Opening Lines of Your Writing and Other Writers

We all know that the opening lines of a fiction story are of great importance. So are the opening lines of a personal essay, a memoir, and even a nonfiction article. That handful of words should reach out and grab the reader, make him/her sit up and take notice and want to proceed. 

Let's take a look at a few opening lines in well-known or successful fiction. As you read each one, ask yourself if there is enough to make you want to read further. Does a question pop into your mind. Has the author planted the seeds of curiosity within you? 

1.  “It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.”

—Paul Auster, City of Glass

2. “Her father would say years later that she had dreamed that part of it, that she had never gone out through the kitchen window at two or three in the morning to visit the birds.”
—Edward P. Jones, “The Girl Who Raised Pigeons”

3.  “When the blind man arrived in the city, he claimed that he had travelled across a desert of living sand.”
—Kevin Brockmeier, A Brief History of the Dead

4.  “Your father picks you up from prison in a stolen Dodge Neon, with an 8-ball of coke in the glove compartment and a hooker named Mandy in the back seat.”
—Dennis Lehane, “Until Gwen”

5.“It was raining in Richmond on Friday, June 6.”
—Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem 

6.   “The magician’s underwear has just been found in a cardboard suitcase floating in a stagnant pond on the outskirts of Miami.”
—Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

7. “On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.”
—Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides 

8.  “In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.”
—Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Try ranking these eight openings from the one that grabbed you the most to the one that left you feeling so-so.

What about the opening lines in your own writing? Go to your files and choose eight of your stories, essays--any kind of your writing. Check the opening lines. If you put yourself in the shoes of the reader, how would you feel about those few words? Would you want to keep reading? Why or why not? 

Yes, we all know that those opening lines are important, but do we give them enough attention as we write, edit and revise? Something to ponder.