the false teeth?).
Tag: Writing
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