Post the First Sentence in your Book

You should all just quit while you're ahead.

That was all... Just... Awful.

--that's how it always starts.

Don't dis the backwoods detective

We begin with the stage case of Sylvia Johnson.

The biggest mistake of my life was clicking on the "Post" button.

here's a weird one for you.

Sunset found her squatting in the grass, ruminating.

We were kings and queens once...

>Sunset found her squatting in the grass, ruminating.

Damn user getting in on the new "bovine-lit" scene. Wish more authors would make books about cows.

Once you go cow, you don't know how.

No one tells you the thing you love most is going to be what kills you.

>Sunset found her squatting in the grass, ruminating.

What's with all this 2nd person POV?

nothing says "this book is about to go straight to shit" than being directly acknowledged by the author.
Notes from the Underground pulled it off.
The Fall pulled it off.
Catcher in the Rye pulled it off.
You are not about to pull it off.

WE

Ahem, I'm fairly certain that the proper term is KANGS.

Fucking pleb.

I only intend to directly acknowledge the reader in the foreword, which is the first chapter. Anything beyond that will be strictly first person.

"It's almost harvesting season!"
not even joking

It's the prologue. You should read the whole thing. It's not in 2nd

Thats good, I don't actually enjoy seeing bad writing from you guys and nothing says pretensious like pretending to be buddies with the reader

"I awaken robbed of my vision, and hear only yelling of three different people arguing about the ethics of preforming surgery with engineering tools in a supply closet."

Call me cis-male.

Want a copy of the book? I'm doing a promotion on Amazon with free downloads

It wasn't like any other day, this was a dark, crisp night and my eyes were headlights.

>Are you fucking kidding me?

sure

>it wasn't like any day
>it's night
>eyes are headlights
nigga what

I'll switch it with what I had originally,

I think I'm dead.

amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01G0TOU14/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1464488055&sr=1-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=fusion heart&dpPl=1&dpID=51EbHhVKuvL&ref=plSrch

A cloud slid down the valley, moving like a slug across the treetops.

Emily looked really nervous. She eyed up the posters and books in our den, lagging on the Chris Hitchens shelf. Under a wreath of smoke I passed her the joint. "God's dead, baby".

I managed to break up the monotony of the PTA evening by doing several really big farts at socially and professionally inopportune moments, something which many of my students' parents seemed perturbed by.

To all the dreamers, to all those who reach for the stars, to all those who think big and live for their passions, go fuck yourselves.

You act like "pulling it off" is some great impossibility and the act of trying is in and of itself defeating. We all understand you feel like a failure, but don't project on us

Has some potential.

Could use some work.

Funny.

Interesting but reword some things.

"You know you're always welcome."

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with appropriating local gang violence and tragedies caused by marginalisation and generally poor social and lawmaking policies in inner city neighbourhoods near to where you grew up into an attempt to make your past life as a 10 year old living a sheltered life in central London seem more exciting and character-building than it ever actually was, it’s totally ethical and defendable don't get mad.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

>local gang violence and tragedies caused by marginalisation and generally poor social and lawmaking policies in inner city neighbourhoods

stopped reading there. hope you die btw

Sitting on the bottom of a boat loading ramp with my grandfather just after the stars come out. He shines his flashlight out over the swamp to show me all the alligators resting on the banks. I can see the little bit of devil leftover in their eyes when the light’s on ‘em. Gator-fire, he tells me. I turn to ask him why they’re so bright just as the last truck pulls out of the gravelly lot behind us, illuminating his worn face for just a second. His eyes flash red-orange in the headlights.

it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.

>you wrote this therefore you think it!
>what are character voices

this is hideous. good god

This legitimately sounded like it came from an anime or light novel.

A song's remembered.

"I will literally kill you if you so much as set a foot inside a recruiting station."

it's one sentence tho

A warm and forward wind hums through the treetops.

i mean you're probably just trolling but is it fair to judge it as a whole off the first sentence of something? i didn't submit any of those but still

I found my uncle jacking off in amongst the treetops. treetops treetops treetops

>fair

of course it isn't fair

One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary.

now that i think about it i realize i have probably missed the point of a critique oriented thread. carry on

What fun, we are so very afraid! As you should be, for the storm is coming. I see the inferno and the lightning. I see God killing the infidels. Fucking God, always with the killing infidels.

Beautiful.

woah i guess dfw isn't dead

very cozy. keep this up for 200 more pages.
>mirin them superior numerics

It was all a dream

'You still haven't told me why the creep had his kids taken away from him.' 'Well, let's just say when the General Mills company removed the word 'nut' from his children's 'Honey Nut Cheerios' cereal and changed the product name to 'Honey Cheerios', this sicko decided to re-add the 'nut' to their bowls himself.' 'Chief, I don't know why you always have to tell me about the crimes of pedophiles in the most roundabout and sickeningly graphic yet wittily ironic ways you can find.' 'Well, it's either this or I start drinking again.'

Laughed aloud

Fuckin gay, tbqhwyfdskys,

kek

may i read more?

Off our knees; hallelujah, hallelujah!

What's the 'ds' for?

no

>necrophilia

Absolutely disgusting desu senpai

I'm just fuckin around, lol. But seriously, give me some context. I hope "It was all a dream" meant all the narrator/protagonist had come to believe as true was really all a lie (or something similar to that), and not literally a dream/

It's a Joycean 'first sentence fragment is the end to the last sentence of the book'

>bath day

>including rapper name in pseudonym.
you ain't slick

Trash

He tried to kill me (tried to kill ME!), and I found myself unable to stop laughing as my hands convinced his head and torso to part ways.

Hi there!; I'm David Foster Wallace; welcome to a "little" book of mine called Infinite Jest!; hope you enjoy!

*record scratch* *my own worst enemy starts playing* Hooooooh boy, I bet you're wondering how I got into THIS mess!

holy fuck

There's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface.

i always love a good 'hooooooooh boy'

>My Own Worst Enemy
>tfw It Ain't Me

There's so many things wrong with this sentence. It's like a spectacle of bad. For example, consider the awkward use of repetition that adds nothing but words to the overall statement. Consider the ugly use of parenthesis at the very beginning of the opening sentence of a book. Consider the shitty young-adult-novel-esque use of capitalization for emphasis, a turd which is rivaled in AIDS only by the excessive use of exclamation points that is so common among hack writers. And after you've considered all this, consider the fact that he thought that he could get away with using the verb "convinced" to describe ripping someone's head from their torso. Imagine that. Why don't you go 'convince' your draft into millions of little pieces, and then try to convince me that what you wrote something that is of any value or that it conveys anything at all? Overall, I'm giving you an F on this assignment, and I'm stapling it to the wall, not because I think it's particularly special, nor particularly interesting, nor particularly good, no, dear God, no - I'm doing it as an example for the class on how not to write an opening line for a book. And if I see anyone writing something this bad and turning it into me with a shit-faced grin, I will slap that grin clean off your face and fail you. Do I make myself clear?

That's more than one sentence, mouthbreather.

OP said first sentence, not first paragraph.

Critique it anyway, fags.

Lol

When it became clear to the tax collector that the peasants had no way to pay, he settled on a finely wrought talisman and the headman's daughter.

...

I like it, but it's not appropriate as the first sentence. It looks like it'd be more appropriate much later in the book. Generally, spouting something off without context isn't a good way to start. You should start with something that really introduces your work, stylistically and thematically.

This image is cool, but you should consider a different tense. It sounds like the narrator is reminiscing, why not use past tense?

that's a finely wrought sentence, except for "no way to pay". The double internal rhyme makes it feel cheesey. I'd word it "no way of paying" to avoid that, personally.

A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

How I’d love to live in a world that isn’t dictated by dollars and alarm clocks, the routines of the day to day ─ the routines which come to define who I am, but are nothing but tedious ─ to live in a world wherein I’ve time to think: to sit down and be careless of the deadlines and tasks on the calendar, to be able to appreciate the glory of the earth; the sacred beauty of the atmosphere before me ─ gallant yet gentle hills, dusky orange of autumn rolling forever, a magpie’s song and calmly flowing river, filling my lungs inhaling nature’s purity; god is in the air, a celestial holy salmon sky above me, heaven angelically beckoning my name; restoring my soul ─ of course, my endearing heart soon turns to ashes in my mouth as I’m second-naturedly reminded of the incessantly tormenting past dwelling in my skull, the involuntary, ceaseless stream of consciousness now pains me: being raised in the hellishly confining city vibrates a deep discomforting depression within me; the way I envision the untimely death of a perfect love might, I’m reminded this is my first and last try at life and that my youth is eternally gone, therein lies the hideous thought: there was supposed to be something else.