"She liked macaroni and cheese drowned in hot sauce."
-My Nonexistent Debut Novel by Me
Yes, I know that is an odd opening line to my novel, but, I like it. I think opening sentences should be kind of off-the-wall because that way they will really catch your attention. And they shouldn't be thesis-like either. The opening sentence shouldn't sum up the entire point of the book (unless it's done in a really obscure way. Like, mine could be the thesis of my book but it's kind of a read-between-the-lines kind of thing, or a hidden meaning). It's a book, not a research paper or an essay, so the opening should be fun and not boring.
Mine would continue after that opening sentence and be something like: "She only wore orange underwear, and the small scar on her chin was from the time she fell out of a tree when she was 4. Her favorite movie was 'Bye Bye Birdie,' and she read harlequin novels, but not for the sex, for the vehement and indestructible love the characters had for one another. But no one knew any of this."
It would be a story about a high school-aged girl and pretty much her trying to find herself in the "adolescent world." I've always wanted to write a story about that, and kind of base it on myself and my experiences/views (but none of those things I wrote up there are about me. At all.) on high school and being a teenager, because...you know, I know so much about that. :) I would have her character be completely raw and you would know every detail and flaw about her, but it would make her be so much more relative to readers. I really like this task because it's making me actually think about something I've always wanted to do but have just been too scared, I guess, to do it.
When I was trying to figure out what my opening sentence should be, I remembered that I loved the opening lines to the book Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli: "They say Maniac Magee was born in a dump. They say his stomach was a cereal box and his heart a sofa spring." That is such a good book. Another one of my favorite openings is from one of my all-time favorite books, of course, The Catcher in the Rye: "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." I love Holden Caulfield.
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2 comments:
i love yours so much. it actually sounds like a book i would love to read. i feel like i've kind of copped out on mine to tell you the truth.
Thanks. :) Maybe I should actually write it. I kind of want to. I haven't written a story, like an actual completely coming from my imagination story in so long.
P.S. I don't think yours was a cop-out, I liked it.
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