Sunday, March 20, 2011

First lines are sexy.

Find the first line of a story I wrote at the sexy first line (and short-short story) website, 50 to 1. The story's actually about a girl who falls for a boy who falls for her best friend, who's a guy, and how they make it work. I don't think it'll ever be published. But you can read the opener!

Here are some other first lines that are cool and so on . . .

Call me Ishmael. —Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." —Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. —David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

and from my mentor, the estimable Larry Garber, from his first novel Tales from the Quarter:

There are some women who are terribly narcissistic; they keep kissing their own shadows and getting their lips dirty.

You should really track this book down and read it. Probably at the biblio, since it's out of print.

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