Writer's Block: The start of something wonderful

[seawasp]

[Error: unknown template qotd]
"And then, after walking all day through a golden haze of humid warmth that gathered about him like fine wet fleece, Valentine came to a great ridge of outcropping white stone overlooking the city of Pidruid."
     -- Robert Silverbert, Lord Valentine's Castle

This opening line is rich with imagery and sensation, a dreamlike intensity fully appropriate for a novel in which dreams figure so prominently.  Lord Valentine's Castle is one of my favorite books of all time, a book I have read many times over and found that it still retains its wonder every time.

In my own case, I'll probably never be able to surpass:

"Dear God, I'm going to die," said Joe Buckley.

Of course, you have to have read the right Baen books beforehand to fully appreciate that line.

Comments

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I often doubt that

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

will ever be surpassed.

[kjn]

"My friend Hergal had killed himself again."

Though I also must say that Jack Vance was a master of the opening line, especially in his Dying Earth short stories.

This is Joe Buckley We're Talking About

[tamahori]

Not so much your books, but with a bunch of the others he's, briefly, showed up in, I get the feeling that line is how he greets every morning. :)

I note even David Weber has gotten in on it now.

-- Brett

Re: This is Joe Buckley We're Talking About

[kjn]

IIRC, Weber was one of the first. He did it in 2000, in Ashes of Victory.

Re: This is Joe Buckley We're Talking About

[tamahori]

Ah, I hadn't noticed at the time. In Mission of Honour I noticed that Buckly was the name of a scientist that rather dramatically demonstrated why Impeller Wedges and Hyperspace Gravity Waves do not mix at all well, and the inspiration for a a bunch of infamously unlucky warships.

-- Brett

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

'When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday there's something seriously wrong somewhere.' (I may be guilty of paraphrasing as it's from memory.) Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham.

Why? Well, it's memorable (I first read it at age twelve so it's been in my memory for - cough, mumble - almost half a century) and it sets up expectations of coming trouble. Also, though the reader doesn't know it yet, it's from the point of view of a (temporarily) blind man. Since the book has a great deal to do with blindness it provides an instant and complete auditory world description - a soundscape. The viewpoint character's world 'sounds like Sunday'. If it were Sunday, this would be extremely comforting, but it isn't.

Re: This is Joe Buckley We're Talking About

[shanejayell.livejournal.com]

Buckley is hilarious in John Ringo's books too. Not only is he fabulously unlucky, his personality ends up the basis of a line of personal computers, ALL of whom are fatalistic....

Jim Butcher

[ldsman.livejournal.com]

"The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault."
— Jim Butcher (Blood Rites)

[claidheamhmor]

I have loved "Lord Valentine's Castle" since the day I read it, and that line is one of the reasons.