On Writing: The Paradox of First and Last Lines

It was a bright and sunny day,

For anyone – like myself a while ago – who was every confused at to why Dark and Stormy Night is lambasted as a bad opening line, its a bizarre story of a writing L where basically the best opening was ruined the longest, weirdest, hardest to decipherest run on sentence:

“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.”

I have to confess as I cut and paste this it doesn’t seem that bad, I mean it does manage to include redundancy (I’m pretty sure sure we figured dark and stormy = torrential rain and violent wind) info dumps. But I do feel the sentence does do a lot of heavy lifting it does create a strong sense of scene (but at what cost) but it does feel a little dogpiling that this poor sentence gets bashed constantly in relation to first lines.

That intro now done – something I mused about was that there is a bit of a paradox around first lines, and so some extent last lines as well.

While its a common topic of celebration, I must confess again that I don’t really remember that many first lines. (most first lines I remember are from listicles about first lines) This may just my memory problems but I really agree with Ursula K Le Guin’s thesis that the purpose of sentences is to make you read the next one, and therein lies my paradox, I think that a first line serves to just make a reader get to the next line. Yet that’s a big ask for a very first line.

I often use the metaphor of the story being a path. Your first line needs to make sense as a first step of that path, it doesn’t need to carry all the symbols, setups, world-building at all but it needs to be the first step towards those.

So herein is another paradox, that is I strongly believe good writing isn’t just about avoiding bad writing – but when it comes to a first line its very high probability time for losing a reader if you have a trash first line. I’m pretty sure most people would glaze over a simple or average line that got them to the second – but a garbled mess of a first is going to be a very big turn off.

I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on this paradox – do you thing first lines are really important – semi-important or just a place to start?

I think the final thought is that when there is 99% of a book to get right to be successful a first line just seems a small element.

And Endings

So last lines are a bit different. For one thing typically if a person gets all the way to your last line most people are happy that you’ve read their book and probably won’t let complaints about a last line sour the mood.

Then again there can be a bit of a recency effect (we recall the most recent piece of information better than others) and a really bad last line might ‘ruin’ the memory of the story and be more likely to spoken about.

So other than perhaps hurting reviews and sales of your NEXT book I don’t think there as much pressure on a last line but its interesting to talk about them. I think a last line has a lot power over the lasting image of a book, elevating the story to something haunting and epic, or just something you read one time.

Where a first line might be a first ‘step’ I don’t actually see the metaphor of steps applying to the last line. To me the last line is the final image, its the ‘photo’ taken at the end of the journey, whether that’s a final look back over the trip, a look forwards. A final dialogue, or thought of a person “tomorrow is another day” (see I remember 1 (1/2) of a last line…)

Fortunately one none paradox is you can always stew and struggle over your first and last lines once the whole draft is written, you don’t (you really don’t) need these devices down first in face most recommendations would be not to as beginnings are so often changed in revision anyway!

What are your thoughts on first and last lines? Any particular favourites or clangers?