What’s your strongest opening to a story?

[StillStunned]

Here's one from a work in progress, where I'm deliberately trying to make the scenery part of the story:

There’s a place in Spain where you can walk all day and never see another human being. Where your only companions are the snake gliding through the brush, the ibex clinging to the cliff, the eagle soaring overhead.

The only sound is the soft wind as it mourns an abandoned farmstead or a cross marking the grave of a long-dead pilgrim. Iago Blas, obit. 1458.

The landscape is drawn in harsh contours, unsoftened by any thickness of the air. The moisture has been sucked out of it by a sun so greedy that it’s leeched the colour from the rocks and plants.

It’s a hard land, and lonely. The rocks beneath your feet are the very bones of the mountains. It’s a place where the spirits of nature feel very close.

 

[nice90sguy]

This set the tone perfectly for my Humor and Satire story "I Married My Sister":


Gordon Crotchet, emulating Rodin's Thinker in pose if not physique, sat in his toilet and pondered the paint catalogue.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Here's one from a work in progress, where I'm deliberately trying to make the scenery part of the story:

Wow!

 

[orangecurious]

I kind of misread the title of the thread...

This is probably the strongest opener of mine, in terms of 'BANG'

My sister warned me about her.

"Sure, she's my best friend, but stay away from her, she'll fuck you over."

and it's from And what a time it was

 

[StillStunned]

Wow!

Thanks. I'm not a bad writer, I think, when I try.

 

[StillStunned]

"... But bananas are full of potassium!" Raine's plight was clear in her voice. "They're good for you."

"That does not mean that they go on pizza!" Jason growled, showing a surprising level of determination for a boy that most would describe as quiet and laid-back. "Even the 'pineapple people' would agree with me here, I'm sure."

"Banana goes everywhere," Raine insisted.

- Unpublished work, WIP title: Bananas.

I'd try banana on pizza. I like bananas. (Even if I have to concentrate to remember where to stop writing it.)

 

[EmilyMiller]

Thanks. I'm not a bad writer, I think, when I try.

Yeah. It’s good

 

[lovecraft68]

My answer to this and to any question along the line of 'what's your best..." is always going to be the same.

The one I've yet to write because whatever you're happy with now, if you're not out to beat it, then you should just stop doing whatever you're doing. This goes not just for writing, but anything. When you think you won't do better? Then you won't.

 

[Bamagan]

"... But bananas are full of potassium!" Raine's plight was clear in her voice. "They're good for you."

"That does not mean that they go on pizza!" Jason growled, showing a surprising level of determination for a boy that most would describe as quiet and laid-back. "Even the 'pineapple people' would agree with me here, I'm sure."

"Banana goes everywhere," Raine insisted.

- Unpublished work, WIP title: Bananas.

Sung to the tune of Havana (Camila Cabello)

Banana, ooh na-na (ay)
Half of my lunch is a banana, ooh-na-na (ay, ay)
I got it at this sweet cabana, na-na-na
Oh, yes my lunch is a banana (ay)
Potassium, it matters (uh huh)
Banana, ooh na-na (uh)

 

[djrip]

You know the one...

Fashioned from curled rinds of flesh, twined sinew, dry and cracking. Sheaves of viscera rustle and flutter through her body in a breeze of movement; flakes and dust sift loose.

She has taken an eye.

Look there.

The eye whispers; she can hear its voice, sibilant and moist, from where it rests in the hollow above one cheek. There is a sodden weight to the thing, cradled in thirsty bone. It pivots in the socket, dilates.

Look--sstop. Tracks. Trackss.

The eye is lonely. It can't be trusted, she knows this. But there is a kind of game to it; the eye must be mostly truthful if it is to have any influence at all.

She shuffles onward.

An Eye For Love

 

[StillStunned]

Sung to the tune of Havana (Camila Cabello)

Banana, ooh na-na (ay)
Half of my lunch is a banana, ooh-na-na (ay, ay)
I got it at this sweet cabana, na-na-na
Oh, yes my lunch is a banana (ay)
Potassium, it matters (uh huh)
Banana, ooh na-na (uh)

A song my wife often sings:

"In the island of Jamaica
Everybody loves banana..."

 

[yowser]

From my most recent:

At first I thought the fallout would be insurmountable.

And for many weeks it seemed that way.

Opening the side door to our old New England farmhouse kitchen that late October Saturday, with sunset just around the corner, I was taken completely by surprise to see Barb standing by the window staring out into our backyard. She turned to face me when I entered, and the look she leveled at me said a galaxy of things. I was caught, the jig was up, and she was pissed.

 

[StillStunned]

Yeah. It’s good

I suppose I'd better write the rest at some point.

 

[32aa]

From "Let tomorrow be tomorrow"
................................................
“mmm… my girlfriends were right,” my young lover purred softly as she nuzzled her warm bare body against mine. Her small soft breast against my chest and the soft tuft of brown pubic hair brushing against my hip.

“Right about what?” as I lightly kissed the top of her head through her tousled brown hair.

“That older men are the best lovers,” toying with my sparse gray chest hair.

That brought a chuckle from me.

“Somehow, I think that their definition of ‘older men’ didn’t go all the way to ‘ancient’.”

A giggle.

My young lover snakes her hand down between us and wraps her soft hand around my shriveled cock.

“You’re not ancient… And this part down here is DEFINITELY not ancient. And these guys are still doing their job.”

I gasp as her hand moves down, cups my loose balls, gently massages, and rolls each drained orb in her soft warm hand.

“And this tongue,” she moves up and plants a soft kiss on my lips before lightly probing her tongue through my lips seeking my own tongue.

“mmmm…. I can still taste myself on you… so sexy. This tongue could teach a whole generation of guys how to pleasure a woman,” looking up with a playful grin, “And maybe even a few women.”

Was she messing with me? I wanted to ask what she meant by that last sentence. I mean, I had never been with a woman who had played around with another woman… or women. Instead, I just smiled back.

The playful grin remained as my young lover went back to resting her head on my chest. A few minutes later her breathing deepened. She had fallen into a relaxing and satisfying sleep.

 

[AG31]

"It was something at first sight. Not love. No, not that, but something."

I published this before in the thread "Just one line." I never published this story, but the line remains one of my favorites.

 

[Trionyx]

When you are living in the wilderness far from other people, your body starts to change slowly. You sleep better, your strength improves and your sense of contentment climbs. Your senses become more keen, better able to discern tiny changes in your environment. The sense of smell, freed from exhaust fumes and pollution, improves dramatically. You can smell the subtle changes of the seasons; those first few blooms of early spring flowers, the rain approaching on a hot summer day and the musty smell of decaying leaves in the fall. The vision improves so that a tiny speck approaching in the sky is seen well before the details of a hawk or an eagle become apparent. Food tastes better once the bland, mass-produced foods have cleared from your taste buds and you are preparing your food from scratch while using wild herbs and plants for natural seasoning.

Most dramatically, the hearing improves. A tiny breeze tickling the leaves, a splashing brook hundreds of yards away, a screeching hawk high in the sky and even the snorting of a lumbering bear in the woods are all easily heard once the din of traffic, Muzak and twenty-four-hour news reports are relegated to the mind's trash heap.

Jim's hearing picked up the distant vehicle well before it arrived.

From the
Craziest Summer Ever

 

[intim8]

Holy hell. As I was reading this, I'm thinking, OK, it's not that bad of an opening. But by the time I got through it, I'm dying to read this story. Like, I'm rearranging my schedule to make time for it, I'm paying cash money at the bookstore...

Totally worth it. @tenyari, that was quite good. I found that I had already read it, but it was worth a second read. I'd follow you, but turns out I already was.

 

[StillStunned]

Someone was complaining about these snippets being mostly very "writerly". So here's one from another WIP, tentatively called "Dirty Old Man":

Don’t be a dirty old man! I told myself. You’re already going to be the strange one. So don’t be a dirty old man!

The idea of being surrounded by young women was both exciting and worrying. I’d always enjoyed the sight of a pretty face, a bit of cleavage perhaps, a swelling bosom, nice plump thighs. I just didn’t want to enjoy it too much.

Inwardly I cursed HR. Again. Nine years to go until my retirement, and all of a sudden I’m sitting opposite Oliver from HR and he’s telling me, “So sorry, Thom, but your job isn’t safe.”

Well, fuck you too, Oliver from HR.

In gratitude for all my long years of service, he’d graciously arranged for me to learn a new profession. Reskilling, he called it. Fucker.

 

[Comshaw]

Not an erotic story but one I've been working on.

Death, it comes to us all, but it comes in many different forms in a war. Clubs, swords, bullets, bombs, mines, rockets, bayonets, knives, garrote, grenades, gas, radiation, mortars, artillery shells, lasers, accidents, sickness, even by the bare hands of another human; there are many ways to die in a war...

 

[lovecraft68]

Not an erotic story but one I've been working on.

Death, it comes to us all, but it comes in many different forms in a war. Clubs, swords, bullets, bombs, mines, rockets, bayonets, knives, garrote, grenades, gas, radiation, mortars, artillery shells, lasers, accidents, sickness, even by the bare hands of another human; there are many ways to die in a war...

Not an opening, but your line reminds me of a line from one of my novels. "People think of death, they think of a grim reaper, they never suspect a blue eyed blonde with an epic rack, and cute little giggle."

 

[tenyari]

Totally worth it. @tenyari, that was quite good. I found that I had already read it, but it was worth a second read. I'd follow you, but turns out I already was.

Thank you, and thank you for reminding me that I need to finish the next part - a short piece for a birthday party with a little humor around alien abduction / probing.

(That got stuck right at the moment Ángelita arrives for her party.)

Since this thread is about intros... be kind to this one as it needs some extreme editing...:

Meanwhile Pepper and I were down in Polanco stirring up more than our share of silly trouble with people out on the town from Ciudad Universitaria. It was still afternoon so that meant cafes around a trendy shopping area. It was one thing for an 'Alien' like me to be running around naked in there, but Pepper was human. For her it was all about exhibition.

This was one of our favorite pass times. To frolic around naked in some place where everyone else was trying to be seen. All the eyes ended up on us, and we would just giggle and goof around until it got intense enough that I needed a good fuck. I was an Alien after all, always horny.

"Ángelita, you look absolutely ravishing in my skirt, I could just eat you up!" Pepper would say just a little too loudly.

"Will you? Please? Oh and it's so pretty, I just had to wear it, I hope you don't mind," I would giggle back in an equally loud voice as I twirled my naked body around holding my hands out as if gripping the sides of a long maxi-skirt. A couple of guys would look at us in confusion, but some of the girls with them would just roll their eyes.

Pepper would just chase me and then break out in a fit of laughter. She had long red hair, green eyes, and tan freckled skin set off against myself as a green skinned, amber eyed Alien with pointy ears and violet hair. But we had uncannily identical hourglass figures in every measurement from the neck down. That was the source of our game, if either of us had owned clothes, we would have been perfect fits for trading. So we pretended it was true.

From the moment my boyfriend Silverio introduced us, we had been the best of friends, always up to mischief. Pepper had actually tossed all of her clothing in the trash moments after we met, declaring herself an absolute nudist in front of a shocked Silverio as her own boyfriend just gave a knowing smile.

When we first started doing this I was worried there'd be problems with jealous women, and sometimes there were. As a New Human, an Alien as many local Humans still saw me; I could not wear clothing. But Pepper was another story. Even still, Mexico being a more restrained society meant we were both a bit of an affront to people. From time to time police and others would come to chase us away and I would have to resort to having Teacher, my people's AI; manifest to remind them of new laws.​

Yes... I am intentionally beginning a story with 'meanwhile' - as in "in the middle of things". It's something I've wanted to do since hearing it in a song from the German reggae singer 'Gentleman'.

But that's not even been read back yet, and even in posting it here I had to fix some issues I spotted. That's alpha-alpha draft - the point where my writing is stream of consciousness.

 

[Comshaw]

Not an opening, but your line reminds me of a line from one of my novels. "People think of death, they think of a grim reaper, they never suspect a blue eyed blonde with an epic rack, and cute little giggle."

I like that. As an unrepentant admirer of the female form, I could easily be lulled into a somnambulistic state by a blue-eyed blonde with an epic rack giggling at me.

Edited to add:
Or as Bob Seger put it, "She was a black haired beauty with big dark eyes
And points all her own, sitting way up high
Way up firm and high"

Night Moves - Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

Comshaw

 

[VallesMarineris]

Yes... I am intentionally beginning a story with 'meanwhile'

This looks like a fun read. I'm in.

FYI, James Joyce started a novel in the middle of sentence (and ended it with the beginning of that same sentence).

 

[MelissaBaby]

"It was something at first sight. Not love. No, not that, but something."

I published this before in the thread "Just one line." I never published this story, but the line remains one of my favorites.

Is the reference to the opening line of Catch 22 intentional?

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain, he fell madly in love with him.

 

[AG31]

Is the reference to the opening line of Catch 22 intentional?

No, not consciously anyway. I read Catch 22 way back soon after it was published in 1961.