First Lines (Part 1)

Last summer, Rachel Heffington compiled a lovely little post of first lines from her stories and flash fiction pieces. Thinking that was a fun idea, I scrounged through documents both well-used and nearly-forgotten. What I found was a mix of the mysterious and the ridiculous, the excellent and the mediocre. Placing these first lines side by side, it's interesting to note the patterns of how I begin stories, and how I've grown over the years. I found so many pieces from which to pull, I've split this into two posts.

Note: There's no particular order to these snippets.

[Pinterest]

***

The chosen ones have not yet arrived. Lord Mauray paced from one end of the balcony to the other, his boots slapping the tiles in a restless rhythm. He paused at the railing and scanned the labyrinth of rooftops and bustling streets below. A wide thoroughfare cut through the city. Across the outlying fields in the distance, a dark speck appeared.

A messenger--but does he bring news of life or death?

[The Prophet's Quest, novel, complete]

***

He stood in the pouring rain, left hand loose at his side and right hand clenched around something. His clothes had long ago soaked up as much rainwater as they could. Now they clung to his shoulders like a cloak of grief and wrapped his legs like chains. Evening darkness shrouded the forest clearing. He stood alone--a solitary pillar holding up the thundering sky.

[Ann Marie, unfinished]

***

"I'm beginning to think your debts are going to cost you more than your life."

[untitled, unfinished]

***

Landon awoke with his face wet and the damp leaching into his clothes.

[untitled, unfinished]

***

A rainstorm usually affects a single region, for thunderheads can only be so and so big, and cloud banks can only stretch so far. But this deluge rolled across the entire cosmos in one day.

[tentatively titled Our Destiny, unfinished]

[Pinterest]

***

"Keeping my share of the loot, Char?" the tall man sneered down, twisting his bronzed features.


Charlotte flicked him a glance. "Never, Wolf." She tossed him an amulet. "That good enough?"


[Redemptive Scars, short story, complete]

***

Rodin jammed the shovel into packed earth. The blade rang against a stone, and he dug it up. As big as two fists, it was--and not his own moderately-sized fists, either--more like the farmer's meaty paws. Rodin picked up the rock with one hand and hurled it over his shoulder, where it clattered onto a pile of its brethren.


[untitled, unfinished]

***

It's not the first time Blair has asked me to dive, and I know it won't be the last. Serebell has too many secrets left in it to abandon our mission.


[untitled, unfinished]

***

Once upon a time, there lived a peasant man in a village. This man, Ewald, had little more than the threadbare tunic on his back and the sieve-like thatched roof  above his head.


Every day, he worked a patch of stony ground. "It's me garden," he'd say of it, when inquired by foot-travelers passing through. They'd raise their eyebrows at the pebbly soil and stunted green shoots, and walk on by without comment. But poor as the 'garden' was, for Ewald, it was his only source of income.


[untitled allegorical short story, unfinished]

***

"No, not you. Anyone but you." Prince Tyrus--by all appearances thoroughly overwhelmed by the sight before him--covered his eyes, then scrubbed his hand down his face as if resigning himself to meet it head-on after all.

[To Fool the Court, unfinished]

[Pinterest]

***

The young man gaped at me with something between wonder and terror in his eyes. "How'd you do that?" he stammered.


I rolled the strawberry-sized ball, sickly green and smooth as marble, between my fingers. "I don't know."


[untitled, unfinished]

***

This is a story that took place a very long ways away from where you live. So you've probably never laid eyes on the magnificent Macaroni Kingdom. Too bad. You would have liked it. (The King ordered everyone to like it, but most do anyway.) The Macaroni Kingdom is my home, and that of many other macaroni penguins. Oh, I suppose I should introduce myself before we continue. I'm Mac, short for Mac 'n' Cheese, because my brilliant parents thought that was a good name for a macaroni penguin. (That's a lot of pasta, I know, and it's about to get worse.)


[The Quest of a Macaroni Penguin, short story, complete]

***

There it is! Beginnings are key when it comes to stories. The best ones hook us with their intrigue, unexpectedness, or humor. The worst ones make us put a book down and never pick it up again. I'm not too sure where mine fall in that spectrum, but nevertheless, this was a fun exercise.

Which ones are your favorites? What's a first line that you've read or written that you absolutely love?