This one is pretty simple:
Write an opening sentence.
Post it in the comments below.
Any genre will do, really, though versatility has value.
The sentence should be on the shorter side. Let’s say, mmm, no more than 25 words. Some things to avoid, since sometimes folks fall into these traps: avoid blood, death, dead people, kids being hurt, and so forth. Think original. Conceive of a sentence that, when crafted right, is a strong hook. The kind that makes people want to read further. It makes them want to know more. Compelling and maddening in equal measure.
By next Friday, I will pick between five and ten I really like, and I’ll pop them into next week’s challenge, and you guys can choose one of those I pick to serve as the opening sentence to a new piece of flash fiction.
Today, no story necessary, though.
Just an opening line.
Due by next Friday, 2/26, noon EST.
536 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: Post An Opening Sentence”
Never again shall I run in between two men about to duel at sunrise.
She is an ocean; she is a mountain; she is a monsoon—-and she is no one.
Epic..as they say.
The cold froze Lin’s breath deep in her throat, turning it silver and sharp before it had even left her lips.
I like this !
Nice one.
Now that’s cold!
If you remember nothing else about this story, remember this: Gopher was always right.
Any message written on liver pate’ is probably a bad omen.
If Lisbon Bester had known that a single four-minute egg was to be the reason for his downfall, he probably would have ordered the quick and efficient killing of every single laying hen known to man.
In the glow of the forge the scars on the dusk of his forearms were stars.
Sometimes it pays to be forgettable – and well armed.
“Of all the things I expected to find in my tomato soup, this wasn’t one of them.”
I was less concerned that I had conceived the fetus growing within me despite living in the celibate isolation of my underground bunker, than I was about the growths sprouting from my shoulder blades and increasingly disrupting my sleep.
Lili Nemo
They had deserved so many more years of ordinary and boring than they’d got.
Shadows can fill anything, did you know that?
Had I arrived six minutes earlier I would have been on a plane to freedom, but instead I ran straight into my future wife.
He pressed the accelerator harder as if the brute force would make it race ahead of the jam; slamming the breaks at the next instant.
The piles littered every service spoke of disappointment and of a life in despair.
My hands always shake, after I kill myself because I’m too hungry.
My fake daughter loves pancakes, and she won’t let me go -ever.
Wait, this one is better:
My daughter Emily loves pancakes with chocolate chips and bananas, but this Emily at the table is all wrong, and she won’t let me go.
The tiger yawned, looked at me pitifully, folded his paws and studied my CV.
-not trying to hide his boredom.
Sleipnir dipped over the event horizon, and started broadcasting “I got you Babe” over all emergency channels.
“Fuck off, grasshopper,” the monks sucked his teeth and let his arrow fly.
“Don’t know, whose dream is this anyway,” asked the baboon, “I’m bored already!”
Only one more, then I’ll stop. Probably.
“Sorry,” I managed a confused face, “I don’t speak bullshit.”
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Denied, the letter said.
There’s no denying this is a great opener.
She opened her eyes to a sepia sky, like someone’s memory, and she knew this day was going to be different.
Well done Katarina. I hear in the writing world sepia is the new orange which is the old black.
It was a butchered mangle of a language; the sounds too harsh, the stresses too frequent, the consonants too throaty.