First Lines of Novels

“It doesn't smell the same.”

That's the very first line of our novel 'Wish You Were'. Well one of them. Let's just say it's under review. In fact our first chapter more resembles a pile of lego bricks as we take turns dismantling and rebuilding in a new order. 

It's not going to win any future “Best first Line” awards is it. By comparison, here's Denis Lehane's favourite first line – from James Crumley's wonderful novel about drinking, 'The Last Good Kiss.'

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."

That's more like it. It's important not to get carried away though. There's a wonderful character in Albert Camus' La Peste who is obsessively trying to write the perfect first line. And boy does his need work. Worse still, once he cracks it, he knows it will be so perfect the second line will only let it down, and hence the novel is doomed.

I can relate to this. I have a dystopian vision of the future, 99% unwritten, in my shoe-box of abandoned projects. It starts “Eartha is running”, which personally I think is rather good. So good in fact, I was unable to get any further, apart from killing off poor old Eartha halfway down page four.