A Book's First Sentence - retrieved [Archive]

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A Book's first sentence
Hey guys,

Here's the deal: I've got this manuscript in 3rd person, and the first sentence, in fact the first paragraph, is a dialouge enclosed in quotation marks. It's supposed to be a news anchor talking.

Yeah, that's how it begins. Now, I've never read a book that starts off like this? Would this be a turn-off to readers and publishers alike? Or am I okay?

Thanks,

-Jason
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I, personally, don't like to spend the first paragraph wondering who is talking and why... is it obvious from what is being said?
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Yeah. In the way the speaking is, I'd think it's obvious it's coming from a news anchor. But still...is it okay to do this?
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I don't see why not.
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If the first sentence/paragraph is riveting and inviting for the readers to read on, why the heck not?

If it's ho-hum-who-cares, then it's probably not a good way to go.
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You could always do something like "This is John Jones at KXVTV, back after our station break" - and then go into your first paragraph. Puma
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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/statusicon/post_old.gif 06-12-2006, 12:10 AM alaskamatt17 (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/member.php?u=818) vbmenu_register("postmenu_641047", true);
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In Susan Cooper's Dark Is Rising sequence, at least four of the books start with a paragraph of unattributed dialogue. The following paragraph always makes it clear who is speaking. Those books seemed pretty popular when I was in grade school, and I think the author won several awards for them, so it must be an okay thing to do. If you do it right.
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Each of my three published novels, and my current WIP, begins with dialogue. The first one was reviewed on national television, and the reviewer actually commented on how gripping the first line was. I try to make each line of dialogue intriguing enough that you have to read on to see who's talking, and what exactly is their dilemma. It seems to me that if you begin with a line or two of dialogue, setting the hook and raising at least some of the story question, this then buys you time to spend a couple of paragraphs setting the scene.
Hope this helps.
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A tip for you. Elmore Leonard said that readers these days often skim-read, skipping over whole paragraphs of text in their haste to pcik up the next plot point. But, they will never skip over dialogue....for some reason. Therefore, if the man is right (and I suspect he is) starting with some gripping dialog is a pretty smart thing to do.
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I know that when I skim-read, I don't skip over dialogue. Another good example of a book that uses unattributed dialogue to good effect is Ender's Game, which begins with not just one line of it, but an entire page.
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Most of my stories begin with dialogue. It's my way of throwing the reader right into the middle of the characters and action.
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Thank you everyone, you've all helped set my mind at ease.
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The first paragraph of a novel should have either a murder, sex, or a witticism of some kind. All three together would be ideal.
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I've started more than a few novels with dialogue, making clear who's speaking as soon as possible.

Have an opening strong enough to distract a tired assistant editor (on her way home after a long day plowing through a six-foot tall slush pile) from a subway full of potential muggers.

That's how my first book sold. She missed her stop and figured the rest of the book was worth checking out.

:D
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first sentence
I think it all depends on how good the dialogue is. You can open a novel with any type of sentence, as long as it grabs the reader's attenion.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gillhoughly
I've started more than a few novels with dialogue, making clear who's speaking as soon as possible.

Have an opening strong enough to distract a tired assistant editor (on her way home after a long day plowing through a six-foot tall slush pile) from a subway full of potential muggers.

That's how my first book sold. She missed her stop and figured the rest of the book was worth checking out.

:D

That is a fanstastic visual to keep in mind to make the start of the novel compelling!
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Thanks all. Okay, I guess my next question would be: Is it okay to start right off the bat with something controversial/get's people's blood boiling? Example: Iillegal immigration?

-Jason
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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/statusicon/post_old.gif 06-12-2006, 04:52 PM Gillhoughly (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/member.php?u=6219) vbmenu_register("postmenu_642259", true);
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drevil915
Is it okay to start right off the bat with something controversial/get's people's blood boiling? Example: illegal immigration?

Yes. For non-fiction.

For fiction start with character, always character.

Causes and blood-boiling controversy are everywhere. We are hammered with it day in and day out to the point of boredom. Everyone has an opinion and chances are it will be quite different from the one you want to express. What gets you hot under the collar will only cause another to yawn and put the book back.

Hook a reader in with a good character who is in the middle of that controversy and you're on the right track.

Stephen J. Cannell did an excellent job of balancing character with a theme on illegal immigration in his "Riding the Snake (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380800160/102-3647590-7056907?v=glance&n=283155)," which you might want to check to see how he did it.
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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/statusicon/post_old.gif 06-12-2006, 05:24 PM writeorwrong (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/member.php?u=6875) vbmenu_register("postmenu_642340", true);
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Garpy
A tip for you. Elmore Leonard said that readers these days often skim-read, skipping over whole paragraphs of text in their haste to pcik up the next plot point. But, they will never skip over dialogue....for some reason. Therefore, if the man is right (and I suspect he is) starting with some gripping dialog is a pretty smart thing to do.

I love Leonard's tenth rule of writing: Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/statusicon/post_old.gif 06-12-2006, 06:01 PM drevil915 (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/member.php?u=7001) vbmenu_register("postmenu_642405", true);
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Quote:
For fiction start with character, always character.

Hmm, could I get away with introducing the mc on the second or third paragraph?
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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/statusicon/post_old.gif 06-12-2006, 08:25 PM Gillhoughly (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/member.php?u=6219) vbmenu_register("postmenu_642717", true);
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drevil915
Hmm, could I get away with introducing the mc on the second or third paragraph?

Only if you're really, really good.

Don't overthink. Just write it and put it up on AW for feedback. Ask friends who write to beta read for you. Read it to yourself outloud while pretending you are your worst enemy and want to find fault with it. Read it in a silly voice. If it still sounds good after all that abuse you might be on to something.

Quote:
Yeah, that's how it begins. Now, I've never read a book that starts off like this?

There are two reasons for that:

1) you don't read nearly enough;

2) it doesn't work.

Go to a bookstore and read the first line of at least 100 books in the genre you're writing in to see their technique for how they start their stories. There's no need to reinvent the wheel when someone else has figured it out already.

Get Strunk & White's Elements of Style and proof sentence structure plus punctuation. It's like an artist knows red + yellow = orange. After a bit of practice writing/punctuating things correctly becomes as normal as breathing.

I did a panel talk on writing last weekend and everyone agreed that, in addition to writing well, the less work you present an editor the better chance you have of making a sale. ;)
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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/images/statusicon/post_old.gif 06-13-2006, 04:48 PM Jamesaritchie (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/member.php?u=184) vbmenu_register("postmenu_644484", true);
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Quote:
Originally Posted by drevil915
Thanks all. Okay, I guess my next question would be: Is it okay to start right off the bat with something controversial/get's people's blood boiling? Example: Iillegal immigration?

-Jason

There are no rules about this. Except one, maybe. If your first sentence makes a reader want to read your second sentence, then it's good. Same with subject matter. All that counts if for each sentence to make the reader want to read the next.

And I see nothing at all wrong with starting off a novel with illegal immigration. It's a heck of a lot better start than I see in many published novels. The sooner the reader knows the subject of the novel, the better off you are.

And, of course, beginning a novel with illegal immigration is a great way to show character.

There is no one or the other, no this and no that. As long as the read is interested and want sto read the next sentence, and the next and the next, you're doing it right. Read a thousand novels, and you'll probably find a thousand and one ways of beginning.
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I once went through a bunch of novels sitting on my bookshelf and gathered all the opening sentences from them -- just to get a feel for what people did with their openers. I'll post the file here:

Quote:
September 3rd, 1939. The last minutes of peace ticking away. Father and I were watching Mother digging our air-raid shelter. "She's a great little woman," said Father. "And getting smaller all the time," I added. -- Spike Milligan, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall

Two men stood outside for two minutes buzzing the door alarm, their fat guns raised and ready, only slowly relaxing as the time passed. Afte that they packed the guns away. -- Roger Levy, Reckless Sleep

Bill Roberts decided to rob the firecracker stand on account of he didn't have a job and not a nickel's worth of money and his mother was dead and kind of freeze-dried in her bedroom. -- Joe Lansdale, Freezer Burn.

A system traffic monitor screen showed a blip where none had existed in this solar system. The wavefront of presence which had begun far, far out above the star spoke a series of numbers to a computer in Pell Central and a name flashed to displays throughout the room. -- C. J. Cherryh, Finity's End.

"Television presenter, television presenter, television presenter, television presenter, train driver."
Sergeant Hooper looked up. "Train Driver?"
"I'm sorry, my mistake. Television presenter."
-- Ben Elton, Dead Famous

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a dream. -- John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress

Manfred, prince of Otranto, had one son and one daughter: the latter, a most beautiful virgin, aged eighteen, was called Matilda. -- Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto

In a distant and second hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part...
See...
Great A'Tuin the turtle comes, swiming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge ancient shell pocked with meteor craters.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic

The sun rose slowly, as if it wasn't sure it was worth all the effort. -- Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to answer all or any of these questions. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites.

This is the bright candlelit room where the lifetimers are stored -- shelf upon shelf of them, squat hourglasses, one for every living person, pouring their fine sand from the future into the past. The accumulated hiss of the falling grains makes the room roar like the sea. -- Terry Pratchett, Mort

There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, he was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. It's sad, but that's all you can say about some people. -- Terry Pratchett, Sourcery

The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. -- Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn't bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. -- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids.

The bees of Death are big and black, the buzz low and sombre, they keep their honey in combs of wax as white as altar candles. The honey is black as night, thick as sin and sweet as treacle. -- Terry Pratchett, Eric

This is the Discworld, which travels through space on the back of four elephants which themselves stand on the shell of Great A'Tuin, the sky turtle. -- Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad

Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.
The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it.
-- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

Corporal Carrot, Ankh-Morpork city guard (Night Watch), sat down in his night shirt, took up his pencil, sucked the end for a moment, and then wrote, "Dearest Mume and Dad,... -- Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms

(I'll skip over about a dozen Pratchett books here, otherwise this is going to take me forever.)

According to the First Scroll of Wen the Eternally Surprised, Wen stepped out of the cave where had had received enlightenment and into the dawning light of the first day of the rest of his life. He stared at the rising sun for some time, because he had never seen it before. -- Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Sam Vimes sighed when he heard the scream, but he finished shaving before he did anything about it. -- Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

At noon, when Dr Charles Ransom moored his houseboat in the entrance to the river, he saw Quilter, the idiot son of the old woman who lived in the ramshackle barge outside the yacht basin, standing on a spur of exposed rock on the opposite bank and smiling at the dead birds floating in the water below his feet. -- J G Ballard, The Drought

Moni sat up and looked around cautiously. The enormous dormitory was packed with sleeping forms, drugged into total exhaustion by hours of brutal physical toil. -- Terrance Dicks, Doctory Who: The Day of the Daleks

"Do you believe in love?" he asked her.
"Yes," Lara replied. "And I hate it."
-- Gene Wolfe, There are Doors

Sitting on the fake leather chair in the cheesy hotel room, Konstantin thought, This will be a very serious weapon. -- Pat Cadigan, Dervish is Digital

Rats!
They chased the dogs and bit the cats, they --
But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

Polly cut off her hair in front of the mirror, feeling slightly guilty about not feeling very guilty about doing so. -- Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

It was a nice day. All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. -- Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

Johnny never knew for certain why he started seeing the dead. The Alderman said it was probably because he was too lazy not to. -- Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead

In the dim light of the steam carraige, Lady Melodia Gold looked hungry, but not for food. -- Michael Moorcock and Storm Constantine, Silverheart

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. -- Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan

Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other -- other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is child. -- Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast

To the north, south, east or west, turning at will, it was not long before his landmarks fled him. Gone was the outline of his mountainous home. Gone was that torn world of towers. -- Mervyn Peake, Titus Alone

It is worthless, this old pen case I brought from Viron. It is nothing. You might go around the market all day and never find a single spirit who would trade you a fresh egg for it. Yet it holds...
Enough.
Yes, enough. I am sick of fancies.
-- Gene Wolfe, On Blue's Waters

The time machine is a sphere full of milky fluid in which the traveller floats enclosed in a rubber suit, breathing through a mask attached to a hose leading into the wall of the machine. -- Michael Moorcock, Behold the Man

At castle Erorn dwelt the family of the Vadhagh prince, Khlonskey. This family had occupied the castle for many centuries. It loved, exceedingly, the moody sea that washed Erorn's northern walls and the pleasant forest that crept close to her southern flank. -- Michael Moorcock, The Knight of Swords

In their ruddy jackets of leather that reached to their knees the men of Erl appeared before their lord, the stately white-haired man in his long red room. He leaned in his carven chair and heard their spokesman. -- Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter

Count Brass, Lord Guardian of the Kamarg, rode out on a horned horse one morning to inspect his territories. He rode until he came to a little hill, on the top of which stood a ruin of immense age. -- Michael Moorcock, The Jewel in the Skull

My name is Ulric Graf von Bek, and I am the last of my earthly line. An unhealthy child, cursed with the family disease of albinism, I was born and raised in Bek, Saxony, in the early years of the century. -- Michael Moorcock, The Dreamthief's Daughter

Composite image, optically encoded by escort-craft of the trans-Channel airship Lord Brunel: aerial view of suburban Cherbourg, 14 October 1905.
A villa, a garden, a balcony.
Erase the balcony's wrought-iron curves, exposing a bath chair and its occupant. Reflected sunset glints from the nickel-plate of the chair's wheelspokes.
-- William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine

There never was a city like Troy. The young priest Kalchas, sent to Egyptian Thebes during his novitiate, came back unimpressed by the pyramids built on the west bank of the River of Life. Troy, he said, was more imposing, for it reared higher and its buildings housed the living, not the dead. -- Colleen McCullough, The Song of Troy

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or conversations?" -- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. -- J R R Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

The heat of the New Orleans night pressed against the window like an urgent lover. Jack Karaquazian stood sleepless, naked, staring out into the sweating darkness as if he might see at last some tangible horror which he could confront and even hope to conquer. -- Michael Moorcock, Blood

I was born in the reign of King George VI, backstage at South London's old Brixton Empire, during a lull in the Battle of Britain. -- Michael Moorcock, War Amongst the Angels

"By means of certain myths which cannot easily be damaged or debased the majority of us survive. All old great cities possess their special myths. Amongst London's in recent years is the story of the Blitz, of our endurance."
Setting aside his antique fountain pen David Mummery pauses to stick a newspaper picture of the Temple beside the article he is preparing which will again be favourable to the City's freemasons and must surely guarantee his entrance into their brotherhood;...
-- Michael Moorcock, Mother London

As Major Nye tried to brush some green and brown stains from the collar of his tropical combat jacket a little damp earth fell from his neck and struck the fused stone of the timeless causeway. -- Michael Moorcock, The Condition of Muzak

In the spring of 1903, on the advice of my physician, I had occasion to visit that remote and beautiful fragment of land in the middle of the Indian Ocean which I shall call Rowe Island. -- Michael Moorcock, The Warlord of the Air

"What's the hour?" The black-bearded man wrenched off his gilded helmet and flung it from him, careless of where it fell. He drew off his leathern guantlets and moved closer to the roaring fire, letting the heat soak into his frozen bones. -- Michael Moorcock, The Stealer of Souls

On a dreary winter's day, with rain sweeping across Lyonesse Town, Queen Sollace went into labor. She was taken to the lying-in room and attended by two midwives, four maids, Balhamel the physician, and the crone named Dyldra, who was profound in the lore of herbs, and by some considered a witch. -- Jack Vance, Lyonesse

It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". -- Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul

The house stood on a slight rise on the edge of the village. It stood on its own and looked out over a broad spread of West Country farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means -- it was about thirty years old, squatish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye. -- Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The fire pit was about twenty-five feet long by ten feet wide, and perhaps two feet deep. The fire had been burning for hours. The bed of coals gave off a blast of heat almost unbearable even back where I was seated, fifteen feet from the side of the pit, in the second row of tourists. -- Robert Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice

If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he owned the place, he's a spaceman. -- Robert Heinlein, Double Star.

His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the hyper-video, and occasionally in tremendous three-dimensional newscasts covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a Galactic Council. -- Isaac Asimov, Foundation

In the night-time heart of Beirut, in one of a row of general-address transfer booths, Louis Wu flicked into reality. -- Larry Niven, Ringworld

Masked eyes peered through the semi-darkness of the room. Beyond the metal door ahead lay the jewels of the House of Shey -- a scintillating pile that would buy the freedom of four hundred men. A misstep at this point would bring hell down about him. Yet, in the great city outside, dawn was breaking and he must act quickly. -- Charles L Harness, The Paradox Men

"Describe, using diagrams where appropriate, the exact circumstances leading to your death."
Saunders had been dead for almost two weeks now and, so far, he hadn't enjoyed a minute of it. What he wasn't enjoying at this particular moment was having to wade through the morass of forms and legal papers he'd been sent to complete by the Department of Death and Deceaseds' Rights.
-- Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf

Geoffrey sat alone in the big open-plan office of the Institute of Industrial Research where he worked. He was surrounded by computers and they all winked and flashed at him, but, despite being intimitely acquainted with every one of them, Geoffrey neither winked nor flashed back. -- Ben Elton, Gridlock

Carlton is a little coastal town some miles south of Perth in Western Australia. They're a strange contrast those two towns. Perth is home to a higher density of millionaires than any other city in the world, but just down the road in Carlton people hang kind of looser. -- Ben Elton, Stark

In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy, an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul. -- Frank Herbert, Dune

The three people running northward through moon shadows in the Forbidden Forest were strung out along almost half a kilometre. The last runner in the line ran less than a hundred metres ahead of the pursuing D-wolves. -- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

The city was open to the nomad.
Colin Charteris climbed out of his Banshee into the northern square, to stand for a moment stretching. Sinews and bones flexed and dainty. The machine beside him creaked and snapped like a landed fish, metal cooling after its long haul across the turn-pikes of Europe. -- Brian Aldiss, Barefoot in the Head

The sensory impact pressed in on him from all sides at once in the first dazzling moment of his arrival: a fierce bombardment of smells, sights, sounds, everything alien, everything much too intense, animated by a strange inner life. -- Robert Silverberg, Thebes of the Hundred Gates

So then, I have to go downtown to the University and forage for dollars again. It doesn't take much to keep me going -- $200 a month will do me nicely -- but I'm running low, and I don't dare try to borrow from my sister again. -- Robert Silverberg, Dying Inside

At two thirty in the afternoon of 16 August 1977 the telephones on the desk of police chief Sam J. Maggot of Memphis PD rose against him. Spitting Big Mac, Sam snatched up the noisiest protestor and shouted "Yo" into it, the way one does. -- Robert Rankin, They Came and Ate Us

Listen to the wisdom of the Old Ones:
The red world and the blue are brothers. They were born together in the seething maelstrom of dust and gas spinning out from the heart of the vast cloud that was to become Father Sun.
-- Ben Bova, Mars

Mattthias cut a comical little figure as he wobbled his way along the cloisters, with his large sandals flip-flopping and his tail peeping from beneath the baggy folds of an over-sized novice's habit. -- Brian Jacques, Redwall

When the storm broke she was genuinely frightened, and that answered another small conundrum. Afraid of lightning. It explained the uneasy tension that had been haunting her since the wind started to rise and the first rain fell, and which had grown stronger as the elements began to assault the landscape in earnest. -- Louise Cooper, The King's Demon

By midnight he knows his discontent will not let him sleep. The panzerboy drives north from Santa Fe, over the Sangre de Cristos on the high road through Truchas, heading for Colorado, wanting to get as close as possible to the night sky. -- Walter Jon Williams, Hardwired

Stubbornly, Elijah Baley fought panic.
For two weeks it had been building up. Longer than that, even. It had been building up ever since they had called him to Washington and there calmly told him he was being reassigned. -- Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun

"Ninety-eight -- ninety-nine -- one hundred." Gloria withdrew her chubby little forearm from before her eyes and stood for a moment, wrinkling her nose and blinking in the sunlight. -- Isaac Asimov, I Robot

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their affairs they were scrutinised and studied perhaps almost as closely as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. -- H G Wells, The War of the Worlds

One afternoon, at low water, Mr Isbister, a young artist lodging at Boscastle, walked from that place to the picturesque cove of Pentargen, desiring to examine the caves there. -- H G Wells, When the Sleeper Wakes

"Hssst! Nest!"
His voice cut through the cottony layers of her sleep with the sharpness of a cat's claw. Her head jerked off the pillow and her sleep-fogged eyes snapped open.
-- Terry Brooks, Running with the Demon

I have set myself to write the story of the Great Change, so far as it has affected my own life and the lives of one or two people closely connected with me, primarily to please myself. -- H G Wells, In the Days of the Comet

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers as Assistant Surgeon. -- A Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the morning, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he stayed up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. -- A Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

The storm had broken.
Pug danced along the edge of the rocks, his feet finding scant purchase as he made his way among the tide pools. His dark eyes darted about as he peered into each pool under the cliff face, seeking the spiny creatures driven into the shallows by the recently passed storm. -- Raymond Feist, Magician

This time something had told Tom to try going westward. West was a good direction, he figured. You head for the sunset, maybe you can walk right off the edge into the stars. -- Robert Silverberg, Tom O'Bedlam

"I take pride withal in my humiliation, and as I am to this privelege condemned, almost I find joy in an abhorrent salvation; I am, I believe, alone of all our race, the only man in human memory to have been shipwrecked and cast up upon a deserted ship."
Thus, with unabashed conceits, wrote Roberto della Griva presumably in July or August of 1643.
-- Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before

Easter was early that year. It fell in blackthorn winter, when the blossom on the sloe could have been taken for frost, and the hawthorn had barely sprouted its buds of green and copper. Every morning the grass was patched with white, and there was iron in the air. -- Joy Chant, Red Moon and Black Mountain

A hundred torches and a large central fire filled the great hall of Tara with a ruddy glow. It fluttered nervously in the fretful gusts of autumn wind that battered at the fortress hill of kings. -- Kenneth C Flint, Master of the Sidhe

It was on the eve of the Kalan Mai that king Ceneu of the Red Neck was accustomed to hold a great feasting, attended by the noblest of the Men of the North and others of their blood and fosterage from the furthest limits of the Island of Prydein and its Three Adjacent Islands who had wintered at the royal courthouse. -- Nikolai Tolstoy, The Coming of the King

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. -- J R R Tolkien, The Hobbit

Tika Waylan straightened her back with a sigh, flexing her shoulders to ease her cramped muscles. She tossed the soapy bar rag into the water pail and glanced around the empty room. -- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight

Let me get to the point immediately: I've always wanted to compose my own obituary. I don't mean to be vain, just a bit more generous than my critics. -- Brian Castro, Drift

At the top of the Arlington Cemetery is a row of trees evenly spaced with white stone benches in between. The Englishman, Simon Northcott, was sitting on one of these while Buddy Marlin, the American, walked backwards and forwards in front of him. -- Gavin Robertson, Thousand

"I knew I was right -- a very slight earthquake," Caesar said as he put the bundle of papers on his desk. Calvinus and Brutus looked up from their own work, surprised. -- Colleen McCullough, The October Horse

Althalus the thief spent ten days on the road down out of the mountains of Kagwher to reach the imperial city of Deika. As he was coming out of the foothills, he passed a limestone quarry where miserable slaves spent their lives under the whip laboriously sawing building blocks out of the limestone with heavy bronze saws. -- David and Leigh Eddings, The Redemption of Althalus.

At ten to five he began to gnaw the rim of his glass, and she was afraid it would break. "It's too late," he said. "They've had second thoughts." -- Ramsey Campbell, The Nameless

Whomp!
If a scaled-down Cruise missile had flown up the hall, hit the front door and detonated, Stevie thought, it would have sounded like this. The impact shook the entire house. -- Steve Harris, The Devil on May Street

Squire Trelawny, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time when my father kept the "Admial Benbow" inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof. -- Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

Rollo stared upward, his thick red hair tumbling back from his young freckled face as he squinted agains the glare of the snow. Had he really journeyed across half the world for this? -- Jane Welch, Dawn of a Dark Age

Ealstan's master of herblore droned on and on about the mystical properties of plants. Ealstan paid him no more attention than he had to, no more attention than any other fifteen-year-old boy would have given of a warm summer afternoon. -- Harry Turtledove, Into the Darkness

Tom Ingles was not in a particularly good humour as he pushed his bicycle out of the barn at his uncle's farm. It was hot and thundery and the heavy storm-clouds were massing over the ridge of the mountain behind him. He was used to the Long Mynd now and there was not much he did not know about its moods, its loneliness once the summer visitors had gone, and its secret places. -- Malcolm Saville, The Man with Three Fingers

The storm settled over the Eltair coast just after the advent of nightfall. Like the worst winter gales, it stole in on cat feet. The fitful, fine sleet dusting over sere landscape changed on a breath into muffling snow as the temperature plunged below freezing. -- Janny Wurts, Peril's Gate

-- And then all the people cheered again, and one man, who was more excited than the rest, flung his hat high into the air, and shouted (as well as I could make out) "Who roar for the Sub-Warden?" Everybody roared, but whether it was for the Sub-Warden, or not, did not clearly appear: some were shouting "Bread!" and some "Taxes!", but no one seemed to know what it was they really wanted. -- Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno

Night had fallen in earnest while the Brotherhood of the Wolf rode south, but when the warriors reached Carris there was light to see by. -- David Farland, Wizardborn

Hapscomb's Texaco sat on US 93 just north of Arnette, a pissant four-street burg about 110 miles from Houston. Tonight the regulars were there, sitting by the cash register, drinking beer, talking idly, watching the bugs fly into the big lighted sign. -- Steven King, The Stand

umber whunnnn
yerrrnnn umber whunnnn
fayunnnn
These sounds: ever in the haze.
But sometimes the sounds -- like the pain -- faded, and then there was only the haze.
-- Steven King, Misery

In that part of the western division of this kingdom which is commonly called Somersetshire, there lately lived and perhaps lives still, a gentleman whose name was Allworthy, and who might well be called the favourite of both Nature and Fortune; for both of these seem to have contended which should bless and enrich him most. -- Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

It's twenty years ago now since we settled on the Creek. Twenty years! I remember well the day we came from Stanthorpe, on Jerome's dray -- eight of us, and all the things -- beds, tubs, a bucket, the two cedar chairs with the pine bottoms and backs that Dad put in them, some pint-pots and old Crib. It was a scorching hot day, too -- talk about thirst! -- Steele Rudd, On Our Selection

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. -- James Joyce, Dubliners

The Dashwoods had been a full week in the great metropolis. Each day they visited different localities, and each day fresh wonders and glories were revealed to them. -- Steele Rudd, The Dashwoods

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