jjhunter: Drawing of human JJ in ink tinted with blue watercolor; woman wearing glasses with arched eyebrows (JJ inked)
jjhunter ([personal profile] jjhunter) wrote in [personal profile] lettered 2013-04-14 02:37 pm (UTC)

I'm still pretty pleased with this first line:

  • 'In the years after the war, Jem rarely talked about how he earned his Purple Heart.' (a thing with feathers, To Kill a Mockingbird)
I especially like it because it manages a similar sleight of hand to canon's first line, in that it gets at the emotional core of the story but the story that follows is not at all from Jem's perspective.

I do like reading new things. I read quickly enough that other people's first lines are like the first tinge of taste on my tongue when I first sip a glass of wine, and the sensory impressions of the following lines cascade almost immediately after. When I write, however, finding a first line that clicks for me like a title does is the hook that permits the rest of the story to be pulled forth afer.

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