Would you please help me with the first line or so to my novel?
I’m suffering badly from writer’s block and would love to receive some encouragement and assistance. I’m also struggling with all lines subsequent to the first and would politely request that you add new lines in a cogent and orderly fashion for several chapters.
I do have a working title:
I Who Have Nothing
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17 Answers
You could begin by saying “I’m suffering badly from writer’s block” and see where that takes you. It is a simple but inspired beginning leading to all sorts of possibilities..
“it was a dark and stormy night”
I began my life with nothing.
The day I realized that I had nothing, was the day that changed everything.
Many people who thought I had nothing, never noticed me, and often this worked in my favor.
Having nothing is really a perspective, one that could either destroy your life or bring it to magical places I never knew existed.
It was when he/she left that I realized that I who have nothing had found the key to everything.
“I had nothing, no new ideas, no old ideas, so I decided to outsource the writing of my novel.”
“Nothing new under the Sun today, it’s just like any other day; except there are two Suns in the sky today.”
The closing of the door as she left sounded like a vault door closing on my life. There were a lot of things in that vault, things I try to avoid looking at.
When I was writing every day, I kept a writing journal as well and noted down ideas, problems, lists, rationales, etc. When I was stuck and couldn’t proceed with my novel, I journaled about being stuck and how frustrating that was and everything I thought or felt about it. I think that’s what eventually cracked me loose. And I counted that as meeting my daily writing commitment.
Void of freedom. Vacuum of freedom. Victory of defeat.
I wouldn’t consider writing a novel by picking a title and then starting with lines 1–3 with no context. That sounds like either a bizarre writing strategy, or an experiment.
Wouldn’t you kinda need to know what you’re going to write about (like… a lot about it) before having any idea what to write for the first line or two? How can you possibly expect us to write opening lines without having any idea what we’re writing about?
It could be “The spiked ball slammed repeatedly into the body of the fallen knight.” or “Gayle idly gazed at the students grudgingly trudging their way to class”, or anything.
And, even if you were well into writing the novel, I’d say it were a mistake to stop yourself on the first line or two. You may as well just put something down (or not) and work out the rest of it before worry about first lines, if you don’t have any particular idea now. I’d say it’s probably better to worry about strong first lines after knowing the rest of the work. Otherwise you can waste a lot of time with nothing to base the first lines on, eventually come up with clever nice-seeming first lines that you get attached to, but find out after writing the rest that the first lines are no longer appropriate, or that they’ve been messing with your whole novel because you’ve been trying to make them all fit your first lines.
No, but I’ll give you the ending.
The End
And I firmly believe that people who ask what to write have nothing to say.
“Wondering why he even bothered, Jeremy opened his eyes.”
Building upon the opening line from @chyna
I began my life with nothing. Nothing but a slap on the ass and a bulb syringe up my nose. These were the highlights of my life for several years thereafter.
“Two cars, a 60-hour job, a wife, three sons, a mistress, and a dozen books on on my name; I have everything.”
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