Master first lines and story hooks

You've got an outline. You might even have an agent. Now you're sitting down in front of the screen with the keyboard under your fingers. Now you've got to write the book. This is the hard part. And you've got to write the first line. Now, the first line has got to do a lot of work. Because people in bookshops quite often open the book and read the first line. So you want that first line to make sure that this customer buys the book. So, what I thought I'd do is talk about some first lines and discuss why they're good and what they actually do. The oldest story that we know of was written... was written down, rather about 4,000 years ago. It was probably told orally long before that. And it's called *Gilgamesh*. So, let's have a look at the very oldest... what we might call the first, first line. "There was a man who saw the deep the bedrock of the land who knew the ways and learned all things Gilgamesh..." That's not bad, is it? I think that's not bad. And Gilgamesh turns out to be 18 feet tall, by the way, and I think of him as a sort of Babylonian Jack Reacher. I told Lee Child that and he didn't mind. Now, the first line that we probably all remember begins, "Once upon a time a long, long time ago in a land far, far away..." That's a great first line because it tells you that this story, which is probably about giants eating children and that kind of thing, isn't something that happens in the child's world. That first line takes you to a completely different universe, really. You want to catch the reader's attention. So, here's an intriguing first line. "Until he was four years old James Henry Trotter had a happy life." It's a great first line because you immediately want to know what happened to him when he was four years old. This is Roald Dahl. And because it's Roald Dahl, it's something quite cruel. "When he was four years old both his parents were eaten by a rhinoceros." Roald Dahl had that knack of combining terrible violence with humour and it's one of the things that kids love. The book is *James and the Giant Peach*. And when I talk to primary school kids, if I say, "Until he was four years old," they all know, they're putting their hands up. They all know what the book is, they all know what comes next. Very memorable. Something completely different but equally intriguing. "On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan." Now, that really got me, that first line. I read the whole book and it's a good book. It's called *The Garden of Evening Mists*, a stupid title because it's not a fae book, it's not about fairies and toadstools. It's a tough book, actually, about the aftermath of the Second World War in Malaysia. And the author is Tan Twan Eng. It's not the kind of book I'd normally read, especially with a title like that. But I read the first line and I was hooked. You can be mysterious. "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect." Wow! What a great first line. I mean, it makes you go wow, doesn't it? You know immediately that this story is surreal. But you also think, "Now what?" He's still in bed in the morning and he's a giant insect instead of a man. Where's the author going to go with this? So, once again, it's got you. It's a story called *The Metamorphosis* by Franz Kafka. You can be shocking. "There were only three of us left now, the others had been hung over the ramparts one every morning." Oh my goodness. This is what Stephen King calls a "gotcha". Because once you've read that, you're hooked. You've got to find out what's happening here and what the fate is of the three of us who are left. It's a short story by Naomi Mitchison called *The Hostages*. You can start with a joke, if it's a good one. "There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them." It's funny because it's Americans, who love psychoanalysis, going to Vienna, where psychoanalysis was invented. And it's just possible that there might have been 107 on a flight. They might have been going to a psychoanalysts' conference. And, of course, the funny part is, "I'd been treated by at least six of them." Which suggests that none of them are doing her any good, because she keeps looking for a new one. And that's the opening line of *Fear of Flying* by Erica Jong, a huge bestseller in about 1970 and really an iconic feminist novel. Mostly, the first line tells you what sort of story is coming, and that's good. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." A very famous first line. And it tells us three things: this is going to be a romance, ending in a marriage; the story takes place in a prissily ordered society — you get that impression right away; and the author is gently taking the mickey out of that society. That's something of Jane Austen's that is often lost in movies and TV shows based on her work. The fact that she's actually being satirical. She... it's not disrespect, but she's... there is something just a bit silly about these people, after all it's not true. It's not a truth universally acknowledged, it's not a truth. It's not universally acknowledged. And a man in possession of a fortune might not be in search of a wife. And that, of course, is the first line of *Pride and Prejudice* by Jane Austen. Somebody who, for modern novelists, is always worth reading again and again because we have so much to learn from her. Similarly... "All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion." This is a bit enigmatic. It's going to be a thoughtful book. It's going to be a bit sombre. It's going to be a love story with an unhappy ending. You can get all of that from that first line, so it's loaded with significance. And, of course, that's *Anna Karenina* by Leo Tolstoy. Good to set a mood with your first line. This here a favourite of mine. "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." What a great first line because it's terrifically emotional, but it's told as if somebody has just sat down with you... by a fire, you know, maybe with a decanter of whiskey, and you're relaxing, and he's going to tell you about something that he has actually heard. So, it makes it... although it's a novel, so it is artificial, it makes it as if it's not, as if it's just a mate telling you. "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." A very, very good first line in my opinion. "The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning." Vivid, simple, very effective. It creates a terrific atmosphere, sort of combining a kind of decadent luxury. You're really right in it. And it's the first line of the first novel by Ian Fleming, the first James Bond story. James Bond, of course, is a great gambler. He's often up at three o'clock in the morning and he's always smoking. *Casino Royale.* Some first lines give you the maximum information in a few words. "Mr And Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." These two people are Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, but they're called "Mr and Mrs" here to make them more distant, it makes them seem unfriendly. Why give their address? Their address is not relevant in the novel, but it's a boring address. Privet Drive, number four. It's a kind of caricature of a suburban address. What does "normal" mean? It basically means they don't like magic, and this is going to be a book about magic. And why "thank you very much"? You can actually just imagine Mrs Dursley saying, "Thank you very much", like that. It shows that they're smug. They look down on people who aren't like them. And, of course, we know we're not going to like them. We don't like people who are smug about being normal. It's nothing to be proud of. And that, of course, is J.K. Rowling. Probably the most successful writer of the last 50 years. Huge, huge international audience, movies. And somebody, incidentally, who has done so much to get children reading. I always say J.K. Rowling deserves every million dollars that she's earned. "Behavioural Science, the FBI section that deals with serial murder, is on the bottom floor of the Academy building at Quantico, half-buried in the earth." There's a lot to this first line. Behavioural Science is an FBI section — we didn't know that. The author knows stuff. This is going to be a very realistic and detailed story. And "Behavioural Science" sounds like a department in a university, but it's all about serial murder. This is going to be about a serial killer. And he knows it's on the bottom floor of the building. He knows where the building is, it's in Quantico, near Washington, D.C. And then just a little touch of sinisterness — "half-buried in the earth" — like a coffin or something. So, really, lots of information in that first line. It's going to be about a serial killer. It's going to be a realistic thriller. There's going to be something a bit gruesome about it. And that is *The Silence of the Lambs* by Thomas Harris. A book I wish I had written... and a movie. And it so happened that when I watched the movie in a screening room, sitting right behind me was Anthony Hopkins, the actor who played Hannibal the Cannibal, the murderer who ate people, which made it even creepier. Here's one of mine. "The last camel collapsed at noon." We know we're in the desert, that's information, because the desert is where they have camels. We know we're in trouble because this is the last camel, so there must have been several. And now that the last one has collapsed, whoever is travelling is going to be in a real spot. So, that first line immediately creates, with just six words, a situation of suspense, and it locates the story exactly in the North African desert. So, that is from *The Key to Rebecca*, which was my third bestseller. And I originally wrote, "The last camel died at noon." And that was a bit too melodramatic. I changed "died" to "collapsed". It's still pretty melodramatic. But, you know, I thought about it and I knew that clever people would say it was melodramatic, and I thought "to heck with them." I think it works, and so I left it like that. Look at another one of mine. One that is more subtle. "The small boys came early to the hanging." Another short one. Eight words. It's a paradox because we don't normally think of a hanging as something that little boys would be allowed to watch, or would want to watch. So, I wrote that line because I wanted to give a sense of a violent society and a cruel society. This is about the Middle Ages. This is, in fact, *The Pillars of the Earth*, which is my most popular book. We've sold 27 million of them so far. And I wanted to make it clear that this isn't your usual happy picture of the Middle Ages, with brave knights in armour jousting, and, you know, maidens being rescued from high towers and all that — the sort of romantic Middle Ages that comes from early French poetry. I wanted to make it clear that this was going to be a very gritty picture of the Middle Ages. Because the great thing about the cathedrals is that they were built by people who were poor and hungry and slept on the floor and were cold and had, you know, bad clothes and hard, hard lives, and yet they built the most beautiful buildings in the world. And so something timeless and wonderful came from people whose actual lives were pretty grim, and that... that's the romance of the Middle Ages for me. So I started out with this hanging and I started out by saying, "The small boys came early..." And then there's a scene — there follows a scene — where the boys do funny things, like, one of them pretends to be hanged and makes a grotesque gesture, and one of them pees up against the gallows and that kind of thing. So... I think it's probably my best first line just because it has so many complexities and it really works for the book. So, to sum up, well, first of all, I want to say, don't worry if it takes you a while to come up with a good first line. I would spend a couple of hours thinking about it. And if you didn't get one, don't let it hold you up. You'll come back to it because you don't want to spend days doing this and not write anything else. But do take it very seriously and remember the selling role that it needs to have, and always be prepared to think of a better one later in the process and go back and change it because it really is important. But, in summary, you want to put some information in the first line. And most of all, you want to say something that makes the reader wonder what will happen next. I've got a task for you if you feel like it. Pick up ten novels at random. Write down the first line. And then make a list of what's good and what's bad about each one. And then, of course, you might then look at something that you've written and say, "OK, what's good about this and what's not?"