How many fiction writers do we have here?

[nom]

@mary

“It was six o:clock on a very warm evening in the Seeonee Hills.”

In my copy it was seven o’clock, and the sentence continues for a couple of lines before ending with, “…sleepy feeling in their tips.” Unless another book has an exceptionally similar opening, I think I recognise it.
Good incentive to reread it too. Thanks.

I like your Children’s Book Club rule: 1 chapter before judgement. Nice.

[nom]

@Carradee

Um, sorry. Lemme clarify: I removed the modifiers merely to demonstrate why the comma should be removed. I didn’t mean to say that you should remove them altogether.

Oh.
Agreed. No comma needed.

@Carradee

@vic-k

It was simply his sadistic juxtaposing of certainty and uncertainty, that held her at the peak of heightened sexual arousal.

shrugs Still no comma. The clause is necessary to the sentence, so the comma actually interferes with the meaning.

And thanks for that feedback, nom.

'welcome. Since other’s have put up a few lines, I might post the next few sentences of mine (although I’m still not convinced I should start with them). Not this week though. Deadlines looming on research and marking, so recreational writing is at a standstill for a while.

Hmm, shouldn’t be here. Should be offline making phone calls.

[vic-k]

@Carradee

. (And yes, I only dish out what I can accept in return.)-'Dee

youtube.com/watch?v=TYfdLbn7 … re=related
Fluff

[mary]

Nom, thanks for the correction! That’s what you get for not looking at the book. Here is the first sentence from Heneghan’s Torn Away (looking at the book this time):

They handcuffed him to the seat so he could cause no trouble on the airplane.

That is my idea of a dynamite opening line! And here are a couple more.

Lok ran as fast as he could.

And (quoted on the Sounis board on livejournal)

There was a wall. It did not look important.

Finally (the last two are from adult classics of speculative fiction), an opening line from a classic children’s book:

It was a dark and stormy night.

The point? I admire all of these writers - and I admire the last three very greatly. Golding(2) and Le Guin(3) are, IMHO, among the finest writers, and finest stylists, of the twentieth century. But, beyond saying that they don’t waste words, I’m not sure you could fairly critique their works from the first lines. You might even think Torn Away (which is certainly good, but not quite that good) the best book of the four.

The question, I guess, is: What can you actually judge from the first sentence of someone’s work? You can, perhaps, tell that you are intrigued or turned off. But why?

I do think it’s a good practice to at least read the first chapter before giving up on a book, but I said that before.

[dafu]

It was a dark and stormy night.

Ahem, er . . . that may be a line from a classic children’s book but it is also, harrumph, the opening line of a “classic,” Paul Clifford, from one Edward Bulwer-Lytton:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Dave

[mary]

Well, of course I know that, and so did Madeleine L’Engle, who used it as the first sentence of A Wrinkle in Time. It’s very much tongue in cheek, but also, in the story itself, a bald statement of fact. And it sets up the story very well, IMHO - not least by letting alert older readers know that they will need to read on at least two levels.

BTW,with all this talk about first lines, should we all start crafting entries for the Bulwer-Lytton contest, or has that already been done on this board?

[mary]

Um - just for the heck of it, here’s a possibility:

Frieda, the scrawny, downtrodden serving wench, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and gaped at the vision of beauty that had stopped in the doorway: a knight, his eyes flashing like coals, his hair the gold of new-drawn ale, and his armor shining like the sun upon rising.

[vic-k]

@mary

Frieda, the scrawny, downtrodden serving wench, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and gaped at the vision of beauty that had stopped in the doorway: a knight, his eyes flashing like coals, his hair the gold of new-drawn ale, and his armor shining like the sun upon rising.

Her: Scrawny!.. Downtrodden!..low born!..snot all over her face; Him: handsome!..eyes flashing like coals!..hair the gold of new-drawn ale!..armor shining like the sun!
Well, theres no point angin around waiting for the ensuing gymnasticated fornication...is th, cos there aint gonna be none between these two, obviously.tch!tch!
Nobody writes good honky-tonkin`anymore

[Jaysen]

@vic-k

Nobody writes good honky-tonkin`anymore

I thought that was why we kept you around?

[Juddbert]

@Jaysen

@vic-k

Nobody writes good honky-tonkin`anymore

I thought that was why we kept you around?

Heck no. He’s on the judging panel, not one of the contestants. THe only time you’ll find Vic waving the wiggly is when Pink has him pinned in the corner and he’s playing the Get Out Of Jail Free card.

[vic-k]

filf! nuffin but filf

[Mollys_Mum]

In my happy and self-serving dance through DevonThink I have come across the beginning of a novel I plan to write many years hence, when all the principal characters who could hex me or otherwise do me harm are safely dead.

Honor Payne came of her small fortune honestly, despite her lifelong proclivities towards the contrary. She lost it in a different manner, through an excess of her own nature, both generous and darkly manipulative, married to a treachery as mean and stealthy as the ice fog that rolled through the hills of Ballynahinch on the night she died.

She went quietly, alone, a few miles east, in Killyleagh, before the priest could get there, and two towns away from her eldest daughter, a frightened girl who had reached fifty and could no longer drive at night. That was Mathilde. The others–Yvette, Cristiane, Padraic, Heddie–had gone home to America after waiting two patient weeks by her bedside as the cancer wormed through her body and Honor fought it with all the gritted muscles of her wasted face and the burning sapphire anger of her eyes. Padraic, nicknamed Drey, had lasted a mere four days. He had business in London, and a girl waiting for him, and his dry-gutted, wracking grief over the passing of his mother translated itself into an ugly eruption on his upper lip, threatening to spoil the tryst he had so carefully orchestrated. Mathilde sat with him on a bench outside Honor’s window. A single, fading geranium strained to catch the sun behind the spattered glass. Drey bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, his knuckles clenched in a row of bloodless V’s while Mathilde caressed his back with small, futile strokes. His sobs erupted in furious little hiccups from a source in his body that was new and frightening to him. He thought he might cry forever.

I am wondering now if it should be “proclivities for” rather than “towards”–???

[Hugh]

My instinct, backed up to a certain extent by the Concise Oxford, which is all I have access to at the moment: “proclivities towards” is on the money. A proclivity is a tendency; it has direction. It is not an emotion, an attitude or a requirement. “Proclivities for” would be wrong.

H

P.S. Nice!

[vic-k]

@Hugh

proclivities

‘Proclilite(s)’ is a word I used quite a lot, usually to sound eruditeish and posh, n wotnot. 8) The chances of it being contextually correct, in my case, oscillate twixt, slimnzilch!!
Do you think singular vs plural may have some influence on the use of, ‘towards or for’. I wouldn`t know.
vic

Dictionary
proclivity |prəˌklɪvɪti|
noun ( pl. -ties)
a tendency to choose or do something regularly; an inclination or predisposition toward a particular thing : a proclivity for hard work.
ORIGIN late 16th cent.: from Latin proclivitas, from proclivis ‘inclined,’ from pro- ‘forward, down’ + clivus ‘slope.’

[Jaysen]

Proclivity is a good word. I like it. But will the target audience understand it?

[Mollys_Mum]

Well it sounds good to me, and I don’t understand it.

I am off to my son’s college for Family and Friends weekend. Toodleoo–will see you all when I get back.

([size=85]Has anyone gotten past the first line yet? [/size])

[pink]

I suffered a brain freeze at the word contrary and had to reboot.

have a nice time at college!

[Carradee]

@Mollys Mum

Honor Payne came of her small fortune honestly, despite her lifelong proclivities towards the contrary. She lost it in a different manner, through an excess of her own nature, both generous and darkly manipulative, married to a treachery as mean and stealthy as the ice fog that rolled through the hills of Ballynahinch on the night she died.

She went quietly, alone, a few miles east, in Killyleagh, before the priest could get there, and two towns away from her eldest daughter, a frightened girl who had reached fifty and could no longer drive at night. That was Mathilde. The others–Yvette, Cristiane, Padraic, Heddie–had gone home to America after waiting two patient weeks by her bedside as the cancer wormed through her body and Honor fought it with all the gritted muscles of her wasted face and the burning sapphire anger of her eyes. Padraic, nicknamed Drey, had lasted a mere four days. He had business in London, and a girl waiting for him, and his dry-gutted, wracking grief over the passing of his mother translated itself into an ugly eruption on his upper lip, threatening to spoil the tryst he had so carefully orchestrated. Mathilde sat with him on a bench outside Honor’s window. A single, fading geranium strained to catch the sun behind the spattered glass. Drey bent forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, his knuckles clenched in a row of bloodless V’s while Mathilde caressed his back with small, futile strokes. His sobs erupted in furious little hiccups from a source in his body that was new and frightening to him. He thought he might cry forever.

studies above Maybe it’s the time, but I’m having an incredibly difficult time comprehending the beginning of that second paragraph. The lady went where, exactly? All those commas are confusing me.

I particularly like the way you presented “That was Mathilde”, though.

[Mollys_Mum]

She went to Hell in a handbasket, Dee.

[Carradee]

@Mollys Mum

She went to Hell in a handbasket, Dee.

nods serenely

Sure it wasn’t a casket?

ducks