“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
“Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.”
Those two sentences are the first of two very popular Young Adult Fiction books: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Both are the first books out of huge series’.
As soon as you read those, you want to know more. Who are Mr and Mrs Dursley? Why do we care if they are proud to say they are perfectly normal?
Why does the narrator not want to be a half-blood, and what is a half-blood?
These sentences bring you into the story, make you curious. In a way the first sentence is one of the most important parts of a good book. If I’m not drawn in in the beginning, I don’t want to read to the end. I’m just not interested.
But then, the first sentence isn’t all you need to a story- obviously. You need plot, characters, etc. But draw your reader in. Make them want to know more. Make them curious.
After all, Mr and Mrs Dursley weren’t very ‘perfectly normal’ in the end, were they?
