the best start

[ian]

I have stumbled into this with the opening scene to Blade as mentioned elsewhere.


For books, you have to try hard to beat All this happened, more or less.

[Feanor]

Well, I'm sure there are much worthier suggestions, but the first line sets the tone of what's going to come.
I rather like the opening line of Gavin Maxwell's 'Ring of Bright Water':

"I sit in a pitch-pine panelled kitchen-living room, with an otter asleep upon its back among the cushions on the sofa, forepaws in the air, and with the expression of tightly shut concentration that very small babies wear in sleep."

[Nuncio]

Coincidentally, I saw a photograph of that otter (ie the one that GM had tamed, not the one in the film) earlier this evening.

[Robh]

I was quite taken with the opening scene of Barbie: https://youtu.be/C-OuwvuUGsE

The rest of the film was pretty good too

[Kim]

Contact (1997)

Even though the scale is all wrong.

[Mr Larrington]

“It was the day my grandmother exploded”.  Perfection.

[citoyen]

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler - not a killer opening line, more a killer first page…

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. The parking lot attendant had brought the car out and he was still holding the door open because Terry Lennox's left foot was still dangling outside, as if he had forgotten he had one. He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and for no other.

There was a girl beside him. Her hair was a lovely shade of dark red and she had a distant smile on her lips and over her shoulders she had a blue mink that almost made the Rolls-Royce look like just another automobile. It didn't quite. Nothing can.

The attendant was the usual half-tough character in a white coat with the name of the restaurant stitched across the front of it in red. He was getting fed up.

"Look, mister," he said with an edge to his voice, "would you mind a whole lot pulling your leg into the car so I can kind of shut the door? Or should I open it all the way so you can fall out?"

The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back. It didn't bother him enough to give him the shakes. At The Dancers they get the sort of people that disillusion you about what a lot of golfing money can do for the personality.

Magnificent.

[citoyen]

Films wise…

The Matrix
Once Upon A Time In The West
Raiders of the Lost Ark

[readingjohn]

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."

[mrcharly-YHT]

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel

[Kim]

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel

Never mind that being primary blue since the late 90s, we're going to reach the "What's a channel?" stage soon.

[FifeingEejit]

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel

Never mind that being primary blue since the late 90s, we're going to reach the "What's a channel?" stage soon.

Oh, I was thinking Snow.

[citoyen]

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel

Never mind that being primary blue since the late 90s, we're going to reach the "What's a channel?" stage soon.

Oh, I was thinking Snow.

Yes, I expect that's what the author had in mind, but as Kim points out, it's a tad outdated.

(And never mind "What's a channel?" more like "What's a television?")

[mrcharly-YHT]

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel

Never mind that being primary blue since the late 90s, we're going to reach the "What's a channel?" stage soon.

Oh, I was thinking Snow.

Yes, I expect that's what the author had in mind, but as Kim points out, it's a tad outdated.

(And never mind "What's a channel?" more like "What's a television?")

I think they were thinking dead, lifeless grey.

[FifeingEejit]

IIRC my last CRT did a black screen when not tuned, i suppose I could fire it up since it's getting in the way after a mate wanted it for his collection of games consoles and then shit happened.

[Cudzoziemiec]

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel

Never mind that being primary blue since the late 90s, we're going to reach the "What's a channel?" stage soon.

Oh, I was thinking Snow.

Yes, I expect that's what the author had in mind, but as Kim points out, it's a tad outdated.

(And never mind "What's a channel?" more like "What's a television?")

I think they were thinking dead, lifeless grey.

I agree with MrCharly.

[Cudzoziemiec]

[Peter]

wins the internet ...

[rafletcher]

Film - hard to see beyond Saving Private Ryan’s first 20 minutes.

[citoyen]

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel

Never mind that being primary blue since the late 90s, we're going to reach the "What's a channel?" stage soon.

Oh, I was thinking Snow.

Yes, I expect that's what the author had in mind, but as Kim points out, it's a tad outdated.

(And never mind "What's a channel?" more like "What's a television?")

I think they were thinking dead, lifeless grey.

I agree with MrCharly.

The lack of consensus suggests it's a flawed metaphor. Or maybe it doesn't really matter and all interpretations are equally valid.

Either way, it feels like the kind of opening line they teach you to come up with on a creative writing course. It's certainly no "All this happened, more or less."

No idea what it is though, so will look it up...

<google>

Yeah... turns out I have read it and my reaction to that line pretty much tallies with how I recall feeling about the whole book at the time. Good ideas, good story, not great writing.

[mattc]

"The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."

Catch-22, but I'm sure you all knew that.

(Mr Larrington's opening from the Crow Road wins the pithy category. Mr Banks clearly likes a winning formula:
"I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped")

[ian]

I can't say Gibson ever floated my boat, I find the entire cyberpunk genre where it rains all the time a bit dull. Horses for courses (though I'd still heartily recommend Michael Marshall Smith's first couple of books in the genre, especially Spares and Only Forward which are far better). But yeah, that's the sort of line that a good teacher would tell you to write and then delete, because it sounds clever but doesn't deliver anything useful. Also, ironically for a novel set in the future, it pitches it back into the past. If you snag on metaphor and simile, it's not done well, it's trying too hard. I did read an interview with him once where he explained the opening, and it's actually quite thoughtful, but I think ultimately it doesn't convey what he had in mind.


All this happened, more or less is perfect because it sets out everything and brings you in, in so few words. Of course, novels were shorter back then, Orwell had to do with it was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Melville got call me Ishmael.

Some other classic starts:


All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.

Marley was dead, to begin with.


We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.


They don't always have to be short.


It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

And I always loved this one


My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

Certainly for movies, The Matrix, more so if you went in with no clue as to what it was about.

[Pickled Onion]

First lines that draw you in, this has to be one of the best:

The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.



As for films, I watched a crap film the other day that had a fairly good opening sequence. I looked up reviews on imdb later and spotted this gem:
"The best thing about this movie is the opening credits. Listen to the brilliant cover of Placebo's Running Up That Hill then go watch something else" 

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

"Amongst the people I have met, one of those who stand out most vividly in my memory is a certain Mr Ramsay MacDonald. He was chief engineer: and a distant cousin, he said, of Mr Ramsay J. MacDonald, the statesman. He resembled his 'cousin' very closely indeed, in face and moustaches; and it astonished me at first to see what appeared to be my Prime Minister, in a suit of overalls, crawling out of a piece of dismantled machinery with an air of real authority and knowledge and decision. "

'In Hazard', Richard Hughes 1938

[Kim]

As for films, I watched a crap film the other day that had a fairly good opening sequence. I looked up reviews on imdb later and spotted this gem:
"The best thing about this movie is the opening credits. Listen to the brilliant cover of Placebo's Running Up That Hill then go watch something else" 

Which reminds me that Baby Driver also deserves a you-can-stop-after-the-opening-credits award for good starts.