I like the tone of the new version best, but there are many things about the first version I like a lot, too - the blistery bags that get fatter like ticks (yes, it is a little gross, but I know just what you mean!) and especially Mackie's looking at Alice and her breasts and how she's going at the lolly pop - ha! Just made me love Mackie and his hormones. I also liked how the school felt really provincial but in an odd way, like that small town in Big Fish, you know? Well, hopefully there will be some things like this in the interior of the novel. I can't wait!
Please enter me! amandell at mail dot harvard dot edu
If we're talking about first lines, I only just started reading the book, but the opening paragraphs of SKINNY DIP by Carl Hiaasen is awesome. Not really my genre but the opening his hilarious and packs a great punch.
But if we're looking at overall first chapters, I really like the start of Maggie's LAMENT. I'll never forget the dreamy hero's entrance as hair-puller-backer of the barfing MC.
I love the prologue of "The Hours," by Michael Cunningham, because it so perfectly enters into the fugue state, the last moments, of a brilliant suicide. When I read it the first time, I had to jump up to run in to read it aloud to my partner, and when I flipped over the cover and realized that a man really wrote those words, that he could grasp the thoughts of a woman in that state, I loved it even more. I fell in love with Virginia Woolf in that moment, through his interpretation of her death. Morbid? Yes, of course. But having been profoundly depressed in my time, I was able to say, "Yes, yes that's the feeling," and I was hooked.
"Your job will be to separate the white thumbtacks from the colored ones. Be sure to throw the colored ones away. They must leave the building. If they don't, then you will. The president, Daniel Rosen, likes only white thumbtacks at The Agency. Also, should you ever serve him a drink, he has just four ice cubes in his Diet Coke. If you put in more, he will throw the surplus ice cubes at you. If you put in three, he'll throw the entire drink at you."
From The Second Assistant: A Tale from the Bottom of the Hollywood Ladder by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare
Im sure it partly my favorite because of my theatre background. But I really just love it. I can totally see some people in entertainment fields acting like this.
The first opening was sort of gruesome in a good way x) My favourite opening? I would have to say Markus Zusak's I am the Messenger. It's very straight forward but witty. "The gunman is useless. I know it. He knows it. The whole bank knows it. Even my best mate, Marvin, knows it, and he's more useless than the gunman."
Funny that I see this post today. Last night I had this problem with my third draft for a WIP. I completely scraped the original opening from the first 2 drafts and I'm at a happy place with it but then I got to a certain section where I found it might be okay to grab something from the second draft to plug in. It delayed me for hours until finally I deleted my copy/paste fiasco and it was so freeing. It's hard because there this need or feeling of obligation to those words that maybe somehow I was lacking in their development and if I keep working at it... Yeah no. LOL thanks for the post.
Here's one of my favorites-
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes to the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited." Opening paragraph to 'Rebecca' by
( ... )
Comments 52
Please enter me! amandell at mail dot harvard dot edu
If we're talking about first lines, I only just started reading the book, but the opening paragraphs of SKINNY DIP by Carl Hiaasen is awesome. Not really my genre but the opening his hilarious and packs a great punch.
But if we're looking at overall first chapters, I really like the start of Maggie's LAMENT. I'll never forget the dreamy hero's entrance as hair-puller-backer of the barfing MC.
Reply
Reply
"Your job will be to separate the white thumbtacks from the colored ones. Be sure to throw the colored ones away. They must leave the building. If they don't, then you will. The president, Daniel Rosen, likes only white thumbtacks at The Agency. Also, should you ever serve him a drink, he has just four ice cubes in his Diet Coke. If you put in more, he will throw the surplus ice cubes at you. If you put in three, he'll throw the entire drink at you."
From The Second Assistant: A Tale from the Bottom of the Hollywood Ladder by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare
Im sure it partly my favorite because of my theatre background. But I really just love it. I can totally see some people in entertainment fields acting like this.
Reply
My favourite opening? I would have to say Markus Zusak's I am the Messenger. It's very straight forward but witty.
"The gunman is useless.
I know it.
He knows it.
The whole bank knows it.
Even my best mate, Marvin, knows it, and he's more useless than the gunman."
Reply
Here's one of my favorites-
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes to the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited." Opening paragraph to 'Rebecca' by ( ... )
Reply
Leave a comment