The First Sentence – Make or Break?

First impressions count, don’t they?

We’ve all done it. Walked into a bookshop. Picked up a book, glanced at the front
and back cover, then turned to the first page.
The first page…
Well, that’s just the make or break page, isn’t it? The first sentence. The first
paragraph. Those first few hundred words can sell your novel or kill it faster than a
fish learning to suck air. I’m sure most modern novelists believe it’s absolutely crucial
to have a strong first page.
Some do it with something out of the ordinary:
It was a pleasure to burn. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. The Metamorphosis, Franz
Kafka.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. 1984,
George Orwell.
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell
madly in love with him. Catch-22, Joseph Heller.
A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the
words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE,
and in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY,
STABILITY. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.
It was the day my grandmother exploded. The Crow Road, Iain M. Banks.

Some writers begin with prose so poetic it makes your heart sing (or warble, at the
very least):
If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field
that is forever England. The Soldier, Rupert Brooke.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…A Tale of Two Cities,
Charles Dickens.
Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier.
Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the
back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne.
On they went, singing 'Eternal Memory', and whenever they stopped, the
sound of their feet, the horses and the gusts of wind seemed to carry on their
singing. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy.
To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town,
starless and bible-black. Under Milk Wood, Dylan Thomas.
And then others choose an inquiry or a line that makes us ask, “What’s going on
here?”
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs,
and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath.
Who's there? Hamlet, William Shakespeare.
You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement
of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled
with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole
with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means
comfort. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
And sometimes writers start with a problem to be dealt with – and usually it is life and
death:
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had
gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. The Old Man and the Sea,
Ernest Hemingway
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the
elbow. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having
done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. The Trial, Franz Kafka
All these beginnings achieve one thing. They make the reader want more. And
before you have the opportunity to sell a million copies of your book, you’ve got to
make one important sale first – to the publisher. If you can make your work stand out
from all the others in the slush pile, if you can make your story rise to the surface,
then it will give you a better chance to achieve your goal – to be a published author.
Keep writing!