Start a story at the first moment that asks something of your character: a task interrupted, a claim the story will test, or a voice the reader wants to keep listening to. The opening line is a promise about what kind of story this is. The opening scene's job is to keep that promise long enough for the reader to ask a specific question about what happens next.
There are only a handful of ways in, and the classics use all of them. Below are twelve famous openings from public-domain novels and stories, grouped by the choice each writer made, with what each one promises and how to borrow the move. After them comes a worked example that takes one premise from a flat summary to a first scene, and a 25-minute exercise that ends with two openings and a decision.
Open with a claim the story will testLink to this section
A confident general statement tells the reader what the story is about before any character appears. It works when the rest of the book complicates the claim.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813). The sentence sounds like a proverb and reads as a joke: it is the families, not the single men, who are certain of this. Austen announces the novel's subject, marriage and money, in the voice of the gossip she is about to satirize. The very next scene, Mrs. Bennet pressing her husband about Netherfield Park, shows the "truth" at work.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1878), in Constance Garnett's 1901 translation. A claim about families, followed at once by a particular one: "Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house." The general line earns its place because the specific case arrives in the next sentence.
Borrow it when your story has a thesis it means to argue with. Avoid it when the claim is a greeting-card truth nobody would dispute. The line needs an edge.
Open with a voiceLink to this section
Some openings introduce a teller before they introduce events. The reader keeps reading because they want more of this person.
Call me Ishmael.
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851). Three words, and the narrator is already choosing what to be called, which suggests it may not be his real name. The paragraph that follows explains why he goes to sea in the same restless, wry register: "whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul."
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892). The narrator sounds pleased, and the word "mere" hints at how she sees herself beside her husband. The next sentences slide from "ancestral halls" to "a haunted house," and the voice we trust begins to tell us more than she means to.
Borrow it when the narrator's way of seeing is itself the story. Avoid it when the voice is only a costume: a quirky tone with no attitude toward the events will wear thin within a page.
Open with a situation already in motionLink to this section
The most common professional choice: begin inside an ordinary day at the moment it stops being ordinary, and let the reader catch up.
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847). Weather is supposed to be a weak opening, and here it works, because the canceled walk traps Jane indoors with the cousins who bully her. Within two pages she is locked in the red room. The rain is not atmosphere: it is the cause of the first scene.
There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.
James Joyce, "The Sisters," the first story in Dubliners (1914). We enter after two earlier strokes, mid-vigil. "This time" tells us there is a history without stopping to recount it, and a boy's nightly watch on a lit window becomes the story's first action.
Borrow it when you can name the ordinary task your character is doing and the thing that interrupts it. This is the opening the worked example below builds.
Open with an event the reader cannot ignoreLink to this section
Put the most unusual fact on the first line and state it plainly. The calm tone is what makes it land.
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis" (1915), in our translation of the German. Kafka never explains the transformation. The story is about what happens next: Gregor worries about missing his train to work, and that mismatch between the catastrophe and his concern is the whole design.
Marley was dead: to begin with.
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843). Dickens insists on the death, "There is no doubt whatever about that," because a ghost is coming, and the reader must believe Marley is dead to be frightened when he speaks.
Borrow it when the strange event is the premise and the story is its consequences. Avoid it when you would have to spend the next ten pages explaining how it happened.
Open with one fact that defines a characterLink to this section
A single biographical detail, chosen because it reveals what a person cares about or fears.
Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises (1926). The narrator at once says he is not impressed, "but it meant a lot to Cohn," and explains that Cohn learned to box to answer the prejudice he faced. The fact characterizes two people: the man who earned the title and the narrator who belittles it.
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman.
Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia" (1891). The fact is about Holmes, not the woman: Watson goes on to say that Holmes never felt anything like love for her, which makes the italic "the" a puzzle. The story's first line names the one person who beat him before we learn how.
Borrow it when you can find the one fact that a character would mention first, or would least want mentioned.
Open with a narrator looking backLink to this section
A frame tells the reader that the story is over and the narrator has been changed by it.
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925). "Ever since" places Nick after the events; "younger and more vulnerable" admits he has been hurt. The advice, to remember that not everyone has had his advantages, becomes the lens for every judgment he makes about Gatsby. A frame story like this trades suspense about what happens for curiosity about why it mattered.
Open with a contrast that sets the periodLink to this section
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859). The famous paired clauses run for a whole paragraph and end by saying the period "was so far like the present period," which turns a historical novel into a comment on Dickens's own day. Opposites announce a story about two cities and two sides of a revolution.
Borrow it when the setting is a character in its own right, and you can state its tension in a pair.
Twelve openings at a glanceLink to this section
| Opening | Technique | What the reader asks next |
|---|---|---|
| "It is a truth universally acknowledged…" | A claim to test | Who will prove it wrong? |
| "Happy families are all alike…" | A claim, then a case | What went wrong in this house? |
| "Call me Ishmael." | Voice | Who is he, and why tell us this? |
| "It is very seldom that mere ordinary people…" | Voice | What is wrong with this summer? |
| "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day." | In motion | What happens to her indoors? |
| "There was no hope for him this time…" | In motion | Who is he to the boy? |
| "…transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." | Impossible event | What will he do now? |
| "Marley was dead: to begin with." | Undeniable fact | Why does his death matter? |
| "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion…" | Defining fact | Why does that mean so much to him? |
| "To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman." | Defining fact | What did she do to earn it? |
| "In my younger and more vulnerable years…" | Frame | What happened that he is still turning over? |
| "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…" | Contrast | Which side will the story take? |
Every one of them leaves the reader with a specific question. That, not drama or polish, is what a first line has to do.
Build your own opening scene: a worked exampleLink to this section
Famous first lines show the result. Here is the process, using an original premise.
The premise. Iris volunteers at a neighborhood library. Her older sister Ada left town a year ago and stopped answering messages. Tonight Iris has promised to return the borrowed storeroom key before closing. In the returns slot she finds a book with an envelope inside, addressed to Ada.
The writer needs all of that. The reader needs much less to start: Iris wants to finish a task, an object interrupts it, and responding might cost her something.
Step 1: find the taskLink to this section
"Iris wants closure" is an intention the reader has to interpret. "Iris is returning a key" gives her hands something to do and another person something to ask about. Choose a task you could film.
Step 2: compare a summary with a sceneLink to this section
Here is a serviceable summary that has not become a scene yet:
Iris had volunteered at the library for six years. She liked the quiet and knew all the shelves. Her sister Ada had left town last winter, and Iris still felt hurt that she never called. On Friday, Iris went to return a key and found something that would change everything.
It tells us what to feel before giving us anything to notice, and "something that would change everything" withholds the one concrete detail that could make us curious. Now enter through the task:
Iris slid the storeroom key across the library desk, keeping one finger on its blue tag. Behind her, a book dropped through the returns slot. She almost left it for Monday. Then she saw the envelope between its pages: Ada Bell, in the cramped handwriting Iris had spent a year trying to forget. "I'll take that," the librarian said, reaching for the key. Iris closed her hand around it.
A place, an action and a disturbance. "A year" supplies history at the moment it affects what Iris notices. Her closing hand answers a routine request with a changed intention, and the reader has a specific question: why is she keeping the key?
Step 3: make the next paragraph pay for the firstLink to this section
An opening's promise has to be kept quickly. If Iris takes the bus home and remembers her childhood, the choice loses its momentum. Follow the action to its first consequence:
"I left my coat in the storeroom," Iris said. It was hanging over her arm. She laid it on the counter before the librarian could answer, took the book, and unlocked the narrow door beside the desk.
The lie gets her a private room, and the visible coat makes her distress impossible to hide. Now keeping the key has a cost.
Step 4: try three doors into the same storyLink to this section
The same plot can start in different places, and each start promises a different book.
| Entry point | First line | What it promises | What the next paragraph owes |
|---|---|---|---|
| The task | Iris slid the storeroom key across the desk… | A routine interrupted | Why the gesture changes |
| A line of dialogue | "If my sister comes in, don't give her this." | A conflict about trust | Why Ada might come at all |
| The discovery | The envelope in the returned book was addressed to Ada Bell. | A mystery built on evidence | Who Iris is and why the postmark matters |
Choose the opening whose promise matches the story you mean to tell. A mystery-shaped first page on a quiet family story attracts the wrong readers.
Step 5: check what the reader knowsLink to this section
Curiosity needs something to work on. Draw two columns beside the draft: understood now and asked next. Iris, the library and the key belong in the first; Ada's silence and the letter in the second. If nearly everything sits under "asked next," the reader is lost, not curious: add one concrete fact. If nothing does, introduce a change rather than another mysterious adjective. This is where a few words of exposition earn their place: "her sister" prevents confusion in two words.
Five openings that usually fail, and whyLink to this section
- Waking up. The alarm, the mirror, the coffee. Nothing has asked anything of the character yet. Kafka's waking works because the waking is the event.
- Weather as mood. Brontë's rain works because it causes the scene. Rain that only sets a tone delays the story.
- The backstory paragraph. History before we care about the person. Supply the past at the moment it changes what someone does now, as "a year" does for Iris.
- The false alarm. A dream, a nightmare, a chase that turns out to be a game. The reader feels tricked, and the real opening has to win them back.
- "Nothing would ever be the same." An announcement of significance with nothing to see. Show the first concrete thing that changed instead.
None of these is forbidden. Each works when it does the job the failed version skips.
Starting a screenplay or a short filmLink to this section
A screenplay opening follows the same logic with one difference: the first page can only show what a camera sees and a microphone hears, so a voice or a claim has to become an image or an action. The annotated screenplay example opens on a harbor at dawn, where a woman checks a tide table against her watch; one image sets the task (catch the tide) and the clock, and her first line names the deadline: six-ten. In television, the scene before the titles carries this job; the cold open entry explains how it differs from a film's first scene.
Iris's opening makes the move almost unchanged, because it was built from things a camera can see. Set as a first page, it reads:
INT. NEIGHBORHOOD LIBRARY - NIGHT
Closing time. IRIS slides a storeroom key across the front desk, one finger still on its blue tag.
Behind her, a book drops through the returns slot. An envelope sticks out of its pages.
On the envelope, in cramped handwriting: ADA BELL.
LIBRARIAN
I'll take that.
The librarian reaches for the key. Iris closes her hand around it.
IRIS
I left my coat in the storeroom.
The coat hangs over her arm.
Iris's opening as a first page. What a camera cannot film, the year she spent forgetting, is left to the actor.
Opens as a new Plot project once you sign in or create a free account. Inkwell keeps this copy for 24 hours.
One phrase could not come with it: no camera can film "the cramped handwriting Iris had spent a year trying to forget." The page keeps the name on the envelope and the hand closing on the key, and leaves the year to the actor and to the scenes that follow.
Draft two openings in 25 minutesLink to this section
Use your own premise or Iris's errand. Aim for a first scene you can continue, not a perfect sentence.
- Minutes 0–4. Write down who is present, what one person wants to finish, what interrupts it, and what they might lose by responding. One concrete line each.
- Minutes 4–11. Write about 150 words beginning with the task. Keep going until the first changed choice.
- Minutes 11–18. Write a second opening using one technique from the famous examples above: a claim, a voice, or a single defining fact. Keep the same viewpoint and tense.
- Minutes 18–22. Mark what a reader understands and what they will ask next.
- Minutes 22–25. Choose the version that makes you want to write the next paragraph, and write that paragraph before touching the first sentence again.
Then ask someone to read both and tell you what they expect to happen next, without telling them your plan. A prediction you did not intend is useful: it shows you which promise your first lines actually made.
If your opening turns on a conversation, go on to the dialogue examples. If you are writing for the screen, draft your two first scenes in Plot with a save point before each, so you can read them side by side and keep the one with the stronger consequence.