Opening Lines: A writing game for you to play

I’m good at starting stories, but I’m not so good with coming up with compelling conflict and I’m even worse at wrapping things up. Most stories I write get rambly and bogged down in details and go unfinished, and yet opening lines tumble through my brain on a nearly constant basis. I thought it might be fun to put some of them here in the hopes that you writerly types might see fit to use them as story prompts. If you do, just come back here and leave a link in the comments so we can all go read your story.

• When she finally took her hands off his neck, he still wasn’t dead.

• Lucinda Belle Craddock née Van Mott clutched her bucket of quarters and pulled the lever one more time, for Frank.

• It had skidded across the road and landed at the foot of Seth’s lawn chair, and had it had just a smidge more momentum, it would have taken him out with it.

• He hated his name and always had.

• “You said you would show me the scars.”

• Margaret was fairly sure that when she wrote her marriage-counseling book, she was going to include a chapter titled “Sleepfarting.”

• Caitlin had kept her eyes closed for ten seconds, just like Dr. Smoltz had told her to, but when she opened them, it was still there, looking at her and not blinking.

• The things random passersby threw into the gravel pit never really surprised Daniel, until today.

• Hitomi remembered the awful tension everyone felt the year the census numbers showed that cyborgs outnumbered humans.

• His hands, from the right angle, looked like gnarled tree roots, but they knew her body better than they knew anything else in the world.

• The smoke brought him into this world, and now it looked like it was bound to take him right back out.

• The building was obviously alive, the way it sighed and shuddered and sometimes even shrieked.

• Tom left her the day after their fiftieth anniversary, and all she had of his was his gold watch — a memento too bitterly ironic even for her dark sense of humor.

• The so-called invasion was decades behind them.

• Abel had never asked for the visions, never wanted them, never indulged them, but suddenly the entire class was gathered around him, begging him to tell them what was going to happen.

• Tilly had heard the rumors about David — “Doggin’ Dave” they called him — but it wasn’t until she clicked the video link some anonymous e-mailer had sent her that she realized just what he had got up to.

• Mandy sat by the empty crib for three days and three nights.

• The man in the cell was hollerin’ something fierce, his face white as a sheet, but Deputy Mason didn’t speak Spanish and so just stood there, wide-eyed, unable to comprehend the commotion.

23 thoughts on “Opening Lines: A writing game for you to play

  1. Pingback: Opening Lines – The Routine | Brain Release Valve

  2. Oooh, these are making my brain and fingers itch. I’m going to let them percolate a bit and see what comes out. I love it, especially because I suck at getting started.

  3. Sorry no linkage, but here’s a little something:

    When she finally took her hands off his neck, he still wasn’t dead. “Just my luck,” she muttered. ”However did I get mixed up in this?”

    “I need a favor,” the man had said. “Nobody gets hurt, but I need you to do something for me and then we’ll call all your debts square. Cool?” Nah, it couldn’t be this easy to get free and clear, could it? I agreed to listen to his request-but it wasn’t really a request at all-it was a last chance, a life preserver being thrown out for me one last time and I knew I was going to grab it no matter what the favor was.

    That’s how I ended up here, on someone’s private game preserve with muscle cramps in my back and arms, my hands numb but determined, wearing my extra grippy gardening gloves and attempting to strangle a stranger’s giraffe. What had the giraffe done to deserve this? Well that’s a complicated story…..

  4. Pingback: Opening Lines – The Routine : The Great and Secret Thing

  5. Pingback: Opening Lines – Lessons Learned : The Great and Secret Thing

  6. Pingback: Brain Release Valve » Opening Lines – Lessons Learned

  7. Pingback: Opening Lines – Seth’s Lawn Chair : The Great and Secret Thing

  8. Pingback: Opening Lines – Unearthly Scars : The Great and Secret Thing

  9. Pingback: Opening Lines – Sleepfarting : The Great and Secret Thing

  10. Pingback: Opening Lines – Zeitgeist : The Great and Secret Thing

  11. Pingback: The Thing in the Box : The Great and Secret Thing

  12. Pingback: Opening Lines – Cyborg Nervosa : The Great and Secret Thing

  13. Pingback: Opening Lines – Lovely Differences : The Great and Secret Thing

  14. Pingback: Opening Lines – Lovely Differences : The Great and Secret Thing

  15. Pingback: Opening Lines – Smoke and Chains : The Great and Secret Thing

  16. Pingback: Opening Lines – Living Future : The Great and Secret Thing

  17. Pingback: Opening Lines – Living Future : The Great and Secret Thing

  18. Try, try, try, and make on trying may be the rule that must definitely be followed to become a professional in anything.
    Punctuality is probably the cardinal business virtues: always require it within your subordinates.

Comments are closed.