I just ran across this excellent article by Allegra Hyde about what makes a compelling first line – what she calls “love at first line” and compares to the thrill and kismet of meeting a special someone’s eyes across a crowded room. It’s brilliant. She discusses the delicate interplay between clarity and curiosity in the first sentence of a work

A bit of an excerpt:

“The responses to my Twitter inquiry crystallized a nascent theory I’d been formulating about what made certain first lines memorable and propulsive—because, although the sentences came in all varieties, a pattern emerged. Nearly all the favorite first lines gave readers an elegantly balanced dose of clarity and curiosity. Or to put this another way: seductive first sentences ground a reader in a situation, while also prompting a question in the reader’s mind that propels them forward in the text.”

“What Makes a Great Opening Line”, Allegra Hyde, 3/9/22

Anyway, go read it from the link above. Highly worth it.

Here are a few first lines I’m currently playing with in my own works:.

I’m playing with these first two, trying to decide which to use in the opening pages of a you g adult novel. I love the first version, but the second leads into the action better and might give more of a sense of character.:

“Kayley died three times before it finally took.

Kayley put on her combat boots, her fiercest scowl, and a frightening amount of eyeliner before she headed out.

This one is from a novel I wrote a while ago and shelved temporarily, but I’m still trying to find the right revision path for it:

“Ezra Quill knew for a fact that magic was balderdash, which is why it was hard to explain why he was leaning over a birdbath in the light of the moon, letting his best friend give him a lesson in scrying.”

From a story I’m currently shopping around called “Rib Night”:

Lenka Talovic, chief necromancer of the Imperial Court, had one problem on her mind as she surveyed the four dead foot soldiers laid on her table—how to raise them and still make it back to the hall in time for dinner.

And this is brand new, for a short story idea that occurred to me today.

“Forget the seers; seers are a dime a dozen. What I want to talk about is much more rare — the speakers: those who are born with the words and power of dead languages on their tongues.“