I have a bit of an obsession with opening lines. Always have. I collect the ones that I love and I read them over and over, trying to understand why they work, why they grab me, why they make me pause.
I sat in a creative writing class a couple of years ago, trying to come up with an opening line that would stop the world for half a second. Everyone else around me seemed to be writing about love or war or something that felt important.
All I could think about was a cat and a mirror (Thanks Brain).
The cat wasn’t mine, and the mirror wasn’t metaphorical, at least not at first. But when I read my clumsy sentence aloud, I realised that what I really wanted to write about wasn’t the cat at all. It was the reflection. The way stories let us see ourselves sideways, not directly, and how fiction gives us the courage to look at truth without blinking.
Some time has gone by since that class. Now (in my other life when I am not running a secondhand bookshop) I spend my days writing product blurbs and subject lines and the odd sentence that needs to do far too much with far too few words. And still that image of the cat and the mirror sits somewhere in the back of my mind. A reminder that every line, no matter how small, can hold a world if you let it. And that if you stare too long at the cat in the mirror, the cat also stares back at you (Again, thanks Brain).
I think that’s why I love opening lines so much. They’re little acts of bravery. The writer saying, Here. Look. This is where it begins. And maybe that’s why I love secondhand books too. They’ve already begun once, but every time someone opens one again, you’re holding someone else’s beginning and making it your own.
Your turn
I’m curious: which opening lines from books have stayed with you? Reply and tell me please. I’ll be sharing a few of my favourites on socials throughout the week.
PS: If your mirror seems unusually feline today… just back away slowly.