#first line
I remember the first time I got a letter that said “After Five Days Return To” on the envelope, and I thought that after I had kept the letter for five days I was supposed to return it to the sender.
- I Remember (1970), J. Brainard
Post link
Up from the skeleton stone walls, up from the rotting floor boards and the solid hand-hewn beams of oak of the pre-war cotton factory, dusk came.
- “Blood-Burning Moon,” from Cane (1923), J. Toomer
Post link
An ordinary young man was on his way from his hometown of Hamburg to Davos-Platz in the Canton of Graubünden.
-The Magic Mountain, (1927) T. Mann
Post link
Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost foglike, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance.
- One Lonely Night (1951), M. Spillane
Post link
It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened.
- The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber (1936), E. Hemingway
Post link
This is being written in another seaside cottage on another coast. Gin and whiskey have bitten rings in the table where I sit.
-A Vision of the World (short story, The Stories of John Cheever 1978), J. Cheever
Post link
It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed.
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (2003), Mark Haddon
Post link
It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs Shears’ house. Its eyes were closed.
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (2003), Mark Haddon
Post link
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us
- The Time Machine (1895), HGW
Post link
- A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens
- Wuthering Heights - E. Brontë
- Middlemarch - Eliot
- Nineteen Eighty-Four - Orwell
- Pride and Prejudice - Austen
- The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
- Peter Pan - Barrie
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Kesey
- Jane Eyre - C. Brontë
- Anna Karenina - Tolstoy
- One Hundred Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
- The Metamorphosis - Kafka
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain
- The Old Man and the Sea - Hemingway
- Catch-22 - Heller
I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.
- Infinite Jest (1996), D. F. Wallace
Post link
First Line Challenge
Tagged by @alidravana!
Rules: List the first lines of the last ten (10) stories you published. Look to see any patterns you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any. Then tag some friends.
Other than Left on the Table, the easiest trend is that 9/10 of these are from Whumpmas lol.
–
1. Buck woke up to a low, muttered conversation around him and an unpleasant ache in his arms and shoulders. Nine Former Clients
2. Evan liked playing football, he liked the physical rush of it, he liked working out with his team, he liked making impressive catches and taking hard tackles and still holding onto the ball after. Eight Drinks a-Roofied(Explicit/NC)
3. Buck had never woken up before feeling like he weighed less than…well, himself. Seven Seas a-Rising
4. It was a routine medical call. Six Bombs a-Ticking
5. This wasn’t the first time Buck and the team had been called out to an emergency that wasn’t a real emergency. Five Made to Watch
6. Buck felt like he could finally say he’d hit his stride as a firefighter. Four Triggers Tripped
7.“Firefighter Buckley, evacuate now. That’s an order.” Three Blocked Doors
8. “Hey, do you mind if we stop by the store on the way home? I’ve been putting it off for a couple days but—” Two Human Shields
9. Buck prided himself on finding off the beaten trail paths to hike on his days off. A Buck Tied to a Pear Tree
10. Buck had woken up with his fair share of hangover headaches before, but usually those headaches came at the start of his days off rather than the morning before a shift. Left on the Table(Explicit/NC)
Tagging anyone who wants to do this!
“As of 4:24 a.m. Persian Time, the last of the world’s ice is gone.”
