Work Room - Week 28

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I'll just go ahead and throw out the definition from Wiki, for the new topic: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/805095.html or at least the first part of it.

Because having a starting point for your thought process can be helpful:

"In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle, named after Nicolaus Copernicus, states that Earth is not in a central, specially favored position in the universe.[1] More recently, the principle has been generalized to the relativistic concept that humans are not privileged observers of the universe.[2] In this sense, it is equivalent to the mediocrity principle, with important implications for the philosophy of science."


***
"I'll just go ahead and throw out the definition from Wiki..." is a lousy way to grab your attention. My only reason I can get away with it is that I have a bit of a captive audience. ;)

You're not as lucky. You need to grab someone from the first sentence and make them *want* to read more.

What is your favorite "OMG... I need to read more" opening line, and what did you learn from it for crafting your own?

Comments

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

Favorite opening line:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

It's the "thank you very much" that gets me, every time. At eleven, I was sucked in and devoured the first three Harry Potter books. And yes, I typed that line from memory. :)

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

You were 11 when there were three Harry Potter books????

I am so old.

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

YEP. Three! And I had to wait for book 4. I was soooo mad, lol.

I may have been 12? I dunno. It was sixth grade, lol.

And you're not old. =p

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

I just looked it up and the first book was published in the US in 1998? That makes me feel better.

Even if apparently you were 11 when I graduated from high school.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Haha. I was 20 maybe when I gobbled up the first three in one go and also bad to wait for the fourth :D

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

Cool. We graduated the same year.

My favorite opening line:

[ellakite.livejournal.com]

"Once upon a time, there was a Martian named Smith; he was as real as taxes, but he was a race of one."

-- STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
--- ROBERT HEINLEIN

WHAT IT TAUGHT ME ABOUT STORYTELLING:
I am an egg.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I think the only "opening line" that I have memorized is from a children's book that I loved when I was a wee thing, and still have a copy (not my original one) on the bookshelf, and every now and then I re-read it just because it still amuses me. The book is called "A Little Ballerina" and (if memory still serves) it starts out thus:

Carol and her dog Cindy watched the children playing outside. Carol wanted to play with them but she could not, because her legs were weak. It made her tired to run and jump like the other boys and girls.

Of course, that's why her parents signed her up for ballet lessons, to help strengthen her legs. I could really relate to the story since I had leg braces when I was a youngling, to help correct severe in-toeing. It's just one of those stories that sort of sticks with you, not unlike The Poky Little Puppy.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

In 1998 I was 31.... I graduated high school in 1985.


You whippersnappers, get off my lawn!

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

My favorite is and probably always will be from Roger Zelazny's Trumps of Doom:

"It is a pain in the ass waiting around for someone to try to kill you."

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

The wording is gripping, and you immediately want to know what on Middle Earth is as hobbit and why he lived in the hole. And then the second sentence goes

" Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

and it's hook, line and sinker. Vivid and descriptive and tells a lot about this hobbit already.

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

He goes quite descriptive there, and in places it also makes you wonder how familiar the author is with what drugs :-)

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

:D :D :D

This is how I feel when I realize my coworker Mike was only in 6th grade when I was a senior. xD

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

I think dmousey laughed at my pain when I realized I needed to WAIT FOR THE REST OF THE BOOKS, hah.

She was like, "Now you know how it feels, child!" ;)

[medleymisty.livejournal.com]

So a new World of Warcraft expansion pack launched today, and now of course there are issues. Like I don't imagine I'm getting back into the game tonight.

So I went to the forums.

If anyone is planning to write about a really self-involved person who thinks the world revolves around them, you could visit the WoW forums for a lot of inspiration right now.

As for me...I will probably go non-fiction yet again. Only I'm on vacation next week! So if I can tear myself away from WoW and/or the server issues continue, I should be able to put more effort in this time.

But yeah, like - that's my whole philosophy of life right there, about how humans aren't really that special and how I think the point of life really is to try your best to see beyond your own ego.

Nothing springs to mind for a favorite first line other than stuff from my own work, lol. Being a bit Copernican principled over here, I guess.

Re: My favorite opening line:

[tonithegreat.livejournal.com]

Xtreme comment love from me!

This whole month has been a litany of "man, I want to reread that, too."

[tonithegreat.livejournal.com]

Zelazny love! We just read Night in the Lonesome October as a family, night by night in October. It was awesome.

[jexia]

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

Все говорят: Кремль, Кремль. Ото всех я слышал про него, а сам ни разу не видел. Сколько раз уже (тысячу раз), напившись или с похмелюги, проходил по Москве с севера на юг, с запада на восток, из конца в конец, насквозь и как попало - и ни разу не видел Кремля.

Everybody says: the Kremlin, the Kremlin. For all I've heard about it, not once have I seen the Kremlin myself. How many times (a thousand times), drunk or hungover, have I wandered over Moscow from north to south, from east to west, from end to end, thoroughly and at random - and not once have I seen the Kremlin.

(Fine, that's like three lines. We Slavs are a long-winded people.) But you've got that weird, poetic, nervous energy and the sense that something is being hidden and in those shadowy, nightmarish places, something is very wrong. It's also kinda funny. It's like a perfect slice of the rest of the book, which is called Moscow-Petushki by Venedikt Erofeev. I think it was translated as Moscow Stations or Moscow to the End of the Line.

[dmousey.livejournal.com]

Mom-mom pre-ordered the fourth book for you and it came a day early... you had the whole thing read 48hrs. later.

You are so my child. ;0) LOL I wrote this without seeing your above post! Mwha *¡* <3

[theun4givables.livejournal.com]

Yepppp. When book seven came out, Ev said she list me for about a day. Like I locked myself v in our room and wouldn't come out, lol.

[tonithegreat.livejournal.com]

What book is this?

[jexia]

The first of Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

(Loved the first few books, hated the end)

[kehlen-crow.livejournal.com]

First thought on the topic (second explanation) is 'love thy neighbour as thyself' and how that implies you should love yourself too, otherwise how will you love your neighbour?

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

Bwahahaha... I graduated from college that year.