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The First Lineby Stewart Ferris

Case study

Twenty-eight ways to start The Sphinx Scrolls

It took me about eighteen years, and many dozens of drafts, before my first novel was published. The opening line was tweaked and changed frequently as I tried different ways to open the story. Here, in the order in which they were written, are all the opening lines for this book. The final line is the one in the published book.

With hindsight I don’t think it’s necessarily the best one, but it fitted the shape of the story in that final draft. It’s interesting to look back at the others. Some I like, some I don’t. What do you think? I hope you reach your optimum opening line more quickly than I did. This studio is designed to make sure that’s the case.

28 drafts · Stewart Ferris · The Sphinx Scrolls

Mythic scale

I started at the scale of a civilisation. A first line that names Christ, crucifixion and ten millennia asks the reader to swallow the premise before they have a person to follow.

  1. Draft 01

    Ten millennia before Christ would face the ordeal of crucifixion, Hocol faced the final ten minutes of his life.

  2. Draft 02

    It was ten millennia before Christ was born; twelve millennia before man would learn to fly again.

Finding Ruby

Then I found the archaeologist. Mood, insult and Guatemala are character — but they still let the reader nod and walk on.

  1. Draft 03

    ‘So what are they doing here?’ asked Ruby, carefully stepping over a small trench in the drying mud.

  2. Draft 04

    Ruby wasn’t in the mood for games.

  3. Draft 05

    It had taken less than a month for Ruby to develop a deep dislike for Guatemala City.

  4. Draft 06

    On a good day Ruby would unearth a treasure; she might get the opportunity to insult someone she disliked; she might even meet a man who managed to keep his brain above his belt.

The shoe

I kept kicking the same shoe. The grotesque versions are hard to forget; the plain kick is a shrug. Draft 09 also contains an error of word order — ‘When had Ruby kicked’ inverts like a question when it meant ‘When Ruby had kicked’. That is inexcusable in an opening line.

  1. Draft 07

    Ruby kicked a stained old leather shoe out of her path.

  2. Draft 08

    Ruby kicked a stained old leather shoe out of her path and it hurt her foot.

  3. Draft 09

    Word order

    When had Ruby kicked a shoe out of her way and found that there was a dismembered foot inside it, the only thought that crossed her mind was that when a day starts so horrendously, it can’t get any worse.

    Word order. ‘When had Ruby’ is a question. An opening line cannot afford it.

  4. Draft 10

    Ruby kicked an old shoe out of her way and felt perversely comforted when a dismembered foot flew out of it and tumbled across the street.

  5. Draft 11

    Ruby kicked an old shoe out of her way.

Not a good time

Four attempts at the same weather report. Adding Ruby’s name was the only real change. The sentence tells you the trip is unwise; it does not yet put you on the trip.

  1. Draft 12

    This was not a time to be out on jungle excursions.

  2. Draft 13

    This was not a good time to be out on an excursion.

  3. Draft 14

    This was not a good time to be on an excursion.

  4. Draft 15

    This was not a good time for Ruby to be on an excursion.

Sight out of action

I was closing in on a scene. The Antonio sentence is a whole paragraph pretending to be a first line — vivid, but it spends the mystery in one breath. The shorter cousins try to keep the dark.

  1. Draft 16

    The disparate concerns in Ruby’s head became reality at the same time.

  2. Draft 17

    A silhouette of high treetops against a white sun remained imprinted on Ruby’s eyeballs as a blindfold was wrapped around her head by a man called Antonio who smelled of rum, smoke and sweat.

  3. Draft 18

    With her sight out of action her nose and ears kicked into overdrive.

  4. Draft 19

    Her sight was out of action but her other senses kicked into overdrive.

  5. Draft 20

    She was unable to see but her other senses kicked into overdrive.

  6. Draft 21

    She was unable to see but her other senses started to compensate.

Appointment with death

A promise of plot, still abstract. ‘Appointment with death’ is a hook; ‘practical reasons’ is an essay title.

  1. Draft 22

    There were practical reasons for not making it to her appointment with death sooner.

Fifth floor

Intimate and visual — dripping, dressing gown, a door. It starts a scene, not yet a novel. The white cotton is a polish pass, not a new idea.

  1. Draft 23

    Still dripping from the shower, Ruby threw on a dressing gown and peeked out of her room on the fifth floor.

  2. Draft 24

    Still dripping from the shower, Ruby threw on a white cotton dressing gown and peeked out of her room on the fifth floor.

The cut

The extreme reduction. Two words is a title. Atmosphere without a body in it.

  1. Draft 25

    The turret room was dark.

  2. Draft 26

    The turret room.

The published line

The last draft puts you in the body — dust, stone, work. It fitted the shape of the story in that final draft. With hindsight I don’t think it’s necessarily the best of these. It is the one that belongs to the book as published.

  1. Draft 27

    The dust inside the rough-hewn tunnel was unbearable.

  2. Draft 28

    Published

    Abrasive dust filled the rough-hewn tunnel.

Now try yours

The point of laying these out is not to pick a winner. It is to see how long a first line can wander before it finds the book. Paste your own sentence into the assessor — with genre and age rating — and get a reading before you spend eighteen years on the next draft.

Assess your opening lineThe Sphinx Scrolls on Amazon

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