lirazel | Fannish Friday: Good beginnings

Tell me about a beginning to a story that you love! Books, tv, movies, whatever! Something that grabbed you and didn't let you go! This can be single lines or whole scenes or whatever!

Some of my favorites:

+ “I lost an arm on my last trip home.” The opening page of Kindred by Octavia Butler, which grabbed me so hard that I read the whole thing in one sitting!

+ The Killers (1946). This is a solid noir but the rest of it just does not live up to the opening scene, which contains characters we never see again. We're in a diner in a small town around dinner time, and two strangers walk in...

+ Severance episode one. A woman wakes up on a conference table in a windowless conference room. A voice speaks to her over a speaker phone. WTF is going???? Some of the most effective in medias res I've ever seen!

+ Till We Have Faces:

I am old now and have not much to fear from the anger of gods. I have no husband nor child, nor hardly a friend, through whom they can hurt me. My body, this lean carrion that still has to be washed and fed and have clothes hung about it daily with so many changes, they may kill as soon as they please. The succession is provided for. My crown passes to my nephew.

Being, for all these reasons, free from fear, I will write in this book what no one who has happiness would dare to write. I will accuse the gods, especially the god who lives on the Grey Mountain. That is, I will tell all he has done to me from the very beginning, as if I were making my complaint of him before a judge. But there is no judge between gods and men, and the god of the mountain will not answer me.

Goosebumps!

+ Spindle's End by Robin McKinley:

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. (It didn't have to be anything scary or unpleasant, especially in a cheerful household - magic tended to reflect the atmosphere of the place in which it found itself -- but if you want a cup of tea, a cup of lavender-and-gold pansies or ivory thimbles is unsatisfactory.)

+ The opening scenes of Friday Night Lights. Honestly that whole pilot, which is a masterclass all its own. It's Monday morning, and we see the people of Dillon, Texas getting ready for their day. The voice-overs aren't voice-overs: they're the talk radio show where they're talking about the most exciting thing in town: Friday night's high school football game. It's a hell of a way to introduce us to this world and its priorities.

+ The opening scene of The Hour. Maybe it's just me, but having Ben Whishaw speak directly to the camera and announce, "The newsreels read," is a brilliant way to get me to care about something. Lol

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Vector Prime! I was already reading and loving Star Wars EU books before it, but this one really felt like a quantum leap. Way to usher in a new era.

Most of The Black Donellys feels like a fever dream, but that pilot is still etched into my brain.

I think I’ve already mentioned the opening of Voyage of the Dawn Treader before, but also The Secret Garden: When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. What is it with opening sentences about jerkass kids that make you want to keep reading?

I mean, dropping a literal moon on Chewbacca was indeed a hell of a way to open a series! (But seriously: it definitely had a completely different tone and told us that New Jedi Order was going to be different than anything that came before.)

Most of The Black Donellys feels like a fever dream, but that pilot is still etched into my brain.

Omg YES to both statements. In retrospect, it should have just been a movie. And I don't say that about TV shows very often.

What is it with opening sentences about jerkass kids that make you want to keep reading?

YES!

That Kindred line is gripping; I'd forgotten! It's been years, so I should re-read…

Predictable for anyone who knows me, but the opening to Mrs Dalloway -- not "flowers herself" but the lines that come immediately after. What a lark! What a plunge! … First‌‌ a‌‌ warning,‌‌ musical;‌‌ then‌‌ the‌‌ hour,‌‌ irrevocable.‌‌ The‌‌ leaden‌‌ circles‌‌ dissolved‌‌ in‌‌ the‌‌ air.‌‌ Such‌‌ fools‌‌ we‌‌ are,‌‌ she‌‌ thought,‌‌ crossing‌‌ Victoria‌‌ Street.‌‌ For‌‌ Heaven‌‌ only‌‌ knows‌‌ why‌‌ one‌‌ loves‌‌ it‌‌ so…

It is like splashing into cool water. The rhythm is like divine inspiration; it sucks me in at once, and I feel that delicate morning coolth that comes before a hot day breaks.

The‌‌ leaden‌‌ circles‌‌ dissolved‌‌ in‌‌ the‌‌ air.‌‌

One of my favorite lines! It just stays with you! (There's a line one the last page of Faulkner's Sanctuary where he talks about "the dry click of croquet balls" that does something similar to my brain.) And I haven't reread Mrs. Dalloway since undergrad, so it's definitely time for me to go back to it!