the first line of yer novel

@torunn said
From his table at the fashionable Metropol restaurant, Richard had a perfect view of people walking up and down the small street connected to Bayswater Road. For a moment he was captivated by the purposeful walk of a young woman, dressed for a working lunch with a determined look and a smart tailored suit. "A lunch date perhaps", he thought, trying to recall when he last had one.

As Roger walked his dog on the beach that fateful day, Bolto suddenly raced up ahead to the lifeless body lying in the sand.

June arrived in a Lamborghini and departed in flood of tears.

He awoke on a roundabout in The Maldives ~ naked but for his socks, his face daubed with clumsy makeup ~ and hugging an orange traffic cone with a Hemel Hempstead sticker on it.

@FMF
Where did you get those shiny pointed teeth he asked as she clamped down on his throat to stop the bleeding.

Two discs into the Grateful Dead's 15 CD June 1976 box set, he realized he wanted to listen to the rest of it using Galaxy Buds+™ ~ Samsung's wireless earbuds with 2-way speaker delivering sound by AKG with rich treble and bass, an adaptive 3-mic system for crystal clear calls, and long-lasting battery power ~ and to do so in a sensory deprivation tank having eaten opiated fudge cake.

I struggled for weeks with a first line for my first novel, and in the end I decided to be meta about it.

My food taster died shortly after the bite of my sausage reached his stomach but that almost certainly meant that the beans and chips were safe.

@earl-of-trumps said
My dearest Torunn, this is a "first line" thread, not a "first chapter" 😉

That was the moment when I realized Patricia was not my trophy wife after all and that, instead, it was me who was her increasingly superfluous trophy husband who had served his purpose by uniting the fortunes of the Fanshaw and Wilson-Barrett families. The fact this all happened in the context of early twentieth-century Britain, replete with period costumes, vintage cars, and a strikingly televisual stately home with domestic staff speaking with northern accents, makes this story all the more engrossing ~ and potentially lucrative ~ for me to tell.

@torunn said
I only wrote the first line and then Pete added the rest, and it continues. Somewhere. 🙂

After over an hour, sitting stunned, staring out at the UFO hovering over the hills behind the town, I realized it was - in fact - a speck of bird feces on the window pane.

@petewxyz said
Our sentences have alternated so far. Disclaiming responsibility by the third paragraph is a bad sign!

I have this insurmountable writer's block . . .