Types of Opening Lines

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An Action

"The stranger came early in February, one winter day, through of biting wind in a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down my walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand."

             -  The Invisible Man — H.G. Wells

A Character

"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."

             - To Kill A Mockingbird — Harper Lee

A Setting

"Far out in the Uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun."

             - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams

Dialogue

"'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."

             - Charlotte's Web — E.B. White

A Thought

"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home."

             - The Outsiders — S.E. Hinton

A Statement

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

             - Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen

World Building

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms in 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."

             - The Hobbit — J.R.R. Tolkein

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