The writer's group that I'm in does a 'starter sentence' every month. It can be really interesting to see the different directions people will go with the same sentence. Sometimes that sentence will grab me, just begging for a snippet of a story and I'll come up with something that amuses me and hopefully the other writers. Other times the sentence will stare at me ominously and growl, daring me to even try. I'd love to tell you that I plug away and eventually overcome, but that would be a lie. And I try not to lie to my readers.
So today I was at a workshop with some of my fellow authors at the local public library (Yes they are still there and you should go visit one immediately!) and they had this quiz with beginning sentences. I'll admit I couldn't answer them all.
Can you?
Now don't cheat and google them. I'll leave the answers in the comments section in a few days.
Have fun and good luck!
Which novel begins with this line:
1. "Call me Ishmael."
2. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
3. "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
4. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
5. "Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."
6. "'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' grumbled Jo, lying on the rug."
7. "This is the saddest story I have ever heard."
8. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
9. "The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."
10. "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."
