First Line Frenzy: An Editor Critiques Your Book's Opening Line - Reedsy Live

Reedsy Live takes #FirstLineFrenzy, a popular monthly Twitter event, to a whole new level. Authors submitted the first line of their novel for critique in an educational, fun, supportive environment. Reedsy editor Rebecca Heyman then examines what makes a opening line successful and compelling - and how we can improve lines that aren't so effective.
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[@transformationgeneration]

This gal catches a lot of info when she reads a line. And she expresses it quick. It's like it all comes to her as soon as her eyes see it. She is brilliant. it's obvious. Plus, she is kind and constructive in her criticism.

[@SiiKei]

I didn't get to see this while live as it was very late into the night for me, but wow! I think I understood more from this less than an hour video than from reading books upon books about novel beginnings. Thank you, Reedsy!

[@springrising1075]

This was an extremely helpful live show! Thank you for doing all the work you do on this channel. Looking forward to learning more from professionals!

[@somekid3893]

So on the first line at 8:00, I think you could actually use a semicolon and a double-zugma and it might sound pretty good. Try this: The smile dropped from Ellie's face first -- then the mobile; it slipped from her hand, skimmed her jaw and bounced on the countertop before falling flat, Beth's tears still pouring from the speaker.

[@ican384]

Love this, sounds much better

[@yesmeaneh]

That makes it sound like THE SMILE dropped from the phone, rather than showing that the phone IS what dropped.

[@cliveadams7629]

Dunno, I'd have said lose rhe semicolon and the "it".

[@priyamgupta4860]

Ellie's smile dropped first, then the mobile. It slipped from her hand, skimmed her jaw, and bounced on the countertop before falling flat, Beth's tears still pouring from the speakers.

[@daveshif2514]

Dropping both her cell phone, then her smile…

[@dan5783]

Now I'm a Rebecca Heyman fan 👏👍👍

[@aurematic]

«My soup is ruined» For a post-apocalyptic sci-fi would make a lot of sense. Main character found a soup, maybe the first food in weeks and it's ruined.

[@carynschmidt5061]

A few of the comments perplexed me. Must all the information be contained in the first line? The line about the guy burying someone, for instance...could who that someone is be stated in the following line? Most of the other critiques were clear and understandable, but a few seemed a little nitpicky.

[@annacollins2184]

I agree. I love this video, but one of the first line that she like didn't draw me in at all. I hope they make more of these kinds of videos, though.

[@pennywright3274]

I agree with both of you. I think looking at the first sentences of works is important, but I disagree with the people who say that a book is publishable or not just based on the first sentence. For me, the first page or first chapter can tell me that, but not the first sentence. Maybe I'm not so skilled. However, some of the sentences in here have something "wrong" with them, for lack of a better term. Like the one at 26:24. A missing comma isn't the biggest deal, but when you have a huge slushpile to go through, why waste time on an author that doesn't even have a grammatically correct first sentence?

[@TomorrowisYesterday]

@@pennywright3274 I feel like most people who submit stuff to this lady are already on the wrong track. Serious authors don't let their unfinished work be read by some lady publicly on KZbin. There are more professional, private avenues.

[@Jay-pj5tg]

@@TomorrowisYesterday im not sure if thats really true, artists should continually be seeking mentors and experiences to learn and get out of your own experiences. Nonetheless theres also nothing wrong with being at the beginning, but even experts should be afraid of becoming complacent

[@TomorrowisYesterday]

@@Jay-pj5tg I guess perhaps a more valid concern is that these people think they know everything on this channel.

[@vernalviolante]

This is my favorite Reedsy video thus far. Thank you.

[@fetusthegreat9797]

Tropes are what they are for a reason. Waking up is a good example its used a lot and if done well is basically unnoticeable. Even in her own example "someone has been asleep for 500 years" and "show me whats different" call me crazy but if ive been asleep for 500 years waking up would be pretty freaking different.

[@SaraWritesFantasy]

Agreed, one of my favorite books "The First and Last Demon" starts with our protagonist waking up from stasis after 50 years of sleep.

[@alexasax6257]

VERY enlightening! Thank you Rebecca Heyman! I greatly appreciated your focused live interview. You have managed to get across a lot of understanding about the what-when and how, of starting a story and what might go on in the editors mind when reading new material. Bravo!

[@TheLydiaReed]

Love this! Thanks for another great video!

[@annamahoney1093]

I watched another Reedsy livestream and found this below. I love this. Perhaps the most useful tutelage I have ever received. Please do more.

[@animythhoney]

Thanks for this, and please do this more.

[@GaleMarie]

I admire how she phrases her comments. "...encroachment of the cell phone..." ..."needs heavy lifting...: etc.

[@nicoletsuno3950]

Really interesting and helpful analysis. Thanks for the video!

[@davidpopolizio3781]

My soup is ruined is the best opening line ever wha are you on about?

[@NicoleWilbur]

This is such a fun video!

[@luciamillerbooks]

Thank you, Rebecca..really enjoyed your input here...

[@babetteadrian]

last one: wish Reedsy could d more on literary fiction!

[@Markadown]

This was fantastic!

[@heitorla]

The day began at three minutes past five ... but at nine twenty-seven it had progressed to murder. I hat a suspicion that the numbers meant something. Particularly the ending number. My first thought was that it was simply to determine the duration of Schumman's fourth symphony, but that is much longer. So I suspsected 9:27 would actually be a police code. So I checked it. 927 means investigate unknown trouble. There are two additional 927 codes: 927A and 927D. This last one means investigate possible dead body. I don't know for sure, but I believe that was the intention of the author in using this time. I am guessing that the time duration between 9:03 and 9:27 was the time it took to commit the murder.

[@mckayla5747]

ty for the insight!!

[@Fairybook896]

loved this video.

[@rimaelboustani1716]

This was excellent...it would be great if you could do a repeat with more first lines! What about last lines? Titles? Etc.

[@babetteadrian]

your events are really informative, thank you! Hard to find and unlike some others even by famous authors, that are just pushing products to make sales...

[@OriginalSciGirl]

OMG! Gabe is adorable! I love, love, love redheads.

[@Jay-pj5tg]

I totally get where she was coming with all of these lines, also I think a lot of published books have mundane or boring first lines but the second or third sentence make it incredibly gripping.

[@maltefiebig9673]

In one of Brandon Sanderson's Podcasts they do first paragraph critiques. I can recommend checking that out. That makes a lot more sense than just looking at the first line (although there is value in that too of course).

[@zuzannablackmore4625]

I like 'The night that Charlie died was a cold one.' It's one sentence, how much can you say in a sentence. I think what you are looking for is the voice to grab you.

[@ExhaustedPenguin]

13:20 Interstellar starts with Cooper waking from a nightmare.

[@ramonmadali7572]

Great help 😎

[@ainmartinez8186]

More of this pleasssssseeeeee.

[@Jay-pj5tg]

Rebecca has such great vibes!!

[@underratedcritic1983]

38:40 is an excellent first line. I don't even care that's it's a run-on sentence. It's very creative.

[@ludwigvanel9192]

My WIP starts with a dream and I feel it works, coz it gives the contrast between the happy memories from before, and the prison cell he wakes up in. and introduces some characters

[@geraldfrost4710]

You already know she's gonna cringe and give it a hard pass. I've got a wip called "the dream of love" and it takes place half in dreams. I know she's not buying it! Maybe I should talk to Dreamworks...

[@ludwigvanel9192]

@@geraldfrost4710 s yours a love story? In that case, I might not be too interested, but the setting does offer intriguing possibilities Is there interplay between dream and wake? luckily, my WIP is to be a lead magnet, not a sold novel.

[@geraldfrost4710]

@@ludwigvanel9192 My thought was "So you'd have given a hard pass on the Wizard of Oz."

[@geraldfrost4710]

here's the first paragraph: How many people dream of love? I do, and sometimes, oh those precious sometimes, I wake up and write it down. For instance once I fell in love with a girl I met in a dream. Usually it’s the other way around. (I know it's more than one sentence, but neither is it four sentences strung together with lack-of-period punctuation.)

[@footloosemary]

I love this. When she can't imagine death as a living, breathing thing I know it's pre COVID-19. The virus is definitely a character

[@jackh.h.fenton6407]

"Punch and Judy pub." LOL. Nice.

[@HeyJustMe89]

Really enjoyed this and love picking up new grammar tips. I think short lines will almost always fail though for this kind of first line frenzy format. Also ... a little offended at the apologies for having 3 British excerpts back to back. There were no apologies for lots of American novels in a block. Felt quite exclusionary, like British entries were subpar.

[@BrittanyArtPoetry]

I may be wrong but the first one made me think that something was on fire, ‘blazing hills’ which made the small smile relevant and tells us something about the character themselves. Right on with the description bit though, and the length. Break those sentences up. Or it could be superfluous information if the burning is just more dramatic description.

[@priyamgupta4860]

I think what the 7:18 line is trying to say is that Shadow Kissed is not the city but the secret. A deadly secret. The line would do better if it went something like, "Any city built on ancient ruins had its secrets. [Name of City] had the deadliest one of them all -- Shadow Kissed, and she was already sharpening her blade."

[@meghadas1643]

Splendid rays of apple green sunlight basked through the window, giving a final sparkle to the hilt of the golden rod, made of pure gold, adorning the topmost tower of the castle, holding its flag in all its royal pride and charm. How is that opening line?

[@goosewithagibus]

Quite confusing. There's sunlight coming through a window we have no context for and a hilt on a castle (inside somewhere that has a window?) that we have no context for. It's also way, way too over the top with description.

[@akgwriting9481]

​@@goosewithagibusI agree. Also, if the scene being described is outside then why describe the sunlight basking through the window? If the window had to be included I think it might be better to use words like, hit, shown at or something similar showing that the scene takes place outside Not inside. If the point of view is on the inside then yeah, go for the basking in that case get rid of the description of outside and instead go into the inside. If it's on the outside either focus on the outside or not. Idk, sorry about, lol

[@jamesnewman6717]

As an old fogey, I normally pay little attention to young MFA-types; however, Gabe has given an impressive display of expertise, diplomacy, and personality here. Well done.

[@gennenroyle8633]

I can see why my first sentence is so confusing. I tried to convey the city as a person. But shadow kissed is also my main character (sorta). Basically she’s the cities shadow. The personification of the ‘city built on secrets’. I was trying out first sentences and I liked this but the wording got me stuck. Thanks for your insight!

[@jayashreechakravarthy4949]

David Shapiro gets guided access by Abhigel Chakravarthy, to his pressing questions.

[@cmdrterrorfirma4244]

Is this done live on KZbin or some other streaming service? I am subscribed and have the alert on... but I don't seem to see notifications for these.

[@aurematic]

Why so many adjectives?

[@babetteadrian]

re link / voices / Rebecca Heman: couldn't find it. Could you post it please?

[@r.i.p.4485]

How do I enter my line into this event?

[@yeimy.lebron]

I wish I had known about thin¡s! anyway, I will leave my first line here, maybe i´m in luck. "I knew that nothing good could happen on a Wednesday thirteenth."

[@jackh.h.fenton6407]

"I went for a walk."

[@oldproji]

Is this a good first line? When Alice screamed, even the heat from the log fire wasn't enough to stop the man from shivering.

[@TomorrowisYesterday]

Why is the idea of Alice screaming related to the idea of cold??? Confusing. Not a good first line.

[@awiggins47]

I liked it.

[@akgwriting9481]

I wouldn't say it's good or bad per say, it does set up an interesting premise and or scene. The problem I see is that there's just a lot going on for a first line and they don't appear to be all that connected. I guess apart of that is it's just a first line and so nothing has been explained yet...it just feels disconnected, and so much.

[@rajain2609]

'Frightened seagulls wheeled in the sky, their racous cries muted by the howling winds and thrashing.' Maybe the sentence has been structured in this way for foreshadowing. The sea gulls were frightened about sth. We should at least read the whole paragraph.

[@underratedcritic1983]

26:20 Call me crazy, but I don't see anything wrong with this line (other than the inclusion of Lily's surname). The visual image of a person disrobing or removing clothing tends to make me want to read the following sentence. But that could just be me. Whenever a person is adding or removing clothing, body armor, helmet, gloves, etc. signifies something is about to go down

[@mrkshply]

So we can't open with the character waking up but we can open with an absinthe induced stupor? Inconsistent. I think you should almost never open with the character gaining consciousness because it tells us next to nothing about the story. Surely there is a point before or after waking that works better. A good example in cinema is Alien. The characters wake up at the beginning but we start the story seeing the massive ship and it's many compartments. It establishes the isolation and loneliness of the movie. It already seems like a ghost ship. We are unsettled which is good because it's a horror movie. We see the computer activate the wake up process and then the characters are awake and we are comforted until the horror comes later. I always think of the first line as a thesis statement. The reader should understand the story even though they don't know yet the story

[@gary8628]

It shows how subjective the process of editing is. The first line at 5:30 has a few problems, which the agent didn't comment on. We have a lot being told about Jane. She is standing in the truck stop vestibule. We are told what she is facing, what she is smelling and that she is hungry. We are told a lot about a character we know nothing about. We have no context and to me it feels abstract that there is so much info about some we know nothing about. So, there is no context to the entire sentence. This technique seems popular among agents because I see a lot of published books like this. But for me, it's off putting. I also have no idea what a truck stop vestibule is and cannot imagine it. Just my humble opinion.

[@babetteadrian]

re prologues: bit of a one-sided view, just because something is difficult to pull of it shouldn't be discarded completely. Haven't they read Umberto Ecco or many others? Should still be explained how to deal with it...

[@StellarSTLR1]

I want her to be my editor, she's pretty. Please don't tear my sentence apart.

[@racyrowdyrocket]

Sorry but why would you trust this editor's advice? She truly reveals her state of "profession" by 40:00, for the "Anderson didn't like burying people, but he was fond of Suzy," opening line. A story is supposed to be like an onion. Layered. You are not supposed to give everything away. Especially not in your first line. It is supposed to intrigue.

[@TomorrowisYesterday]

Half of what this lady says is alright and the other half is complete bs. A lot of these opening lines were just boring and bad. Waking someone up at the beginning is perfectly fine if done correctly. A lot of youtube people talking about how bad so-called cliches and tropes are just plain ignorant. A lot of very good writers choose to start with someone waking up because it works. 13:11 she's contradicting herself and is completely ignoring what the line has done before someone woke up. Like the line has already stated what is outside the norm and it has already stated why this is different. Like WTF. Get over yourself and your petty rule. You don't get to set rules. You're here to guide and critique. NOT to write rules that people absolutely must follow no matter what. Get over yourself. You're not the end-all-be-all.

[@racyrowdyrocket]

Nobody should take her seriously, after watching her critique the 40:00 mark opening line.

[@joshuatoms7664]

You know what the solution is for many of these sentences? The second effing sentence. Stop pretending all these rules exist in a vacuum.