Miscellaneous

Opening Lines, Part Deux

Earlier today, Seth gave us what may be the greatest opening sentence to a news article, ever, which nicely dovetails with a couple of other great opening lines I discovered today. First up, Garrison Spik penned this beautiful sentence, which won this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, "a literary parody competition that challenges writers to come up with the worst opening for an imaginary novel." It's fucking fantastic:

Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city, their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."

This one, from Melissa Alliston, also got a worthy dishonorable mention:

"Watching Felicia walk into the bar was like watching two fat Rottweilers in yellow spandex and spike heels that had treed a scrawny bleach blond cat at the top of a skinny flagpole that for some reason had decided to sprout casaba melons."

But, the best opening line I actually read today came from John McCain, in an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal, which opened with this doozy discussing the conflict that broke out between Russia and Georgia:

"For anyone who thought that stark international aggression was a thing of the past, the last week must have come as a startling wake-up call."

... ?

Full post as published by Quiz Law on August 14, 2008 (boomark / email).