Share the first line of your Work-in-Progress. Or, if you’re not working on something at the moment, a first line you enjoyed from a novel.
50 thoughts on “Reader Friday: First Line Game”
Fault in Our Stars by John Green:
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time yo thinking about death.
Yo!
An off duty deputy reeking of gin and dressed casually in a pair of shorts and wife beater staggered into the meeting room of the county building.
I was talking to a woman about flowers when John the Baptist blew up.
I would definitely keep reading this.
Were it not for the fact that the little man’s eyes were almost literally the size of tea saucers Leonard would not have panicked quite so much.
Bo Jordan took a big bite from the sandwich set in front of him and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Rage hurtled up Bayard’s throat, but before the emotion could cast itself across his tongue, the king leaned near and warned, “Make your sacrifice an honorable one, Boursier.”
Tony Jackson shouldn’t be dying in a ritzy hotel room in downtown Memphis on a hot July night. He shouldn’t be dying at all.
Grandma’s dead. And I’m not a bit sorry!
She looks out the window at the Texas hill-country.
(Confession time: This is really the first line to a song I’m in the process of finishing… hope it’s okay to post… You know, don’r you, that country songs ARE 3-minute novels…)
All she wanted was a cup of hot, black coffee. Even out here on the galactic fringe, she could count on this one, small homely comfort to get her day started – just about the only such comfort she had found since she stepped aboard the R. J. Boscovich four months ago. But this morning it looked like she was going to have to work for it.
Last night I dreamed the world was ending again.
It’s strange what you think about when you’re running across the Afghanistan desert to kill someone.
I’m intrigued!
Gevin Rees leaned into the wind and mist blowing cold off San Francisco Bay, and stared at the impossible man in front of him.
The cat licked my toothbrush.
A vine crossed the entire width of the path, a distance of twenty-four inches give-or-take, and was an adventurer.
Caught in a maelstrom of black feathers and beady eyes, Bartholomew tugged down his top hat and turned up his coat collar to a murder of crows’ sharp talons and beaks.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brilliant. Would delete ‘crows’ ‘ as it is almost a cliche and is nicely implied by the rest of the sentence. Title of book?
Putrid water gushed over the rim, overflowed the toilet bowl, a small brown stool landed by Jeanine’s foot.
“So this is what hell looks like,” Gordie said as he slid a cardboard box on one of the folding tables.
The dinner party was going wonderfully until my date for the evening, an exquisitely expensive woman named Cécile, pitched face first into her vichyssoise, her blood turning the chilled soup the color of borscht as her face exploded.
Tess turned away from the second-story window and the distant grumble of rush-hour traffic outside.
Darkness should grant Arati the same protection as the others stealthing through the night.
O positive primer wasn’t quite the color I had in mind for the small office, but Lucas Sherwood hadn’t given the décor a second thought when he blew out the left side of his head with a .45.
I threw myself in front of the speaker behind the microphone.
Like most great discoveries, it owed more to circumstance than scientific method.
The man had a damned eye dangling out of a socket protruding from the center of his forehead, his best feature.
The soothing murmur of an ocean ebbed through Nathan Applewhite’s mind until he felt the waves and made them real.
This makes me want to read on… and reminds me of Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber
Lovely. Thank you.
Not even the day I was born—and tagged with the unlikely name of Mercy—can top the importance of what happened when I was eight-years old.
Ryuu felt the beginnings of a headache coming on; he already had a phone call from the police commissioner, the governor, and his wife.
When I left my smartphone on the bedside table in the prostitute’s motel room, things started to go bad.
The commotion behind him told Clyk that his deed had been discovered and if he didn’t do something quick he would be caught and that would mean a hangman’s noose for him.
The exact moment I lost all memory is one I’ll never forget.
Oh the irony.
Indeed.
He scanned the snow covered earth below and eyed his body slumped on the branches of a nearby tree.
You know you’re headed for a bad day whenever this happens.
I always knew my law degree would come in handy. I was promoted to manager of the strip club in less than three months.
The still silence of the night is my addiction.
It was hopeless. I couldn’t stop thinking of Annie. The more I tried to forget her, the more powerful her presence in my mind became. I didn’t want to change what had happened or find some way to bring her back. I simply wanted to rid myself of obsession with her memory.
The terminal was crowded, typical for a Monday morning. Business travelers mostly, men wearing overcoats and carrying brief cases. Looking at the Arrivals electronic screen, Beryl noted Angela’s flight was five minutes late. Bummer. She didn’t like having to play chauffeur to her step sister, which is probably why Ellen bribed her into doing it.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
“Da! Da! Look what I did! Help, Da.”
YOU’RE NOBODY, TILL SOMEBODY SHOOTS YOU
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Fault in Our Stars by John Green:
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time yo thinking about death.
Yo!
An off duty deputy reeking of gin and dressed casually in a pair of shorts and wife beater staggered into the meeting room of the county building.
I was talking to a woman about flowers when John the Baptist blew up.
I would definitely keep reading this.
Were it not for the fact that the little man’s eyes were almost literally the size of tea saucers Leonard would not have panicked quite so much.
Bo Jordan took a big bite from the sandwich set in front of him and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Rage hurtled up Bayard’s throat, but before the emotion could cast itself across his tongue, the king leaned near and warned, “Make your sacrifice an honorable one, Boursier.”
Tony Jackson shouldn’t be dying in a ritzy hotel room in downtown Memphis on a hot July night.
He shouldn’t be dying at all.
Grandma’s dead. And I’m not a bit sorry!
She looks out the window at the Texas hill-country.
(Confession time: This is really the first line to a song I’m in the process of finishing… hope it’s okay to post… You know, don’r you, that country songs ARE 3-minute novels…)
All she wanted was a cup of hot, black coffee. Even out here on the galactic fringe, she could count on this one, small homely comfort to get her day started – just about the only such comfort she had found since she stepped aboard the R. J. Boscovich four months ago. But this morning it looked like she was going to have to work for it.
Last night I dreamed the world was ending again.
It’s strange what you think about when you’re running across the Afghanistan desert to kill someone.
I’m intrigued!
Gevin Rees leaned into the wind and mist blowing cold off San Francisco Bay, and stared at the impossible man in front of him.
The cat licked my toothbrush.
A vine crossed the entire width of the path, a distance of twenty-four inches give-or-take, and was an adventurer.
Caught in a maelstrom of black feathers and beady eyes, Bartholomew tugged down his top hat and turned up his coat collar to a murder of crows’ sharp talons and beaks.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Brilliant. Would delete ‘crows’ ‘ as it is almost a cliche and is nicely implied by the rest of the sentence. Title of book?
Putrid water gushed over the rim, overflowed the toilet bowl, a small brown stool landed by Jeanine’s foot.
“So this is what hell looks like,” Gordie said as he slid a cardboard box on one of the folding tables.
The dinner party was going wonderfully until my date for the evening, an exquisitely expensive woman named Cécile, pitched face first into her vichyssoise, her blood turning the chilled soup the color of borscht as her face exploded.
Tess turned away from the second-story window and the distant grumble of rush-hour traffic outside.
Darkness should grant Arati the same protection as the others stealthing through the night.
O positive primer wasn’t quite the color I had in mind for the small office, but Lucas Sherwood hadn’t given the décor a second thought when he blew out the left side of his head with a .45.
I threw myself in front of the speaker behind the microphone.
Like most great discoveries, it owed more to circumstance than scientific method.
The man had a damned eye dangling out of a socket protruding from the center of his forehead, his best feature.
The soothing murmur of an ocean ebbed through Nathan Applewhite’s mind until he felt the waves and made them real.
This makes me want to read on… and reminds me of Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber
Lovely. Thank you.
Not even the day I was born—and tagged with the unlikely name of Mercy—can top the importance of what happened when I was eight-years old.
Ryuu felt the beginnings of a headache coming on; he already had a phone call from the police commissioner, the governor, and his wife.
When I left my smartphone on the bedside table in the prostitute’s motel room, things started to go bad.
The commotion behind him told Clyk that his deed had been discovered and if he didn’t do something quick he would be caught and that would mean a hangman’s noose for him.
The exact moment I lost all memory is one I’ll never forget.
Oh the irony.
Indeed.
He scanned the snow covered earth below and eyed his body slumped on the branches of a nearby tree.
You know you’re headed for a bad day whenever this happens.
I always knew my law degree would come in handy. I was promoted to manager of the strip club in less than three months.
The still silence of the night is my addiction.
It was hopeless. I couldn’t stop thinking of Annie. The more I tried to forget her, the more powerful her presence in my mind became. I didn’t want to change what had happened or find some way to bring her back. I simply wanted to rid myself of obsession with her memory.
The terminal was crowded, typical for a Monday morning. Business travelers mostly, men wearing overcoats and carrying brief cases. Looking at the Arrivals electronic screen, Beryl noted Angela’s flight was five minutes late. Bummer. She didn’t like having to play chauffeur to her step sister, which is probably why Ellen bribed her into doing it.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
“Da! Da! Look what I did! Help, Da.”
YOU’RE NOBODY, TILL SOMEBODY SHOOTS YOU
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.