#TeamWriter Challenge: 50 First Lines

by Mayumi-H | Jul 15, 2023 | Writing Challenges

Recently, Kate Johnston over at the Facebook #TeamWriter group challenged us to write 50 First Lines. Kate recommended setting a 1-hour timer so we don’t get too involved in perfectionism. I needed 3 hours to go all the way to fifty, but I did it! Here are my offerings…

1. “Maybe we should just get an abortion.”
2. Jonno and Al found the body in the river, but Daisy found the head in her garden.
3. Earthers knew how to kill better than most species in the galaxy.
4. What had I done in my last life, I wondered, to get reincarnated as a cat?
5. A terrified shriek snapped Sam’s senses into combat mode.
6. Brown, bespectacled, and betrothed, he wasn’t at all what she wanted, but he was there.
7. Smoke filled the valley as fire encroached on all sides, yet still the birds were singing.
8. Looking down from the top of her tower, through a haze of misty clouds, the Princess Amaranth opened the sash of her gown, stepped onto the ledge, and fell, naked, toward the ground.
9. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned many times against your congregation.”
10. Australia is a continent of impressive isolation.
11. The chilly, recycled air smelled of disinfectant, dust, and dead bodies.
12. The ghosts of her foremothers floated in a circle around her, silent in their judgment, save one.
13. When man first walked across Mars, he didn’t know what he was disturbing.
14. All my life, I wanted to be a mermaid.
15. There isn’t much that’ll make a man say no to romance faster than a gun in the face held by an angry husband fooled one too many times.
16. The word partner had never held significant meaning for him until he didn’t have one anymore.
17. Sharon looked around the little kitchen – the stove with the scorched burners, the knives dull in their sheathes, the mess of mixed herbs on the counter – and wondered which would be the best way to kill the father of her unborn child.
18. In case you’re curious, the number of dogs it takes to build a spaceship is twelve.
19. On the outside, Lux may have been a man, but on the inside, he was all demon.
20. After so many years of having the people who lived above not look down, Andy learned not to look up.
21. “Five robots rampage in a week, Doc, and you don’t think that’s suspicious?”
22. It was only a matter of time before the trees would organize enough to take over the world.
23. The whip hit hard and fast across his back, breaking skin and bringing blood, while around him the crowd chanted for more.
24. Aksel sat in his prison cell watching the crackle of the electric bars but hearing only the echo memory of his daughter’s voice calling for help, calling for him, and how he hadn’t answered.
25. It was difficult to dance in a wheelchair.
26. In all her years and all her travels, what set Lil’s pulse to pounding hardest was the forbidden kiss of her best friend’s son.
27. Farmer Framm had prayed for a boy, so, of course, he’d been blessed with three girls.
28. No one knows how the baby came to be alone out there in the woods, only that she was found four months old holding a golden apple in her little fist and surrounded by a flock of owls.
29. Wasted and bleeding from the split in my lip, I fell to the ground in front of the bar, cursing my half-blood heritage.
30. A good meal is like a good lover: it should make your mouth water and your soul long for more.
31. The tiny cactus sitting in the office window had never spoken aloud before.
32. This woman wasn’t my first and wouldn’t be my last, but I was a professional, and professionals always leave their clients happy.
33. Blood spurted, and someone cried, “Jesus, Jacky, watch where you throw that thing!”
34. Kalle was hiding in the museum that first night the paintings came to life.
35. “In the head,” she said as she slipped bullets into the six chambers of her pistol’s cylinder one by one, “is the only way.”
36. Most people thought pretty, preppy Lizzie Paine was perfect in every way, but Sandy Carter knew the secret she hid under her skirt, and he was ready to tell.
37. The sun never touches us, down here.
38. Adam wasn’t the first man to walk in Eden.
39. On June 30, 2667, the Earth stopped spinning.
40. Tick-tock went Father Time’s clock while Mother Nature brought the Season Sisters into creation.
41. For a thousand years, the lizard slept, but then the atom bomb exploded.
42. I’ll never forget the day I was murdered.
43. Despite his being human, there were parts of him – parts that Kedeva herself found very interesting – that placed him high on the list of the Queen’s favorites.
44. The house on Peachtree Avenue had a history of strays and ghosts.
45. “It’s the end of the world as you know it,” the demon said as it dropped its umbrella on the back of its chair and swung into the seat with a stylish swish of its tail, “so bring me the terrine and your best Beaujolais, tout suite, if you will.”

*** Some less polite first lines follow.

46. For three nights of every month, I become a monster; for the rest, I’m just a bitch.
47. I guess I was too distracted by the luscious shape of her ass on that dingy stool in that nowhere bar to notice the pearl-handled revolver attached to her hip, until it was too late.
48. I didn’t go to the waterfall to kill myself.
49. “Get up, bitch,” he said, and not for the first time, Anan wished she could put her heavy spanner – the one made for pulling apart ship engines – straight through his hated head.
50. Never piss off a fairy.