Here are 30 killer opening sentences
Here are 30 killer opening sentences
Learn their secret to make people listen to you
THE BEST COMMUNICATORS know how to leverage a key psychological trick.
We’ll get into it now. But first, I’ve gathered together 30 killer examples of this trick in action—drawn from some of the most celebrated writers that have ever lived.
They all have one thing in common. But before you race to the back for the answer, enjoy them. And see if you can work out for yourself why they’re so effective.
Killer opening sentences
My whole life I’ve been a fraud.
Good Old Neon by David Foster Wallace
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.
The Outsider by Albert Camus
The first decade of the twentieth century was not a good time to be born black and female in Stamps, Arkansas.
Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou
If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.
How To Do Great Work by Paul Graham
In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
It was the day my grandmother exploded.
The Crow Road by Iain Banks
It was a wrong number that started it.
City of Glass by Paul Auster
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
“Do you have a big, thick penis?” Howard Stern asks a guest in his New York radio studio one recent Thursday morning. The guest, unfortunately, is me.
Howard Stern’s Long Struggle and Neurotic Triumph by Neil Strauss
They shoot the white girl first.
Paradise by Toni Morrison
All this happened, more or less.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall.
Tracks by Louise Erdrich
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1984 by George Orwell
Some real things have happened lately.
The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion
Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
This is the saddest story I have ever heard.
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
Every woman knows what I'm talking about.
Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Most people will die after three days without water.
The Dumber Side of Smart People by Morgan Housel
All children, except one, grow up.
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
It was a pleasure to burn.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Did you get it?
What all of these openers do is present a mystery you can only solve by reading on. A kind of mental itch. In psychology it’s known as The Zeigarnik Effect—your brain remembers unfinished tasks more easily than completed ones.
So if you want people to read your writing—or if you just want people to pay more attention to you generally—then make them a juicy promise they must wait for.
Once you understand this trick, you start seeing it everywhere. The British artist David Shrigley has been delighting people for years with his off-beat, satirical doodles. And I’ve always wondered how he makes me want to read them all. Now I know. He’s a master of the mental itch.
I felt inspired to write this post after reading ’s piece about writing headlines that stand out in a sea of stories competing for your attention. I’d recommend Kristina’s blog if you’re an internet writer.
Want more creative ideas? I’ve grouped my writing into 3 themes:
You can read my writing mission here →
Some of these are just crazy!
I love how you gave us a mystery to start this piece. 🔎
To add to your list, one of my favorite opening sentences came from a memoir:
"Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart." (Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart)