openings...

[kdbleu]

I'm down to the last few 'tasks' in writing my mystery novel... reviewing the ending, grammar edits, polish... and the opening. I'm really worried about my opening. (Which has changed since you readers read ;)

So I was wondering if y'all could hit me with your favorite starting paragraphs. Bonus points if it's a mystery...

thank you.

Comments

[hearts_blood]

"Whose Body?" by Dorothy L Sayers.

Opening Line: "Oh damn!"

My actual favorite opening paragraph is from Gone With The Wind. It's possible it would be considered old-fashioned now, but it introduces Scarlett O'Hara, tells us what she looks like, how she acts, how she really is inside of her public persona, and that she's rich and pampered and insanely attractive to gentlemen, and consequently sets up the entire plot of the book.

[daybreak777]

She beat me to GWTW!

Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin - that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.

[kdbleu]

Actually a very good to the point opening that sets up much more than it appears.

[kdbleu]

Actually Gone with the Wind is a good example because it is different from the current fashion. Something else to think about.

Dialogue is another interesting option. Nice.

[daybreak777]

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are things you get ashamed of, because words make them smaller. When they were in your head they were limitless; but when they come out they seem to be no bigger than normal things. But that's not all. The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried; they are clues that could guide your enemies to a prize they would love to steal. It's hard and painful for you to talk about these things ... and then people just look at you strangely. They haven't understood what you've said at all, or why you almost cried while you were saying it.”

― Stephen King, The Body

[kdbleu]

Great philosophical opening.

Now, I want to watch Stand By Me. hee.