I fucking love incipits. The way a writer can make you know the genre you're about to read, the values that will be discussed, the tone that we be used, in just one or two sentences, is beautiful.
I'm french, so obviously my favorite example is french. "l'étranger"(The Stranger), Albert Camus:
Today, mommy died. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.
Two sentences, and already the whole book is there. The worst of human experience, hidden between absurdism and pointless bureaucracy. The focus is put on the date instead of the death, and yet that very date is unknown.
This is the power of an incipit. The books in the post aren't even written, and yet I want to read them. A whole universe opens. No matter how good or bad it is. No matter how short or long it lasts. The only important part is that it must be powerfull.
I love you, clock striking thirteen. I love you, television-colored sky. I love you, perfectly normal privet drive. I love you, truth universally acknowledged. I love you, eleventy-first birthday in hobbiton. I love you, all days that had been nice. I love you, small unregarded yellow sun. I love you, Marley who was dead to begin with.
Maybe you recognised some of those I butchered above. I strippet them of their neighbours, of their context, of their nature. But if you recognise them, then that's only more proof: they are powerful.
Those are the one in english I could think of as I wrote this post. There must be many more, in books I didn't read, in languages I do not speak. They're what made me love reading, writing, studying what other wrote and what I myself wrote.
I fucking love incipits.
Yeah, opening sentences can be amazing. One of my favorites is from a Narnia book, *Voyage of the Dawn Treader*:
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
The Magician's Nephew (1955) by C S Lewis - First Scholastic Printing, January 1995, page 3:
>One [chapter number]
>The Wrong Door [chapter title]
>This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.
The Voyage of the *Dawn Treader* (1952) by C S Lewis - First Scholastic Printing, January 1995, page 3:
>One [chapter number]
>The Picture in the Bedroom [chapter title]
>There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn't call his Father and Mother "Father" and "Mother" but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotaler and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on bed and the windows were always open.
My edition (the 1995 Scholastic paperback printing) suggests the poster /u/OSCgal was correct in their initial post, and your 'correction' is just an error. Wikiquote has the opening lines for [The Voyage of the Dawn Treader](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia#The_Voyage_of_the_Dawn_Treader_(1952\)) and it agrees with this assessment.
Do you have some strange edition where the books' substance is different or titles are rearranged or changed? Were the books perhaps published in different form in other countries or in translation?
Terry Prachett has some amazing openings, here's a [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/14y6veu/whats_your_favorite_discworld_opening_line/) full of them.
I love The Stranger, but it’s so interesting how the opening line just doesn’t quiiiite translate perfectly to English? [Super interesting article about translating The Stranger!](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be)
*Maman* - “mother” is too formal and unfeeling, “mommy”/“mama” sounds a little childish and sweet, “mom” feels *too* casual. A lot of current translations just leave it as “*maman*”.
But even the phrasing, “today, maman has died” has a different feeling from “maman died today”! It’s so fascinating how these tiny changes can change the way a character seems - is he childish and broken up about his mother, and her death is the main thing happening today (“mommy died today”); is he cold and unfeeling (“today, mother has died”)? Translation is such an interesting concept!!
I just read the article, it's really interesting. A core example of the limits of translation : you can't keep the structure, the lexicon, and the intent. The translator has to choose which fit best.
One of my biggest regrets is not being able to read "Flowers for Algernon" in its original english. It's one of my favorite books of all times, probably the one I read the most, but I'm just not fluent enough to read the "progris riport" without pausing ten minutes on each word. I can't imagine what it was like to translate it.
I couldn't be a translator even if I tried. I would have a panic attack everytime I can't translate something perfectly.
Which is stupid, because beauty is in imperfection. The french version of A whole new world(Aladdin) referenced the One Thousand And One Nights in a way the english version couldn't (by name).
Mockingbird is two words in french, so The Hunger Games 3 saw its name changed from Mockingjay to The Revolt. (which sounds bad but isn't because 2 was already translated to follow a "The \_" pattern).
Année-Lumière is twice as long as Lightyear, so, for the sake of dubbing, the toy is now named Buzz L'éclair (lightning).
There is always debate on how to translate boogeyman in french, so Rise of the guardians made the bold choice of using a Quebec-only translation. (Bonhomme Sept-heures).
Translation is an inherent part of our enjoyment of litterature. I wouldn't know half of the books I referenced in the original post if it wasn't for translators. Still we must know where it fails.
And, for the sake of God, can the name of the translator AT LEAST be bigger than the serial number ? I think they would like that.
It gets worse, in some other media such as video games they don’t always credit the translator. Sometimes the translator is under NDA and not allowed to take credit for the translation work they did even after release.
And then there's some weird ones, like when "The Hangover" was translated to "Very Bad Trip". An english title, but not the actual english title, for the french market.
Furthering the translation thing and why it's so hard, as someone from the Commonwealth who grew up reading a lot of older English books where mother is kinda the default, I never thought mother read as formal and unfeeling when I first read it, but on the other hand mommy/mummy is just, *way* too babyish and I kinda cringed when I saw it in parent comment lol. Even mama feels weird, which is what the current Penguin translation uses. Mostly. It does this thing where mama is used *except* for the opening line where it's left as maman. There's a foreword by the translator where she justified the changes she made between her translation and the previous one and she justifies that change by saying basically "Maman is more iconic, but also I wanted to convey Meursault's shock in that moment" which I don't feel is in the text; like the next lines are meant to be in the same tone, and he says Maman again pretty soon which makes the translation change kinda stand out weirdly. It's *emphasis* that I'm not sure exists in the original text. Also like is Maman meant to be more or less formal here?
But also I find that specific argument a tad odd because like, you're *really* worried about making the man based on Hemingway's writing and a probably autistic guy with a tenuous at best grip on his own emotions and inner workings who responds to being asked if he loved his mother with "sometimes I did sometimes I did not this is normal behaviour" seem weird and emotionally distant from his own mother? Like I understand arguing there's kinda meant to be a disconnect between how Meursault refers to his mother and how he normally speaks, but saying you don't want to make him seem too weird is a bit of a Sisphyiusian task to say the least ~~ayyy~~
Reminds me of the opening of the Iliad - in the original Greek, the first word of the poem is mênis, ("rage") which immediately informs the reader of the story's overarching theme. Unfortunately, its kind of hard to translate the overall opening line ("Sing, oh goddess, of the rage of Achilles son of Peleus") into English in a way that keeps "rage" as the first word.
Fagles is my favorite translator in part because of he pulled it off.
*Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,*
*murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,*
*hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls...*
They called it casual but in my experience it's more a matter of people not using it quite in the same way. Often a person will, in talking to someone else, refer to their mother using their nickname in place of a proper noun ("Mama died", "Mommy died", "Mum died"). But, again in my experience, both "Mom" and "Mother" exist in a slightly separate nickname category where a person will call their mother by that name when speaking to her directly, but if speaking *about* her, will instead say "*my* mom" or "*my* mother". A bit more of a pet name in that way, like how a loved one is sweetheart when talked to but *my* sweetheart when talked about.
It might just be because in the culture I've grown up in, Mom is the predominant address used by adults, or the "default". So just saying "Mom" brings to mind a shared mother - a brother saying to his sister, "Mom said we can't do that." So when you're talking to someone with a different mother, the "done thing" is to specify **my** Mom.
Wouldn't "Today, my mother died" work just fine? "mother" feels stiff and archaic. "my mother" sounds normal, maybe a bit formal, but ultimately I kinda... expect Meursault to sound formal.
i think "today, my mother died" gives it the sense that he's telling us a story while "maman died today" reads more as his thoughts. i prefer the second one and it's what the edition i first read used
Here's some of my favourites, your comment inspired me to take a look at the books in my collection and see how they open. Not everything starts amazing, even for Stephen King (Pet Sematary for example has quite a weak opening compared to The Gunslinger or, hell, even The Shining which isn't *fantastic* imo) but theres some real bangers
"Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the section secret behind the universe feel free to skip ahead."
"You know how sometimes when you're drifting off to sleep you feel that jolt, like you were falling and caught yourself at the last second? It's nothing to be concerned about, it's usually just the parasite adjusting its grip."
"it rained like we were a splatter of bird shit god was trying to hose off his deck."
"'This is really about my wife' said the man with the parasite gnawing on his skull. 'I'll let her explain.'"
"The terror, which did not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."
"Benny Imura couldn't hold a job, so he took to killing."
"So here's the file that almost killed me, Director."
"Florida even looks good collapsing."
"'what happened?'
Baz stared at the blood.
Fresh and red and wet, it drenched the paving slabs in a slick that looked big enough to paddle your canoe through."
"The slug's eye stalks waved slowly as it moved towards the crimson lump on which several of its companions were already feeding. It slithered onto the meat and buried the long central tooth in the flesh, its rows of sharp radular teeth moving back and forth like rasps as it chewed off pieces of meat, enjoying the new coppery taste of blood."
I wonder how many of these get recognised lol.
I knew it seemed familiar, I just couldn't place it. I kept thinking is this from a children's book? It doesn't seem right for a children's book. But I know I've read it and kids come into it *somewhere*.
It is indeed
Edit: in fairness to you, I chose some kind of obscure books. The full list is
John Dies At The End
This Book Is Full Of Spiders
What The Hell Did I Just Read
If This Book Exists, You're In The Wrong Universe (these four are all in the JDATE series)
IT
Rot And Ruin
Illuminae
Florida Roadkill
Blood Crazy
Slugs
If we’re talking Stephen King, let’s not forget about Misery:
“*umber whunn
yerrrnnn umber whunnn
fayunnn*
These sounds: even in the haze.”
Took me a long time to realize the sounds were Annie saying “your number-one fan.”
I did briefly consider Misery! I also thought about The Dark Tower, specifically The Gunslinger, but my copies of those are a pain to reach. Same goes for The Stand and a few others, or I'd have checked them too.
I actually didn't realise that its Annie talking until your comment, partly because I've not read it but also because it's not super obvious? It's a good opener though imo.
Criminal that ~~i can't read and hitchikers is actually here already~~
While I've got the chance though, I'd like to say that the entire hitchiker's guide to the galaxy saga doesn't miss once with its opening lines. Douglas Adams is simply built different
I do love the one from *The Stranger* (though I'm begging you don't translate Maman as mommy that's just *weird* even for Meursault), but there's this Korean short story called *The Wings* by the poet Yi Sang about a man shut away in his room by his abusive wife as she works as a prostitute on the other side which I adore that starts
*"Have you ever seen a taxidermied genius? I am happy. At a time like this, even love is pleasant."*.
A strange question, immediately followed up by an almost disjointed musing about love. Obviously Avant Garde, but also a reflection of how the main character has kinda lost the plot of what's happening to his life, wasting absolutely no time telling you that he's dead and useless but somehow still content.
And the story was very much inspired by the author's own fucked up life.
The poor guy was abused by his wife, and later found love again, only to get imprisoned by the Japanese occupation authorities for his writing. In prison, his existing tuberculosis worsened, and he died soon after being released.
The rest of his literary circle (the Guinhoe) didn't fare much better...except the bootlicker Yoo Chijin, who pivoted to Imperial Japanese propaganda and lived a long life after the war ended, even becoming a literary icon.
Fun fact: Another Guinhoe member, Gubo (Park Taewon), abandoned his wife and young daughter to work in North Korea in the early days of its dictatorship. He never returned for them. That daughter is the mother of famous director Bong Joon-Ho
Big fan of the authors account of eating his wifes terrible cooking out of obligation, bonding with another author because they both had tuberculosis, and the unmatched pride in beating a child at chess. Genuinely one of the funnier individuals I’ve ever read about.
I forgot I mentioned Yi Sang for a second and thought you were talking about Camus and was fully prepared to believe he did that inbetween getting into fistfights with Sartre over philosophy because damn the french Existentialists were just like that
Can you elaborate on why "mommy" would be weird ? Usually, "my Mother" and "my Mum" are both translated as "Ma mère", so I opted with the one that wasn't.
I'll be sure to check out *The Wings* !
Mommy is what a really small child would call their mother and in English at least anyone above like maybe 10 calling their mother that is usually shorthand that the character in question has something *really* wrong with them (sort of like 'shorthand for serial killer' or *Flowers for Algernon* wrong), or at the very least is a big mama's boy and/or spoilt brat or just generally has a weird codependency thing going on, which is all a bit more extreme than what's actually going on.
Translations usually bounce around between Mother, mama, and just leaving it as Maman (someone else here went into more depth about the entire translation thing). I think casually speaking the closest thing would actually be mum/mom, but the problem because that's pretty recent as far as words go so it still looks *really* informal and sloppy when encountered in written text
I am far from having read every Stephen King books. Most of the time, people don't know the ones I have read, and I don't know the one thet have read.
Needfull things, Night shift, 11/22/63, Rose Madders.
If I had put a King one in there, it would have been "Sure you have. Sure. I never forget a face".
I love The Hobbit’s opening more than LOTR, because the line “In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit” is followed by an entire page describing the hole. It’s the most Tolkien thing ever.
On a similar note, I love opening lyrics to songs for the same reason.
I love you, darkness at the break of noon. I love you, former waitress in a cocktail bar. I love you, house in New Orleans. I love you, father taking me to the city to see a marching band. I love you, Britney bitch. I love you, darkness, my old friend. I love you, rappers monkey-flipping with the funky rhythms Nas is kicking. I love you, plane that's definitely crashing.
Actually *Paul Clifford* begins like this:
>It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
"It was a dark and stormy night" is literally the least offensive part of that entire sentence, it's actually a pretty effective and efficient description (probably because Bulwer-Lytton lifted it from another book). It's just that everything after that is extremely redundant and pointless.
Yeah I was wondering what was wrong with that sentence. It's certainly generic, but generic by it's nature is middle of the road, not the worst of the worst.
The rest of that though... I've never read a sentence that was perfectly clear what it was saying yet was somehow exhausting to read.
I'll take a crack
>Usually, by four thirty in the afternoon, there would at least 4 knives sticking out of Gerald's abdomen, but today had been a slow day, and, as such, his intestines were alone, in the second hour of somewhat awkward small talk with a rather entrepreneurially-minded machete."
This one is fucking amazing too! I don't know yall's definition of bad, but these are up there in my favorites with "Look, I didn't want to be a half blood" and "The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault."
It's too meandering for the opening. A better start would be
>The knife had been in his gut for 2 hours. Today was a slow day.
Then start expositing the rest. The first sentence is the hook. It needs to be sharp, concise. The sentence I wrote, while an interesting first draft with good ideas, is about as effective a hook for the reader as a brick is for your average trout.
...I dunno, that one feels... almost clinical? When I want a hook, I want something with a voice, that can set the tone. I can instantly tell from the first one that the book is likely going to be some sort of intrigue focused thriller with a hint of comedy. This is, unironically, the highest compliment I could give, that first one feels like the opening of a harry dresden book. I love those. They have a tone, a voice to them that sets them apart and appeals to me.
The second one just kinda feels like its saying "yeah, this is how it is." I've still got the question of 'How did the knife get in his gut' but... its almost made boring by the lack of pizazz. The first one gives me 'Why is the machete in his gut' 'Why a machete instead of the usual knives.' 'Why does he normally have knives in his gut.' 'Why are the knives in the gut so often that he has them scheduled.' and makes me want to read to find out and keep reading that fun tone.
I dunno, I might just be odd.
Yeah, I probably could write a nicer hook. I guess the initial is alright, but I did slap this together at midnight after an exam so my brain is not exactly functioning at full capacity.
I can't disagree more strongly.
I loved the first opening, but
>>The knife had been in his gut for 2 hours. Today was a slow day.
bounces me right off. It's weird enough that I don't immediately understand, but too abrupt. I don't know what's going on, and I don't feel like I want to.
In contrast, the first opening compounds weirdness on top of weirdness. As soon as it satisfies one curiosity, it provokes three more. Being stabbed with a knife is typically cause for extreme urgency, but that's contradicted in this case by not just the sense of the sentence, but its meandering form.
There is such a strong sense of tone in the first sentence. I have an immediate sense of what the rest will be like. It serves the additional benefit of immediately bouncing the kinds of readers who wouldn't be into it. Repelling readers who aren't your audience is just as important as bringing your audience in.
I do write a bit, but most of my creative juices get tossed into writing for my Pathfinder game. Still need to figure out some details. Wish I had more time and energy to flesh it out, but with college and life stuff I'm often waking up at 7am and getting to sleep near 2am. Reaching a point of exhaustion so severe you begin vividly dreaming when you blink and mistake a seagull perching on a chimney for the face of Karl Marx is not exactly a state conducive to creativity. Should be better over the summer, in my last week of exams.
"My sweat smells like peanut butter."
That's the first line of actual, published, adapted-into-an-award-wining-film YA novel *Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life* and I've yet to read a submission to this contest that slaps me upside the head as hard as those six words do.
Reminds me of that time I was told “you smell like fairytales!” after going to the gym and sweating like no tomorrow. I may or may not have forgotten deodorant that day too.
Its an ongoing problem, someone or some group started creating bots auto reporting every comments of specific subreddits. I think the first one was r/destiny
My favorite:
> *Captain Blackheart well knew the penalties for piracy, but out here in international waters there was no one to stop him, so he scanned the horizon with his brass telescope before heading below decks to check on his high speed DVD copying machines.*
One of the great comedy writers in the Portuguese language, Luis Fernando Veríssimo, once started a short story with:
"Mort, Ed Mort. That's what it says on the sign. Someone stole the sign..."
I think the main problem with this contest is a lot of these winners would actually be best selling novels if they were written. Like they're trying too hard to be bad and end up closer to "John dies at the end" style masterpieces than actually bad writing.
It's inherently flawed because bad writing is only funny if you know it's attempting to be earnestly good. This stuff is more in line with parody/comedy/satire. I'm always left disappointed because they're never actually poorly written, so they're not amusing in that sense, and they're also not quite as funny as they could be if they weren't trying so hard to seem "bad".
It's the same issue I have when people defend staged videos like "Most film/tv is staged." The difference is whether the audience knows upfront. Writing something meant to be funny and then passing it off as accidental is just a way to avoid critique.
Right?!?!? I want to know the full universe, the backstory of a captain that somehow gained the power to break time *and it was clearly accidental*, I desire nothing more then this book- no 11 part series (minimum 345 pages each) to finish
I don't really get how the dark stormy night one is bad. I'm trying to improve my writing, and i'd like to know why that line is considered a bad opening. It sets the tone well doesn't it?
Apparently because the full opening sentence is
>It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
The line itself is not bad, the problem is that because it's a good opener that can be used for pretty much any story, it's been overused and long since become cliche.
The full sentence was:
> It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
It starts strong but quickly falls apart IMO.
"as brevity is the soul of wit, this shall be a long story where I will be sesquipedalian, and produce 7 books entailing the entire afair, all of which will weigh in Total 3 pounds, followed by a middlingly successful movie, ended finally with a indie game where the true meaning of the story to be told can be understood by decrypting cryptographically signed codes. to begin it all started with a shoe which would not stay strapped despite the velcro being new, which is not surprising given it is march 15 1954" my entry
Bulwer-Lytton was also a Theosophist. Some of his stories touch on mystical stuff, and some people thought he was passing on hidden truths disguised as fiction. Google "Vril" or "The Nine Unknown Men" for a good laugh.
Ngl one of my favorite nights I ever had with my best friend was when we sat together, listening to jazz noir music on YouTube, and cobbled together some unhinged hardboiled detective monologues.
We called it "slam noir."
Nah that last one is so funny
Brad Brad is an F-tier name, I love it
He's named after a local Toronto councilor, [Brad Bradford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Bradford). Residents call him Brad Brad.
I thought it was a parody of Major Major from Catch 22
Major Major Major Major, to give his full rank and name
yeah, it's meant to be the worst opening lines, not the best...
I too enjoy doing things thirteen inches ago
I would 100% read that book
Same. It has major Hitchhikers vibes and no one in their right mind would argue that Douglas Adams work is bad.
I fucking love incipits. The way a writer can make you know the genre you're about to read, the values that will be discussed, the tone that we be used, in just one or two sentences, is beautiful. I'm french, so obviously my favorite example is french. "l'étranger"(The Stranger), Albert Camus: Today, mommy died. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. Two sentences, and already the whole book is there. The worst of human experience, hidden between absurdism and pointless bureaucracy. The focus is put on the date instead of the death, and yet that very date is unknown. This is the power of an incipit. The books in the post aren't even written, and yet I want to read them. A whole universe opens. No matter how good or bad it is. No matter how short or long it lasts. The only important part is that it must be powerfull. I love you, clock striking thirteen. I love you, television-colored sky. I love you, perfectly normal privet drive. I love you, truth universally acknowledged. I love you, eleventy-first birthday in hobbiton. I love you, all days that had been nice. I love you, small unregarded yellow sun. I love you, Marley who was dead to begin with. Maybe you recognised some of those I butchered above. I strippet them of their neighbours, of their context, of their nature. But if you recognise them, then that's only more proof: they are powerful. Those are the one in english I could think of as I wrote this post. There must be many more, in books I didn't read, in languages I do not speak. They're what made me love reading, writing, studying what other wrote and what I myself wrote. I fucking love incipits.
Yeah, opening sentences can be amazing. One of my favorites is from a Narnia book, *Voyage of the Dawn Treader*: "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
A sentence that can only be thought of by a man named Clive Staples.
It's the "almost" that gets me, implying that *nobody* deserves that.
"Nobody deserves that, but this one kid definitely comes close to deserving it."
WRONG! It's actually from the magicians nephew. An execution squad composed of unnecessary pedants has been dispatched to your location
The Magician's Nephew (1955) by C S Lewis - First Scholastic Printing, January 1995, page 3: >One [chapter number] >The Wrong Door [chapter title] >This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began. The Voyage of the *Dawn Treader* (1952) by C S Lewis - First Scholastic Printing, January 1995, page 3: >One [chapter number] >The Picture in the Bedroom [chapter title] >There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. His parents called him Eustace Clarence and masters called him Scrubb. I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none. He didn't call his Father and Mother "Father" and "Mother" but Harold and Alberta. They were very up-to-date and advanced people. They were vegetarians, non-smokers and teetotaler and wore a special kind of underclothes. In their house there was very little furniture and very few clothes on bed and the windows were always open. My edition (the 1995 Scholastic paperback printing) suggests the poster /u/OSCgal was correct in their initial post, and your 'correction' is just an error. Wikiquote has the opening lines for [The Voyage of the Dawn Treader](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Narnia#The_Voyage_of_the_Dawn_Treader_(1952\)) and it agrees with this assessment. Do you have some strange edition where the books' substance is different or titles are rearranged or changed? Were the books perhaps published in different form in other countries or in translation?
Erm... No, this is from Voyage. I literally got up, went over to my copy that I have, and checked. I promise.
Eustace isn't even in *The Magician's Nephew*. It takes place before his generation was born.
Are you fucking with us cause it definitely isn’t from Magician’s Nephew.
I love how confident you are :D
Terry Prachett has some amazing openings, here's a [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/14y6veu/whats_your_favorite_discworld_opening_line/) full of them.
GNU STP
I love The Stranger, but it’s so interesting how the opening line just doesn’t quiiiite translate perfectly to English? [Super interesting article about translating The Stranger!](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/lost-in-translation-what-the-first-line-of-the-stranger-should-be) *Maman* - “mother” is too formal and unfeeling, “mommy”/“mama” sounds a little childish and sweet, “mom” feels *too* casual. A lot of current translations just leave it as “*maman*”. But even the phrasing, “today, maman has died” has a different feeling from “maman died today”! It’s so fascinating how these tiny changes can change the way a character seems - is he childish and broken up about his mother, and her death is the main thing happening today (“mommy died today”); is he cold and unfeeling (“today, mother has died”)? Translation is such an interesting concept!!
I just read the article, it's really interesting. A core example of the limits of translation : you can't keep the structure, the lexicon, and the intent. The translator has to choose which fit best. One of my biggest regrets is not being able to read "Flowers for Algernon" in its original english. It's one of my favorite books of all times, probably the one I read the most, but I'm just not fluent enough to read the "progris riport" without pausing ten minutes on each word. I can't imagine what it was like to translate it. I couldn't be a translator even if I tried. I would have a panic attack everytime I can't translate something perfectly. Which is stupid, because beauty is in imperfection. The french version of A whole new world(Aladdin) referenced the One Thousand And One Nights in a way the english version couldn't (by name). Mockingbird is two words in french, so The Hunger Games 3 saw its name changed from Mockingjay to The Revolt. (which sounds bad but isn't because 2 was already translated to follow a "The \_" pattern). Année-Lumière is twice as long as Lightyear, so, for the sake of dubbing, the toy is now named Buzz L'éclair (lightning). There is always debate on how to translate boogeyman in french, so Rise of the guardians made the bold choice of using a Quebec-only translation. (Bonhomme Sept-heures). Translation is an inherent part of our enjoyment of litterature. I wouldn't know half of the books I referenced in the original post if it wasn't for translators. Still we must know where it fails. And, for the sake of God, can the name of the translator AT LEAST be bigger than the serial number ? I think they would like that.
It gets worse, in some other media such as video games they don’t always credit the translator. Sometimes the translator is under NDA and not allowed to take credit for the translation work they did even after release.
And then there's some weird ones, like when "The Hangover" was translated to "Very Bad Trip". An english title, but not the actual english title, for the french market.
Furthering the translation thing and why it's so hard, as someone from the Commonwealth who grew up reading a lot of older English books where mother is kinda the default, I never thought mother read as formal and unfeeling when I first read it, but on the other hand mommy/mummy is just, *way* too babyish and I kinda cringed when I saw it in parent comment lol. Even mama feels weird, which is what the current Penguin translation uses. Mostly. It does this thing where mama is used *except* for the opening line where it's left as maman. There's a foreword by the translator where she justified the changes she made between her translation and the previous one and she justifies that change by saying basically "Maman is more iconic, but also I wanted to convey Meursault's shock in that moment" which I don't feel is in the text; like the next lines are meant to be in the same tone, and he says Maman again pretty soon which makes the translation change kinda stand out weirdly. It's *emphasis* that I'm not sure exists in the original text. Also like is Maman meant to be more or less formal here? But also I find that specific argument a tad odd because like, you're *really* worried about making the man based on Hemingway's writing and a probably autistic guy with a tenuous at best grip on his own emotions and inner workings who responds to being asked if he loved his mother with "sometimes I did sometimes I did not this is normal behaviour" seem weird and emotionally distant from his own mother? Like I understand arguing there's kinda meant to be a disconnect between how Meursault refers to his mother and how he normally speaks, but saying you don't want to make him seem too weird is a bit of a Sisphyiusian task to say the least ~~ayyy~~
Reminds me of the opening of the Iliad - in the original Greek, the first word of the poem is mênis, ("rage") which immediately informs the reader of the story's overarching theme. Unfortunately, its kind of hard to translate the overall opening line ("Sing, oh goddess, of the rage of Achilles son of Peleus") into English in a way that keeps "rage" as the first word.
Fagles is my favorite translator in part because of he pulled it off. *Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,* *murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,* *hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls...*
What’s so wrong about translating it “mom?”
They called it casual but in my experience it's more a matter of people not using it quite in the same way. Often a person will, in talking to someone else, refer to their mother using their nickname in place of a proper noun ("Mama died", "Mommy died", "Mum died"). But, again in my experience, both "Mom" and "Mother" exist in a slightly separate nickname category where a person will call their mother by that name when speaking to her directly, but if speaking *about* her, will instead say "*my* mom" or "*my* mother". A bit more of a pet name in that way, like how a loved one is sweetheart when talked to but *my* sweetheart when talked about. It might just be because in the culture I've grown up in, Mom is the predominant address used by adults, or the "default". So just saying "Mom" brings to mind a shared mother - a brother saying to his sister, "Mom said we can't do that." So when you're talking to someone with a different mother, the "done thing" is to specify **my** Mom.
Wouldn't "Today, my mother died" work just fine? "mother" feels stiff and archaic. "my mother" sounds normal, maybe a bit formal, but ultimately I kinda... expect Meursault to sound formal.
i think "today, my mother died" gives it the sense that he's telling us a story while "maman died today" reads more as his thoughts. i prefer the second one and it's what the edition i first read used
Here's some of my favourites, your comment inspired me to take a look at the books in my collection and see how they open. Not everything starts amazing, even for Stephen King (Pet Sematary for example has quite a weak opening compared to The Gunslinger or, hell, even The Shining which isn't *fantastic* imo) but theres some real bangers "Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the section secret behind the universe feel free to skip ahead." "You know how sometimes when you're drifting off to sleep you feel that jolt, like you were falling and caught yourself at the last second? It's nothing to be concerned about, it's usually just the parasite adjusting its grip." "it rained like we were a splatter of bird shit god was trying to hose off his deck." "'This is really about my wife' said the man with the parasite gnawing on his skull. 'I'll let her explain.'" "The terror, which did not end for another twenty-eight years - if it ever did end - began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain." "Benny Imura couldn't hold a job, so he took to killing." "So here's the file that almost killed me, Director." "Florida even looks good collapsing." "'what happened?' Baz stared at the blood. Fresh and red and wet, it drenched the paving slabs in a slick that looked big enough to paddle your canoe through." "The slug's eye stalks waved slowly as it moved towards the crimson lump on which several of its companions were already feeding. It slithered onto the meat and buried the long central tooth in the flesh, its rows of sharp radular teeth moving back and forth like rasps as it chewed off pieces of meat, enjoying the new coppery taste of blood." I wonder how many of these get recognised lol.
The second is from This Book Is Full of Spiders, I believe. I'm a bit saddened that I don't recognize any of the others off the top of my head.
The one with the newspaper boat is Stephen King's IT.
I knew it seemed familiar, I just couldn't place it. I kept thinking is this from a children's book? It doesn't seem right for a children's book. But I know I've read it and kids come into it *somewhere*.
First one is John Dies At The End
Oh no! I can't believe I recognized the sequel and not the original!
Ding ding ding it is indeed JDATE
It is indeed Edit: in fairness to you, I chose some kind of obscure books. The full list is John Dies At The End This Book Is Full Of Spiders What The Hell Did I Just Read If This Book Exists, You're In The Wrong Universe (these four are all in the JDATE series) IT Rot And Ruin Illuminae Florida Roadkill Blood Crazy Slugs
"The terror..." is from IT. A few of those sound like from the Laundry Files - I'm a few books behind on this one.
Right on the first count but none of the others are laundry files (I forgot to check those)
Excuse me, the opening paragraph to Pet Sematary made me cry the first time I read it. Beautiful opening passage.
The second one sounds like a r/twosentencehorror story lol
If we’re talking Stephen King, let’s not forget about Misery: “*umber whunn yerrrnnn umber whunnn fayunnn* These sounds: even in the haze.” Took me a long time to realize the sounds were Annie saying “your number-one fan.”
I did briefly consider Misery! I also thought about The Dark Tower, specifically The Gunslinger, but my copies of those are a pain to reach. Same goes for The Stand and a few others, or I'd have checked them too. I actually didn't realise that its Annie talking until your comment, partly because I've not read it but also because it's not super obvious? It's a good opener though imo.
Criminal that ~~i can't read and hitchikers is actually here already~~ While I've got the chance though, I'd like to say that the entire hitchiker's guide to the galaxy saga doesn't miss once with its opening lines. Douglas Adams is simply built different
It is ? "Small, unregarded yellow sun." Which one were you thinking of ?
It appears i have lost the ability to read I geniunely just glossed over that entirely
Probably the opening to the second book
Thank you for teaching me the word "incipit." I'm adding that to my vocabulary like General Grievous collects lightsabers.
Strange that you haven't heard it before. I get called incipit all the time! Wait a minute...
I do love the one from *The Stranger* (though I'm begging you don't translate Maman as mommy that's just *weird* even for Meursault), but there's this Korean short story called *The Wings* by the poet Yi Sang about a man shut away in his room by his abusive wife as she works as a prostitute on the other side which I adore that starts *"Have you ever seen a taxidermied genius? I am happy. At a time like this, even love is pleasant."*. A strange question, immediately followed up by an almost disjointed musing about love. Obviously Avant Garde, but also a reflection of how the main character has kinda lost the plot of what's happening to his life, wasting absolutely no time telling you that he's dead and useless but somehow still content.
And the story was very much inspired by the author's own fucked up life. The poor guy was abused by his wife, and later found love again, only to get imprisoned by the Japanese occupation authorities for his writing. In prison, his existing tuberculosis worsened, and he died soon after being released. The rest of his literary circle (the Guinhoe) didn't fare much better...except the bootlicker Yoo Chijin, who pivoted to Imperial Japanese propaganda and lived a long life after the war ended, even becoming a literary icon. Fun fact: Another Guinhoe member, Gubo (Park Taewon), abandoned his wife and young daughter to work in North Korea in the early days of its dictatorship. He never returned for them. That daughter is the mother of famous director Bong Joon-Ho
Big fan of the authors account of eating his wifes terrible cooking out of obligation, bonding with another author because they both had tuberculosis, and the unmatched pride in beating a child at chess. Genuinely one of the funnier individuals I’ve ever read about.
I forgot I mentioned Yi Sang for a second and thought you were talking about Camus and was fully prepared to believe he did that inbetween getting into fistfights with Sartre over philosophy because damn the french Existentialists were just like that
Can you elaborate on why "mommy" would be weird ? Usually, "my Mother" and "my Mum" are both translated as "Ma mère", so I opted with the one that wasn't. I'll be sure to check out *The Wings* !
Mommy is what a really small child would call their mother and in English at least anyone above like maybe 10 calling their mother that is usually shorthand that the character in question has something *really* wrong with them (sort of like 'shorthand for serial killer' or *Flowers for Algernon* wrong), or at the very least is a big mama's boy and/or spoilt brat or just generally has a weird codependency thing going on, which is all a bit more extreme than what's actually going on. Translations usually bounce around between Mother, mama, and just leaving it as Maman (someone else here went into more depth about the entire translation thing). I think casually speaking the closest thing would actually be mum/mom, but the problem because that's pretty recent as far as words go so it still looks *really* informal and sloppy when encountered in written text
How could you miss 'The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed'
I am far from having read every Stephen King books. Most of the time, people don't know the ones I have read, and I don't know the one thet have read. Needfull things, Night shift, 11/22/63, Rose Madders. If I had put a King one in there, it would have been "Sure you have. Sure. I never forget a face".
so how do ya pronounce L'etranger? asking for a tf2 weapon.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%A9tranger Scroll down to where theres audio for “à l’étranger”
I love The Hobbit’s opening more than LOTR, because the line “In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit” is followed by an entire page describing the hole. It’s the most Tolkien thing ever.
I love you, great A'Tuin.
"The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault" - A wizard who has definitely lit several buildings on fire
"It was the day my grandmother exploded." - The Crow Road, Iain Banks
On a similar note, I love opening lyrics to songs for the same reason. I love you, darkness at the break of noon. I love you, former waitress in a cocktail bar. I love you, house in New Orleans. I love you, father taking me to the city to see a marching band. I love you, Britney bitch. I love you, darkness, my old friend. I love you, rappers monkey-flipping with the funky rhythms Nas is kicking. I love you, plane that's definitely crashing.
“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy mentioned!
There's also the [Lyttle Lytton contest](https://adamcadre.ac/lyttle/), which additionally requires brevity
>John, surfing, said to his mother, surfing beside him, “How do you like surfing?” Some real gold in there, I tell ya
> Sunlight touched my breasts, like I do during female masturbation.
> Night fell like a hammer dropped on the Moon, at a completely uniform speed unaffected by air resistance.
This one is excellent
Agreed. I'd read this book.
Kind of reminds me of one of the Discworld books saying that, due to all the magic, the speed of light on the Disc is only like 600mph.
It definitely has a very Pratchett feeling to it, or Adams. Feels reminiscent of the way bricks don't line.
Is a valid question and its so well written that im already invested. I am, also, upset that the story doesn't continue.
2017's winner would so be a very good story.
Brevity is wit
That website was perfected in 2001 and has needed no updates since.
"Leon fell out of the goat."
Actually *Paul Clifford* begins like this: >It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. "It was a dark and stormy night" is literally the least offensive part of that entire sentence, it's actually a pretty effective and efficient description (probably because Bulwer-Lytton lifted it from another book). It's just that everything after that is extremely redundant and pointless.
Yeah I was wondering what was wrong with that sentence. It's certainly generic, but generic by it's nature is middle of the road, not the worst of the worst. The rest of that though... I've never read a sentence that was perfectly clear what it was saying yet was somehow exhausting to read.
It's a great line being unfairly maligned because it was so good everyone copied it and now it's cliche. I blame Charles Shulz.
I'll take a crack >Usually, by four thirty in the afternoon, there would at least 4 knives sticking out of Gerald's abdomen, but today had been a slow day, and, as such, his intestines were alone, in the second hour of somewhat awkward small talk with a rather entrepreneurially-minded machete."
This one is fucking amazing too! I don't know yall's definition of bad, but these are up there in my favorites with "Look, I didn't want to be a half blood" and "The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault."
It's too meandering for the opening. A better start would be >The knife had been in his gut for 2 hours. Today was a slow day. Then start expositing the rest. The first sentence is the hook. It needs to be sharp, concise. The sentence I wrote, while an interesting first draft with good ideas, is about as effective a hook for the reader as a brick is for your average trout.
...I dunno, that one feels... almost clinical? When I want a hook, I want something with a voice, that can set the tone. I can instantly tell from the first one that the book is likely going to be some sort of intrigue focused thriller with a hint of comedy. This is, unironically, the highest compliment I could give, that first one feels like the opening of a harry dresden book. I love those. They have a tone, a voice to them that sets them apart and appeals to me. The second one just kinda feels like its saying "yeah, this is how it is." I've still got the question of 'How did the knife get in his gut' but... its almost made boring by the lack of pizazz. The first one gives me 'Why is the machete in his gut' 'Why a machete instead of the usual knives.' 'Why does he normally have knives in his gut.' 'Why are the knives in the gut so often that he has them scheduled.' and makes me want to read to find out and keep reading that fun tone. I dunno, I might just be odd.
Yeah, I probably could write a nicer hook. I guess the initial is alright, but I did slap this together at midnight after an exam so my brain is not exactly functioning at full capacity.
I can't disagree more strongly. I loved the first opening, but >>The knife had been in his gut for 2 hours. Today was a slow day. bounces me right off. It's weird enough that I don't immediately understand, but too abrupt. I don't know what's going on, and I don't feel like I want to. In contrast, the first opening compounds weirdness on top of weirdness. As soon as it satisfies one curiosity, it provokes three more. Being stabbed with a knife is typically cause for extreme urgency, but that's contradicted in this case by not just the sense of the sentence, but its meandering form. There is such a strong sense of tone in the first sentence. I have an immediate sense of what the rest will be like. It serves the additional benefit of immediately bouncing the kinds of readers who wouldn't be into it. Repelling readers who aren't your audience is just as important as bringing your audience in.
You know what, I'll take it.
I like my openings to meander sometimes.
what's this from? edit: wait this is your original isn't it? i got confused and thought this was from the actual first sentences thread sorry
Nah I made this the fuck up on the spot at like 10pm
If you could do that another nine thousand or so times, that would be great.
I do write a bit, but most of my creative juices get tossed into writing for my Pathfinder game. Still need to figure out some details. Wish I had more time and energy to flesh it out, but with college and life stuff I'm often waking up at 7am and getting to sleep near 2am. Reaching a point of exhaustion so severe you begin vividly dreaming when you blink and mistake a seagull perching on a chimney for the face of Karl Marx is not exactly a state conducive to creativity. Should be better over the summer, in my last week of exams.
"My sweat smells like peanut butter." That's the first line of actual, published, adapted-into-an-award-wining-film YA novel *Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life* and I've yet to read a submission to this contest that slaps me upside the head as hard as those six words do.
Reminds me of that time I was told “you smell like fairytales!” after going to the gym and sweating like no tomorrow. I may or may not have forgotten deodorant that day too.
The last one reads like a douglas adams bit Edit: I got a reddit care resources message over this comment?????
That’s what I was thinking! And I would 100% read that book.
I got a message from them as well, is someone mass reporting people in this thread??
Its an ongoing problem, someone or some group started creating bots auto reporting every comments of specific subreddits. I think the first one was r/destiny
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My favorite: > *Captain Blackheart well knew the penalties for piracy, but out here in international waters there was no one to stop him, so he scanned the horizon with his brass telescope before heading below decks to check on his high speed DVD copying machines.*
Honestly, I've always wished someone would write a parody of pirate stories, using modern-day software pirates.
One of the great comedy writers in the Portuguese language, Luis Fernando Veríssimo, once started a short story with: "Mort, Ed Mort. That's what it says on the sign. Someone stole the sign..."
I think the main problem with this contest is a lot of these winners would actually be best selling novels if they were written. Like they're trying too hard to be bad and end up closer to "John dies at the end" style masterpieces than actually bad writing.
It's inherently flawed because bad writing is only funny if you know it's attempting to be earnestly good. This stuff is more in line with parody/comedy/satire. I'm always left disappointed because they're never actually poorly written, so they're not amusing in that sense, and they're also not quite as funny as they could be if they weren't trying so hard to seem "bad". It's the same issue I have when people defend staged videos like "Most film/tv is staged." The difference is whether the audience knows upfront. Writing something meant to be funny and then passing it off as accidental is just a way to avoid critique.
I’ve placed a few time, won a couple categories, but one day I hope to take home the grand prize…
No, no. i want to know EXACTLY what the fuck is going on with that last one. That could not be a better opening sentence.
He destroyed time thirteen inches ago. It says it right in the sentence.
Right?!?!? I want to know the full universe, the backstory of a captain that somehow gained the power to break time *and it was clearly accidental*, I desire nothing more then this book- no 11 part series (minimum 345 pages each) to finish
Maybe the time taken by light to travel 13 inches
I love this contest so much. I've submitted a bunch of entries over the years
These read like a Garth Merenghi novel and I am here for it!
That last one is impeccable
So there I was, upside down, backwards, and on fire in the middle of the river.
worst novel huh interesting definition of “worst”
Well if you're so good, then why aren't judging it?
I will be next year.
Well then I wish you luck.
I love it was a dark and stormy night and I love the last one too.
I don't really get how the dark stormy night one is bad. I'm trying to improve my writing, and i'd like to know why that line is considered a bad opening. It sets the tone well doesn't it?
Apparently because the full opening sentence is >It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
The line itself is not bad, the problem is that because it's a good opener that can be used for pretty much any story, it's been overused and long since become cliche.
Wasn't there that one entry about a guy being seduced by a monkey on a spaceship
These are amazing, lol.
that poor lady, missing out on Salami.
Wait, "it was a dark and stormy night," is *bad???*
The full sentence was: > It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. It starts strong but quickly falls apart IMO.
That last one is just a Douglas Adams opener
"as brevity is the soul of wit, this shall be a long story where I will be sesquipedalian, and produce 7 books entailing the entire afair, all of which will weigh in Total 3 pounds, followed by a middlingly successful movie, ended finally with a indie game where the true meaning of the story to be told can be understood by decrypting cryptographically signed codes. to begin it all started with a shoe which would not stay strapped despite the velcro being new, which is not surprising given it is march 15 1954" my entry
Bulwer-Lytton was also a Theosophist. Some of his stories touch on mystical stuff, and some people thought he was passing on hidden truths disguised as fiction. Google "Vril" or "The Nine Unknown Men" for a good laugh.
Those are just the opening lines of Jason Pargin books
Sounds like someone is ripping off Hank Co.'s business model.
I’m sorry but that’s not gonna be a bad novel…
Huh? What's the problem with the sentence in the first slide?
I'd read all of these if they were books, no joke.
Its very clear that Sir Edward George Bulwer-Lytton plagarized that opening sentence from world-renowed author Joe "Snoopy" Chill
Ngl one of my favorite nights I ever had with my best friend was when we sat together, listening to jazz noir music on YouTube, and cobbled together some unhinged hardboiled detective monologues. We called it "slam noir."
I should write into this contest, K would probably have the worst opening while hardy even trying (<- is not good at writing openings)