My daughter mentioned today that the first line of a story contains the story. Should, anyway. A fascinating concept; I looked through several books I like to see if this were so. The first book I looked at was one I just read, by Guy Gavriel Kay, called Ysabel. The first sentence is: “Ned was not impressed.” I was impressed, though, by how much is in this sentence – the presupposition that something was impressive, or trying to be, but that it wasn’t having the expected effect on the character. It suggests that the character might, for some reason, not be as easily impressed as some people. These things turn out to be true, and important to the character and the story; the whys and hows of them unfold gradually, but the kernel is there.
Here are a few others: “My suffering left me sad and gloomy.” (Life of Pi, by Yann Martel)
“Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened.” (The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver)
“Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn’t know my hometown was at war with itself over its children and that my parents were locked in a bloodless combat over how my brother and myself would be raised.” (October Sky, by Homer Hickam)
“I hadn’t meant to shoot the cat.” (Telempath, by Spider Robinson)
“Amid the ten thousand noises and the jade-and-gold and the whirling dust of Xinan, he had often stayed awake all night among friends, drinking spiced wine in the North District with the courtesans.” (Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel Kay)
Most intriguing. I have so much to learn.
Yesterday I wrote about how a poem led me back to writing stories, and I mentioned that it first engendered a companion. I got to thinking about what a male muse might be like, and came up with the following:
Muse II
The sphere he holds is black, opaque, and moon-sized
But it is you he looks at, with his soft eyes
A question kindles, stirs you to your core
But is it just a tease, or is there more?
He holds your gaze with enigmatic light
That grounds you, poised and still, to where you are
The sphere exudes a haunting smell of midnight
Fresh and cool, with taste of piquant stars
If he would beckon, Oh! You know you’d follow
And so you reach to touch the silent sphere
It draws you in, you swirl into its hollow
Cold vapor sudden in your throat and ears
What touch sustains you – where are those kind eyes?
That promise of a hand to lift and guide
How fast, how far, will you keep falling inward
And what can stabilize you from inside?
Ah, there – the touch, the hand that steadies
There the light that caught you, drew you in
You’ll walk in him whenever you are ready
Look from his eyes and quietly begin.
©Wendy Mulhern
©Wendy Mulhern
I sensed that the two poems together might contain an idea for a novel (I needed to write one, as I was participating in NaNoWriMo, at my daughter’s behest.} She was the one who suggested that the two could be muses for each other, and that became the basis for my plot. So much to learn, but a huge part of my learning that month was how alive it made me feel to write the story. Especially as the characters began to fall in love; I experienced the zing of it as if it were my own. I felt it not only while writing but whenever I wanted to, and I wanted to more often than I told anyone. Though it was fiction, it was very real for me.
So I’ll keep working at how to do it. I’ll become a master of my first lines, and my plot lines, and my character development. Well, first I’ll be an apprentice; I’m not proud.
You used the first lines of at least three of my favorite books! And what a perfect poem again! Keep writing, my talented friend!(“I knew her when she….”)
Wendy, I like this. I have been searching for inspirations, and I found the first lines of books you cited inspiring. It made me think about words; how little it takes to tell a story, but we need to escape into the words of the entire novel so we can really feel it.