First Lines—2

Last week we talked about beginnings of novels and films and how, in both cases, that first line is rarely dialogue—unless you have a narrator telling the story.

However, using a narrator can often be a crutch for a new writer—those evaluating your script might feel you had to have a narrator to tell the story because you couldn’t just tell the story on its own. So you’re well advised to look for a beginning to your script that is not dialogue-driven.

The script for this year’s film Passengers begins with the line: “A million suns shine in the dark.” If I’m the reader of that script, I easily get from those first seven words that I’m someplace else… I’m out in the universe… and wondering where I am and what’s going on makes me want to read on.

Don’t think, though, that your first line has to necessarily wow the reader, it just has to draw them in. Witness the opening sentence of Dead Poet’s Society: “A young boy, dressed in a school uniform and cap, fidgets as his mother adjusts his tie.” There’s so much going on in that short sentence. I’m introduced to the boy and his mother. I get a visual picture of what he’s wearing—down to the cap even. And I also get action here, because the boy fidgets as his mom does her adjusting. Is this an “oh wow!” line? Not at all. But it’s a nice short action moment, followed by the first line of dialogue of the script. Why do I say “nice short”? Because whenever you can start with a short-ish sentence, you should.

It’s about plunging the reader right into your script. You want to make their eyes just move down that page and seek out the rest of your story.

But let’s go just beyond that first sentence to the next one or two.

Shawshank Redemption begins like this:

A dark, empty room.

The door bursts open. A MAN and WOMAN enter, drunk and giggling,

horny as hell.

Wow. I’m right in the middle of this passionate moment. But it’s messy, too, isn’t it? They’re “drunk and giggling” not “intensely gazing into one another’s eyes” or something. And the sex that’s going to happen right now is a bit messy too.

But what’s not messy? That first sentence. Four words, one comma. Think about what that sentence could have been. They’re in a cabin, so it could have gone into lots of detail about the setting—plush cabin with every luxury, run-down cabin that’s seen better days, cobweb-filled cabin that portents danger; there are a lot of flowery ways that cabin could be described. But why? Why spend time with that. The slug line says, “INT. CABIN” and that’s all we need to know.

In the beginning of your script you need to get down to it—whatever it is. Spend no time going into descriptive detail of the setting, get us to the action, romance, nervousness between the people talking, whatever it is that’s really going on.

First lines—get ‘em right.

Copyright © Diane Lake

30Apr17

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