The opening lines are the words that hook our readers into our fictional world. The words that start them down the path of our tangled webs. We hope to give the reader just enough to intrigue them with our story question.
Here are the words that opened a debate into minimum sentences for criminal convictions. The question for my readers is this: would you read a book that opens with these lines?
"At just before 2:00 am on March 9, 2009, Leroy Smickle was engaged in a very foolish act. He was alone in the apartment of his cousin, Rojohn Brown, having elected (because he had to be at work in the morning) to stay in while his cousin went out to a club. Mr. Smickle was reclining on the sofa, wearing boxer shorts, a white tank top, and sunglasses. Thus clad, he was in the process of taking his picture for his Facebook page, using the webcam on his laptop computer. For reasons known only to Mr. Smickle, and which arguably go beyond mere foolishness, he was posing in this manner with a loaded handgun in one hand. Unfortunately for Mr. Smickle, at this exact moment, members of the Toronto Police Emergency Task Force and the Guns and Gangs Squad were gathered outside the apartment preparing to execute a search warrant in relation to Mr. Brown, who was believed to be in possession of illegal firearms. They smashed in the door of the apartment with a battering ram, and Mr. Smickle was literally caught red-handed, with a loaded illegal firearm in his hand. He immediately dropped the gun and the computer, as ordered to by the police, and was thereupon arrested." [From the judgement of Ontario Superior Court Justice Anne Malloy in February 2012.]
I write a draft of an opening line to get my story going. But then I go back and write and rewrite the lines. I read other what other writers have written. I ask myself, what pulls me into a story. Are there lessons to be learned from Justice Malloy's opening? How do you craft your story opening?
