We skipped around this week to the small and big literary journals, and decided to sample what's out there for fiction first sentence hooks! What stands out to you? Sometimes it isn't the first sentence that hooks us, but maybe the second one. Our eyes read the first line quickly, and in a second our minds decipher the meaning, but by then we are already on to the second sentence. Perhaps it is the second one that truly hooks us.
Make this an exercise. Read the first lines below, and then go to the stories and read the first and second sentences. Were you hooked by the first sentence or did it happen after you read the second one?
Marigold wanted a Chihuaua.
By John Oliver Hodges from "Bristles" in the journal Compose
One of our family’s favorite films is the Cary Grant classic “Arsenic and Old Lace,” in which Grant’s young and dashing character, Mortimer Brewster, about to elope with his sweetheart, discovers that his adorable maiden aunts have been happily murdering lonely old men (which they consider putting the poor dears out of their misery) and having Mortimer’s delusional cousin, Teddy Brewster (who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt), bury them in the cellar.
By Suzanne Vincent from "Galloping Insanity" in the journal Flash Fiction Online
Nobody ever listens 2 me, says Flowerpower420.
By Eric Llloyd Blix from "Things I Sometimes Do: Real Estate Adventure"
Yancey swishes down the dirt road, feet aflutter.
By Ann Beattie from "Yancey" in the journal Paris Review
This happened when there was a country called Yugoslavia.
By Yoko Tawada from "To Zagreb" in the journal Granta
Mnted a Chihuahua.
Marigold wanted a Chihuahua.
In Marigold wanted a Chihuaua, I felt the first sentence pulled me in, too. :)
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