Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr. Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.
-- High-Rise by J.G.Ballard

She stopped counting the dead an hour ago.
-- The City Always Wins by Omar Robert Hamilton

"Hand over the entire internet now and nobody gets hurt," she said, aiming the toothbrush at the nurse like an evil magic wand.
-- Normal by Warren Ellis

"To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die."
-- The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die.
-- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

A screaming comes across the sky.
-- Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Rattle, gurgle, clink, tinkle.
-- A by Andy Warhol

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.
-- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The sky above the port was the color of television tuned to a dead channel.
-- Neuromancer by William Gibson

Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure.
-- The Stranger by Albert Camus

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...
-- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

Not all great novels have great openers, and not all great openers are indicative of a great novel. But I'm a big sucker for great openers. So much so that it isn't entirely unheard of that I may walk out of a bookshop with a book I know absolutely nothing about, written by an author I've never heard of solely because I peeked inside and the opening sentence on the very first page spoke to me. It may be a little odd to be thinking about openers as I make my way through the very last chapter of THE SOLAR GRID (which anyway as a graphic novel, is a medium that operates very differently to prose), and perhaps especially odd to be writing this as I deal with weather-induced flight delays, but there is an area of commonality between all those things; When it comes to fiction (or heck, a public talk even), a great opener is probably as crucial as a perfectly tied closing, or as important as "sticking the landing" as they say. It's not that nailing both guarantees smooth sailing in the mid-section, but the odds are likely in your favor. Or thought of a different way; I'm more likely to be forgiving of a boring second act, as long as I'm given a fantastic first and third. And I may even forgive a boring first act if the second and third are great (although, a bad first act makes it challenging for any reader to even make it to that supposedly great second act), but never have I been able to forgive a book that delivered a terrible third act, no matter how great the first two acts may be. It's no different to flying in many ways; we may all forgive a little turbulence mid-flight, but it's a little more difficult to forgive a delayed/unorganized/exhausting take off or a really horrendous (potentially lethal?) landing.

Ideally, of course, we want all three acts to be incredible, we want every aspect of our projects to be flawless, but if we're in a situation where something's gotta give, I for one hope it's never the opening and never the ending.

Ganzeer
Brooklyn, NY
09.08.24