[jrumbut]

I think this might already happen. This is just anecdata but I often get turned off from books by overwrought first page(s). Eventually someone convines me to go back and the rest of the novel is good.

I'd love to hear an author's perspective on this, if any of them notice it. My guess is that they stew on opening passages for years before writing, causing them to get a little neurotic about them, then eventually they settle down and write in a way that comes more naturally to them for the rest of the book.

[alleyshack]

In pretty much any writing medium (novels, screenplays, short stories, etc), standard advice involves hooking the reader within the first paragraph or so. This is partly why "in medias res" tends to be such a popular opening technique - it drops the reader straight into the action, which is theoretically more interesting than "She woke up, got dressed, and went downstairs for her daily breakfast of toast and juice...". However, starting in medias res has itself become something of a cliche, to the point where you have to really know what you're doing to be able to use it effectively.

What I think a lot of novice writers, and people giving advice to novice writers, often miss is that "hooking" your reader doesn't mean immediately assualting them with action. All it means is raising a question the reader wants to know the answer to.

For example, "The Wizard Hunters" opens with the line "It was nine o'clock at night and Tremaine was trying to find a way to kill herself that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court, when someone banged on the door." Not much action - Tremaine is sitting in a dusty library reading books - but that line raises two immediate questions: 1, why is Tremaine trying to kill herself in a way that would be ruled "natural causes", and 2, who's banging on the door at 9pm?

Similarly, "Black Sun Rising", the first book of the Coldfire Trilogy, opens with the line "She wondered why she was afraid to go home." Again, the line raises multiple questions, inviting the reader to keep reading to learn the answers.

[Swizec]

My forever favorite opening line to a novel remains “We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold”

How can you not want to keep reading after that? While at the same time it’s still at the beginning, not assaulting you with action, etc

[marnett]

God bless Hunter.

[isolli]

An interesting example, one of the best-known book openings in French literature ("Aujourd'hui, maman est morte."), and the difficulties translating the sentence in English: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translat...

[ahartmetz]

Interesting article, and I believe I have a better translation: "Today, my mom died." It sounds better than just "mom" and seems to express the right level of closeness.

OTOH I think it's often appropriate to keep "mamma" in Italian movies and texts because it carries a huge amount of connotations, which "maman" doesn't.

[jprissi]

> Interesting article, and I believe I have a better translation: "Today, my mom died."

Well it's not an accurate translation, 'my' create a distance between the narrator and the mother that you don't have in the original sentence.

You traduction is much more objective than what the author wrote.

[yesenadam]

"Mom" is US English only I think.

[dingaling]

But then you have to translate for the majority of English-speaking countries that don't use 'mom'...

[labster]

"Mum"'s the word.

[taneq]

Or if you use "mother" it changes the tone to be more preppy.

[wrycoder]

“Woke up, fell out of bed Dragged a comb across my head Found my way downstairs and drank a cup And looking up I noticed I was late Found my coat and grabbed my hat Made the bus in seconds flat Found my way upstairs and had a smoke Somebody spoke and I went into a dream”

[komali2]

A great example of "in media res" mildly weirdly implemented is the beginning of the second "Sin City" movie, wherein Marv wakes up next to a crashed cop car and some other vehicle, asking "how did I get here?" It's a weird implementation because it immediately goes into a flashback, but I wouldn't say it's a "poor" implementation because the effect is the viewer is introduced to Marv's memory issues.

[pjc50]

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

- opening sentence of Iain Banks' The Crow Road

[glandium]

> "She woke up, got dressed, and went downstairs for her daily breakfast of toast and juice..."

It's been a long time since last time I read it, but isn't this essentially the opening of the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy?

[majormajor]

I think you get the opening with the bit about the world being destroyed and losing the great idea for peace and whatnot, first.

edit: yep, there's a prologue which gives you the broader scope https://www.amazon.com/Hitchhikers-Guide-Galaxy-Douglas-Adam...

[komali2]

Writer's perspective - starting and ending a book are the top 2 hardest things, in my opinion, especially because editors get all up your ass about beginnings. I suspect this has to do with primacy principle, i.e.the editor is "most aware" during the beginning of the reading, and also aware that readers do the same thing. They will pick up the book in the bookstore and possibly skim the beginning to see if they should buy, so you gotta hook.

Other things I find difficult about writing:

Ending chapters (I saw a really bad one once in the Broken Earth trilogy that was basically "[character] realized she had nothing more to say, so she walked away." I totally understood how the author got herself in that situation lol)

Making decisions on tropes. For example, say I'm writing a sci fi with a "rise of the machines" plot point (I am). What is the nature of those machines? Rampant AI in existent technology? Did it make war-bots? Or maybe multiple rampant AIs in autonomous bots? Etc. There's like fifty of these kinds of decisions I need to make in a book I'm working on now.

Writing dialogue that's interesting, but not campy, but realistic, but not drab.

[hinkley]

Did you ever see Throw Momma From the Train?

Crystal’s character has writers block because he is fixated on a good first sentence setting the tone for the rest of the novel, and he never gets past line one.

[mirimir]

Stover's Caine's Law starts with an author's note: "Several parts of this story take place before the events depicted in Act of Atonement Book 1: Caine Black Knife. Other parts of this story take place after. Still other parts take place before and after both. Some parts may be imaginary, and some were real only temporarily, as they have subsequently unhappened."

That must have been driven by comments from initial readers, I suspect. Basically, some of the characters are rewriting the overall story of the series.

[kqr]

I do this too, and my wife thinks I'm insane. But I'm not really trying to judge if the book is good or bad. I just want to know if it's good. And there are more good books with good first few pages than I'll be able to read in my lifetime, so I don't really lose a lot by accidentally not reading a good book with bad first pages. On the other hand, by accepting bad first pages I risk having to suffer a whole bad book!

[taneq]

> then eventually they settle down and write in a way that comes more naturally to them for the rest of the book.

In game development, often you'll start with a random level from early-mid game, since that lets you playtest all of the gameplay. You then work forwards and return to the opening levels once the gameplay, art style etc. are all locked in and polished.

I wonder if some writers would benefit from a similar approach?

[urubu]

Yeah, read page sample(1:150, 1) of novels sounds like a better approach.

Funnily enough, there is a (French) Page 112 prize: https://www.prix-de-la-page-112.com/