On January 28th, my son was born and all last week, life has been a celebration firsts.  First day home from the hospital.  First feeding.  First diaper changed.  In honor of all these firsts, I thought I would make “Beginnings” this week’s theme for DIY MFA.  Later this week, I’ll discuss the ins and outs of crafting a successful opening to a story but today I wanted to ask all of you:

What’s your favorite story beginning or opening line?  Why?

A Few of My Favorite Beginnings:

“The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.”
~Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man Is Hard to FInd

I love this opening line for because in just eight words, Flannery O’Connor manages to establish all the important elements of the story.  First of all, we get the character–a grandmother who clearly has ideas of her own and from the get-go we know these ideas are going to make trouble for everyone in the story.  We also get a conflict.  It’s implied in that first sentence that some group of people is going to Florida but the grandmother does not want to go.  Right away, we know that this grandmother character is going to be fighting against everyone to get her way.  We also get a sense of the setting of the story.  This is a “road trip story” and we know that because it’s implied that the grandmother and others are headed to Florida.

The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind
And another
His mother called him “WILD THING!”
And Max said “I’LL EAT YOU UP!”
So he was sent to bed without eating anything.
~Maurice Sendak
Where the Wild Things Are

Again, this opening scene gives us a character (Max) and right away we know what he wants, what his goal is (to be a wild thing).  The conflict is that the people around Max don’t want him to be wild and when he acts wild, he gets “sent to bed without eating anything.”  That event of being sent to bed without dinner is what sets off his journey to the place where the Wild Things are.  In just a few lines, we learn a lot about this protagonist, the conflict of the story and the inciting incident that sets the story in motion.

Now, you tell me: What’s your favorite story opener or first line?  Why does it work so well?