Opening Line Game

[Garren Jacobsen]

Let's play a game to help get some creative juices flowing. Write an opening line. Not one that you have already written or one that you have read, but a whole new opening line. Have fun with it yall. Here are some of mine from games past:

"Have you ever been shot to death? I have. It's not as unpleasant as it sounds."

"Oooooooh, so that's what it's like to get struck by the wrath of God. Well, never doing that again."

"John thought it was just an expression. Of course, now he really sees that it isn’t an expression and going to Hell is very possible. He should have brought a water bottle. Idiot."

"There he sat, surrounded by a circle of salt and a bevy of crosses, the devil himself. Satan. Handcuffed to the interrogation table. Ah, Mr. Smith. Glad you could come. I need a strong defense attorney. You’re my man.”

"Carl Windemere lamented the Grim Reaper had turned vegan recently, it would have been great to share the meat tornado with his old friend. Oh well, Grimmy can just eat the damn salad for all he cared."

"Freddy beat his head against the desk and felt his headset slip a little each time. This was the hundredth time today he had to explain to some dumbass wood elf that no, computers don't run on magic and no you can't plug it into a tree. That will fry the system. Just plug it into the power outlet in your teeny ass San Franciscan apartment and it will work. No, Mr. Necromance, actual thumbs cannot be used as thumb drives for your Macbook."

"Mom always said that violence was never the answer. Apparently, Mom had never tried to talk to a hungry 10-foot tall troll terrorizing a dog park. Office Baggit has. It's bad advice, Mom."

 

[WooHooMan]

"Cold grey ribbons glide along the warm green sky. The stars step aside and silently watch."

"Here: in the land of (insert setting name here). Upwards: mountains of mist with pockets of pine trees and forestry."

That's all I got in me right now. I hate opening a story with dialogue/monologues so I'm not going to post the first-person openings that I came-up with.

 

[Orc Knight]

'It was the screaming that alerted them first. Not that screams of terror were anything new in this part of Eld, what with the deep and dark forests no more then a mile or so beyond the fields.'

One of my latest attempts at a story and it's beginning.

'All great adventurers start somewhere.

Usually in a tavern. Not the local pub with the nice lighting and the good beer and ales on tap, with the fresh straw or sawdust laid down every morning and where the fights usually have a fiddle and a song going on and a ring in the center for that. '

Another one from my attempt at pulp fantasy.

 

[Rkcapps]

Cool game. How about:

"Funny how you don't know how to appreciate the sky. Until staring at it on your back and blood pours from you, racing you toward death."

 

[Skybreaker Sin K'al]

How about:
"The They-et lowered his crested eye socket to the scope of his rifle, and took aim."

"The sky opened."

 

[Firefly]

"Cate had been telling people she was dead her whole life, but no one had ever believed her before Kay."

"The octopus looked mad."

"Witches aren't supposed to be allergic to cats."

 

[Laurence]

“There was a dinner that nobody would remember. One that men would speak of with lurid tongues. That a child would dream of with vivid adaptations.”

“Eleris and the trees had never had reason to fight before.”

“The town of Wycombe stood unfailingly fragile upon its tooth.”

 

[Demesnedenoir]

It will ease your worries to know you aren't dead, but it shouldn't.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

"Eleris" means "mother woods" in one of the languages of my world, BTW. Kind of funny.

“There was a dinner that nobody would remember. One that men would speak of with lurid tongues. That a child would dream of with vivid adaptations.”

“Eleris and the trees had never had reason to fight before.”

“The town of Wycombe stood unfailingly fragile upon its tooth.”

 

[Laurence]

"Eleris" means "mother woods" in one of the languages of my world, BTW. Kind of funny.

You’re a very wise man!

 

[Orc Knight]

'It is said that angels fall. Sometimes hard. Some don't so much fall as meander. Perhaps this story isn't exactly about a fall so much as a quick little jaunt over to the dark side. For one often hears it has cookies.'

Another one I dug up from still another half baked work in progress.

 

[Ban]

"My land of residence knows only men and mosquitos, and of the twain, I prefer the latter."

 

[Devor]

The others hated being buried alive, but once I got over my captivity, I found whispering to the souls above to be far more fun than killing them ever was.

 

[Writeking]

Tell me where the spellbook is and maybe I'll let you live.

 

[FifthView]

Every great story begins with an awakening, but what happens after you awaken for the hundredth time in a new land, naked, sprawled under a foreign sky, feeling the pain of the traveling marks encircling an altogether new part of your body? Your first thought might be: You didn't know you had so many body parts. Or it might be this: What's this hungry creature staring down at me?

 

[Devor]

Before the temporal paradox the words "Once upon a time" may have been a whimsical way to start a story. But now they're full of irony and sarcasm, like the butt of a joke. Once upon a time my mother died. The second time I was able to save her. The third time I fixed it. Mothers are supposed to die because children are supposed to grow up.

And growing up is the price of time.

 

[WooHooMan]

Before the temporal paradox the words "Once upon a time" may have been a whimsical way to start a story. But now they're full of irony and sarcasm, like the butt of a joke.

When I started reading your post, I didn't realize that these were your opening lines. I thought you were going to point-out how the trendy thing to do with openings is to have some kind of meta-y ironic thing or a paraprosdokian instead of the old cliches like "once upon a time" or "it was a dark and stormy night".

 

[Orc Knight]

They were The Three. The First Three. Legends in their own right and nigh on gods. Shrouded in mystery (and the vague aroma of ripened cheese, stale ale and sulphur), they can expect to be treated well in nigh any tavern, inn, noble house or castle they enter.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

There was a dragon in his office. Three days ago, he was a simple attorney doing contracts, evicting bad tenants, couple divorce cases. And now, three days after meeting with Thomas and Lashul, he had a dragon in his office.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

"It was the Year 888 when Dream took a ride on the interstellar train through the Sleeping Sea and the Ocean of Paradoxes and the Astral Abyss, through all twenty-two stations."