This post is inspired by Ari Meghlen’s prompt project, for which I’m glad, as I’ve been drawing blanks on blog topics the last few weeks. So, today, I’ll share my thoughts and experiences with opening lines.

In her post, Ari says that the opening lines cause quite a lot of pressure – after all, if the reader finds our books, and is intrigued enough by the cover and blurb to buy it (or, at least, download the free sample on Amazon), this is the first bit of actual story they’ll see, after the title/copyright page and possibly a map.

A bit contrary to the title, I won’t limit these thoughts to the opening line – or a couple of lines – but I’ll consider the opening sequence as a whole. Which, typically, means the prologue and/or the first chapter. While the first lines are no less important, one line or one paragraph would need very bad writing to deter a reader that fast, and I think the 10% mark for Amazon’s free sample is a good place to judge whether a book might be fit for a reader’s tastes (though that goes well past the opening sequence).

And, in all honesty, I definitely share her feelings. It’s very hard to write a good opening. After all, you need to set up the story, world, the main characters, and give a good hint at what the hell is going on. Which isn’t easy to cram into a short passage. And I’m not surprised that I’ve changed the opening to the first book of my project several times.

When I started writing the story (past the demo chapter from the very middle), the opening sequence – labeled as prologue – ended up at 15000 words. Quite long for a prologue, yet it didn’t tell all I wanted to tell. It was the first harsh lesson I faced in writing. That an opening this long was a hint of a problem. I did what I had to do – cut it completely, spread mentions throughout the story, and stored it in the depths of my computer to eventually use as a prequel.

As if this wasn’t enough, I faced similar issues with the first few chapters. By the final product, of the first 40k words, around 30k were cut, and the rest was reworked several times, to ensure that it won’t take several hours for the reader to see something major happen. During the drafting stage, I took a couple of jabs at the new intro, but most of them ended up being half-hearted, as I admit I had no idea how to tackle it. Eventually, I came up with a short prologue that sets up the three main characters and gives a hint of their motivation.

The second book, still in progress, also gave me a fair amount of trouble with the opening. At first, I wasn’t planning to include a prologue, then I played around with two ideas – for a time, even having a draft with two prologues. The second prologue is a typical “kill your darlings” scene – one I am very reluctant to part with, and one I tried several times to find a use for, though it might end up being cut, stored as a “deleted scene”, and hints spread throughout the story. Which only proves how hard it is to do an opening, even if it’s a sequel, where a lot of the set-up is already done.

What challenges will come with the opening sequence of the eventual third book – that’s hard to guess.

With that said, maybe this is one of the things that feels hard for a writer, but only because we’re too hard on ourselves. Sure, we want to start with the right foot, for a good reason – it’s easier than ever to share your story with the world, and thus, it’s harder than ever to be found and seen. And if someone finds us, we don’t want them to leave by a dysfunctional intro to our book.

As a reader, however, I don’t think the bar is that high. And I say that looking back at the time before I also experienced writing, which gives me a lot of sympathy for the plight of writing a good intro. But maybe it’s because I’m not that harsh on first impressions anyway. If the theme – as hinted by the title, cover, and blurb – catches my attention, I’m quite likely to give a book more than just the prologue or first chapter to pull me in. Then, maybe that’s just me, and not a common practice, so I’d definitely welcome other readers to share how “trigger-happy” they might be on putting a book aside if the opening is weak.

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So, that’s a wrap for today. Again, thanks to Ari for giving me a topic when I struggled to come up with one myself.