I used to have a habit of goinging to my local Waterstones, and reading the first sentence and paragraph of various sff works.
It was actually an exercise in snottiness - I would laugh at lots of the feeble openings, the cliches, and general bad writing, while mentally lauding my own work in comparison.
I don't do that anymore - namely, because although I still believe the opening sentence has paramount importance in any book, I have a better perspective on my own writing.
Anyway - point being, David Gemmell has, in my mind, the accolade of best and worst opening in the sff books I looked at.
The worst was a book I don't remember the title of - it was set in Ancient Greece, I believe. It was basically a set of rather mediocre prose, settled about with what are obviously researcher notes. It gets an accolade for "worst opening" because of the completely artificial nature of the prose, which ran something like this:
The boy ran along the road, grey dust thrown up by his sandals. The street was called Victory Way. Two boys chased after him, hurling abuse from their tongues. They were wearing togas. The chased boy clambered desperately onto a statue, out of the way of the other boys. It was a statue of Athena. "Come down from that statue of Athena!" yelled a tormentor.
Not great.
The best was - I think - from "Midnight Falcon". It's a powerful opening paragraph of complex guilt and joy about a dead sibling. I won't try to imitate the work - suffice to say, it was a very powerful paragraph, and an excellent start to any novel, because it immediately drew the reader into an emotional character experience.
It was actually an exercise in snottiness - I would laugh at lots of the feeble openings, the cliches, and general bad writing, while mentally lauding my own work in comparison.
I don't do that anymore - namely, because although I still believe the opening sentence has paramount importance in any book, I have a better perspective on my own writing.
Anyway - point being, David Gemmell has, in my mind, the accolade of best and worst opening in the sff books I looked at.
The worst was a book I don't remember the title of - it was set in Ancient Greece, I believe. It was basically a set of rather mediocre prose, settled about with what are obviously researcher notes. It gets an accolade for "worst opening" because of the completely artificial nature of the prose, which ran something like this:
The boy ran along the road, grey dust thrown up by his sandals. The street was called Victory Way. Two boys chased after him, hurling abuse from their tongues. They were wearing togas. The chased boy clambered desperately onto a statue, out of the way of the other boys. It was a statue of Athena. "Come down from that statue of Athena!" yelled a tormentor.
Not great.
The best was - I think - from "Midnight Falcon". It's a powerful opening paragraph of complex guilt and joy about a dead sibling. I won't try to imitate the work - suffice to say, it was a very powerful paragraph, and an excellent start to any novel, because it immediately drew the reader into an emotional character experience.
