Con­sider two open­ing lines, both con­vey­ing the same idea.

As plans go, it was right up there with the Mag­inot Line.

and

The plan sucked.

Which one is better?

The first line is fun­nier and more styl­ish. It also has a way of grab­bing atten­tion. On the other hand, it relies on a cer­tain famil­iar­ity with Euro­pean his­tory. If you don’t know what the Mag­inot Line was, and why it was so spec­tac­u­larly inef­fec­tive, the joke falls flat.

The sec­ond ver­sion, in a tone I like to refer to as “The Hem­ing­way,” is direct, down­beat and to the point. It also has a stark sim­plic­ity and frank­ness that cap­ture the futil­ity of the plan.

The answer as to which is bet­ter depends on the tone for your entire story. Is it bit­ing and sar­cas­tic (option 1) or dark and hard-​boiled (option 2)? Or some­thing else entirely, mean­ing both of these lines would be ill-​suited to the task?

I’ve been think­ing a lot about open­ing lines recently, since that’s again some­thing I can tin­ker with for Sins of the Moth­ers before actu­ally start­ing NaNoW­riMo in Novem­ber. In many ways, your open­ing line defines the tone of the novel for your reader and sets up expec­ta­tions for the nar­ra­tive. In a lot of ways, both of the options above wouldn’t actu­ally work for me, as I’ve set­tled on writ­ing this book in third per­son and both of those sound like first per­son nar­ra­tive lines to me.

My default style for third per­son view­point is a tone I think of as “The Asi­mov,” a com­pletely invis­i­ble nar­ra­tor that remains neu­tral and just tells the story with­out edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing or embell­ish­ment. I tend to avoid more vis­i­ble nar­ra­tors because unless they’re done really, really well – talk­ing Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash here, where the enter­tain­ment of the nar­ra­tion com­pen­sated for the holes in the plot – I find them to be more dis­tract­ing than use­ful. Remem­ber that story is king, and punchy nar­ra­tion or even Aaron Sorkin-​class dia­logue won’t turn a bad story into a good one. Nar­ra­tion can dis­tract from minor plot issues, but if the story doesn’t work then ban­ter­ing with the reader isn’t going to help. Per­son­ally, I’d rather fix any struc­ture prob­lems and then get out of the way, let­ting the story tell itself.

Which, of course, brings me back to the open­ing line. How impor­tant is it, really? There are tales float­ing around on the inter­webs telling authors that your first line will make or break the novel, that all agents or edi­tors comb­ing through the slush pile are going to care about is the open­ing line, or the first para­graph at most. If you don’t hook them imme­di­ately, you’re doomed.

I’m not so sure I believe this. I think open­ing lines are impor­tant, but they’re only vital for true slush, unre­quested sub­mis­sion of your whole man­u­script. With no sup­port­ing mate­r­ial, the first line bet­ter be good or no one is going to read any farther.

But that’s not the way pub­lish­ing works any­more. In most cases, the agent or edi­tor isn’t even going to see the first page of your man­u­script until after you’ve sent them a well-​crafted query let­ter and they’ve been intrigued enough to ask for sam­ple chap­ters (or the com­pleted man­u­script). So in this case, they already know they’re inter­ested based on the query, and aren’t going to change their mind just because the first line didn’t reach out and grab them by the throat. If 21st cen­tury writ­ers put as much effort into their query let­ter as they do into their first para­graph, they’d prob­a­bly get much bet­ter results.

So that’s pub­lish­ing. What about read­ers? Don’t you have to grab the reader once the book is on the shelf?

Again, I’m not so sure. Per­son­ally, and I know I’m atyp­i­cal here, I don’t buy books from shelves any­more. I buy ebooks exclu­sively, mostly from eReader.com, though I’ve shopped Short­Cov­ers and the Ama­zon Kin­dle store, since I can read both of those on my iPhone as well. In all cases, the first line is a minor fac­tor in the buy­ing deci­sion process if it’s even avail­able for con­sid­er­a­tion at all. In a lot of cases, I don’t get to see the first line of the book until after I pur­chase it, and by that point I’m invested and deter­mined to read as far into the book as I can so that I get my money’s worth. (I actu­ally am as cheap as they guy in the McDonald’s com­mer­i­cal with the jack­ham­mer.) So again, in ebooks you’re much bet­ter off pol­ish­ing your pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial, the sum­mary posted on the web site with your book, than in mak­ing sure the first line grabs the reader.

But while ebooks are the next hot thing – finally, only a dozen years after I got into them – I know a lot of peo­ple still don’t read elec­tron­i­cally. So for the folks that still do haunt the brick and mor­tar book­stores, surely open­ing lines are still vital for them, right?

Maybe. At least in that venue, you know that the poten­tial buyer can access the open­ing line of your book. There’s a chance they’ll see it. But a lot of peo­ple don’t. A lot of read­ers lit­er­ally judge a book by its cover: its back cover. The blurb on the back cover of a paper­back, or the jacket flap of a hard­cover, tells most read­ers every­thing they need to know about whether or not to make a pur­chase. If that sells them, they’ve already made their deci­sion by the time they see the first line.

So does that mean first lines aren’t impor­tant at all? Of course not. Like I said, it sets the tone and nar­ra­tive expec­ta­tion for the reader. And no mat­ter what, you want to start strong. But the open­ing line isn’t the most impor­tant part of your nar­ra­tive – that would be the end­ing – and it isn’t vital to get­ting your book noticed. Make it good enough, match the tone to the rest of the story, and focus on get­ting the story right. The rest will take care of itself.