First Lines - Starting Your Story

How can a writer begin a story in a way that focuses the reader's attention by clearly showing purpose and character? Below are a couple of exercises that can help you generate ideas for writing first lines. Using established parameters when writing a first sentence is a way to sharpen skill by working with a specific kind of clarity. The writer learns to identify the essences of character and situation.

Exercise

After you warm up with "Sentence Pairs," do "First Line...Last Line" and post it on your blog. Make sure you stop back here to let me know that it's up.

Sentence Pairs

Write a first sentence about a birth. You may use dialogue, straight narrative, or a combination. Now write a first sentence about a death. Try other pairs such as falling in love and breaking up, or pairs that aren't in opposition, such as spring and summer. Invent other pairs, always thinking about grabbing your reader's attention.

First Line...Last Line

Write a piece in which one of the following sentences is both the first line and the last line of the piece; in other words, circle back to the beginning.

1. I should've been in school that April day.
2. They murdered him.
3. Two a.m. Friday.
4. In that place the wind prevailed.
5. That was both the beginning and the end of many things.
6. There is a young legend developing on the east side of no place.
7. Some secrets are best kept buried, dusty as old bones.
8. The past becomes the present as I stand by the window.
9. I thought he was surely the meanest person I had ever met.
10. It was supposed to be the perfect crime.
11. Kitty was the girl next door.
12. Just in time to miss her only morning class.
13. Never talk about the things you cannot change.

Be creative, and have fun!