Your opening line matters. A lot.

Your goal with every chapter opening is to establish who and where you are in the most interesting ways possible.

Some opening lines are, of course, quite famous—think “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife” from Pride and Prejudice, a line so brilliant and layered that college students everywhere have written thousands if not millions of pages about it.

We needn’t aim to make our opening lines famous but we should aim to make them gripping.

Ideally, your opening should make people compelled to turn the page. Consider the opening of Susannah Cahalan’s #1 New York Times bestseller Brain on Fire:

At first, there’s just darkness and silence.

“Are my eyes open? Hello?”

Talk about making the reader compelled to turn the page! This opening doesn’t show who and where, of course; instead it does the opposite (reveals that the narrator doesn’t know who or where she is). And it definitely makes you want to read more to find out.?

Your opening sets the tone for everything.

Consider the opening for Cat Marnell’s New York Times bestselling book How to Murder Your Life:

A baby seal walked into a club. Just kidding! The baby seal was me. And fine, I didn’t walk into a club, per se — not on that night, anyway.

Through that, we not only learn where we’re starting the story (at a club) but also that the narrator is silly, ridiculous and, some would say, insane.

You should think about all your words carefully but your opening line and the opening lines of all your chapters most carefully.

IF YOU LIKED THIS TIP, YOU'LL LOVE MY BESTSELLING BOOK BULLETIN: 4 QUICK BITS IN YOUR INBOX EVERY THURSDAY THAT WILL GIVE YOU A LEG UP ON LAUNCHING YOUR BESTSELLER. SIGN UP HERE.