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Aim For The Heart: Nathan Bransford's Stupendously Ultimate First Line Challenge
Nathan Bransford's Stupendously Ultimate First Line Challenge
Over on Nathan Bransford's blog, he was hosting a first lines writing challenge, with the promise of a partial manuscript read to the winner. Hundreds of entries. Most were quite good. Some were outstanding. Some were just plain confusing. Voting will be limited to one selection after it's been narrowed down by Nathan and Anne Dayton, but so many of the entries were excellent, I thought I would post my favorites. With comments and in no particular order (except the first one, which is my hands-down favorite): Here is the question the people of my hometown of Vigilant, Michigan want answered: Why did I, Grace Johnson, an African-American high school senior, an honor student, take two bullets to protect the life of the white supremacist jackass Jonathan Gilmore? --LafreyaThis one immediately grabbed me, because I wanted to know the answer to that question, too. Isn't it peculiar how a man seated in his pickup truck on the side of an isolated country road with a pistol in his mouth will consider getting out of the cab so that he doesn't make a mess of things? --EricThere was a sadness to this line that made me want to read more. Did he kill himself? You already get a sense that he cares about people, that maybe he's not quite ready to do it.I was six years old the first time I watched a man die; my father put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. --LostdreamsThis sentence says a lot. First, that the character has a first time to see someone die, implying that there are subsequent times. Second, there's something cold and heartless in the phrase "watched a man die." Has this once innocent six-year-old since become a killer himself? Jerry hated his job – and not just because it involved collecting bad ideas – he hated his job because, on February 14th, 1975, he dropped a very bad idea – accidentally, of course – into the head of a five-year-old boy. Ten years later, that boy caused Armageddon. --JenI like the questions this one raises. Why is Jerry collecting ideas? How did the boy cause Armageddon and why? Just after dark, death grabbed me by the ass. --RayShort and funny. It's easy to lose the humor in writing like this, but I definitely would've kept reading to see if it stuck. Rüdiger stood on the broken outer wall of Streitberg castle, plucked a hair from his nose, rubbed it between his finger and thumb, then flicked it away and wiped his hand on his round belly. This siege had gone on long enough. --ScottIt's really the second sentence that makes the first one work so well. The rhythm of the two is perfect, and there's an incredible amount of detail in these few words. You just know he's going to start bellowing to the troops next. Their green eyes met across the bomb-shattered corpse of the zombie. --Scott MacHaffieThis sentence was just plain funny. Any time you can put zombies in your book, you're guaranteed a winner. Other fantastic entries, no comments: My girl friend was furious with me, my boss wanted to fire me, the IRS wanted to question me, the mob wanted to kill me, my dog was indifferent to me, and my gold fish was dead; clearly my circumstances had only improved slightly since Monday afternoon. --Helen The Amusing MuseJack had never been at gunpoint before. It wasn't nearly as romantic as it seemed in the movies. --ReidMy husband stood in the driveway waving his arms around as if blaming me for the kitten stuck in the tree, so I took the gun out of my handbag and shot the furry problem out of the tree and then pointed the gun at my arm-waving husband and smiled. I would be solving lots of problems today. --Church ladyOn a November night three weeks before he was murdered, Preston Lomax was making a list of all the people who wanted to kill him. --Steve AxelrodIf it was up to me, it would rain exactly 14.3% of the time. --WolfMy first thought was, "There's so much blood." Actually, that's not true, that's just something I've always heard people usually say in this situation. Really, my first thought was, "What the fuck?" --ReidWhen God falls asleep at the wheel something bad is bound to happen. --FredSo I've been thinking of growing a backbone. --Amanda CapelI was fifteen years old and shoving a geometry book into my locker, located second from the left beside Mrs. Moroney's homeroom, when I learned my father was a serial killer. --L. AmadeusUntil she looked through Rebecca's front window, Tabitha had seen only three dead bodies in her life. --Heather WardellWhen I was a little girl, I thought every town had its own vampire. --MargaretNone of this would have happened if "Gullibility" had been at the top of my "Character Faults To Be Addressed" list. --R.C.As far as Alex could see, nothing was wrong with the fixer-upper except for the corpse decomposing on the kitchen floor. --Danette HayworthWhen the UAV codenamed Blackjack first cracked the air above the Lady Garian, only two people could have foreseen the slaughter that followed: one was busy running a dungeon in Warlock Realms, the other out buying cake. --Troy MastersI don't dislike my grandmother, she just talks entirely too much for a dead woman and really, it is getting harder and harder to explain to Gordie why things keep randomly flying around my room. --SheriConsider this: when your mother pimps you out at age sixteen to fat, white, railway workers who sweat out their foetid imaginings on your young body, and afterwards whisper to you of their foul children and kaffir-hating wives before kissing you goodbye and promising to be back, then the first nineteen-year-old john she brings you will seem like a sweet, sweet prince. --CharlotteOn his last birthday, Danny Davis turned twelve. --Idea ManAfter I ate Ed and took over as VP of Sales, Charlie installed a shark cage in his office for our weekly one-on-one's. --SkottkMy death was never reported to the police. --David L. McAfee It was just like any other family gathering, except it was the first with all of us dead. --Tricia Grissom----------- Here are the top choices another challenger thought worthy of mention.
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