: The way you open a novel largely depends on what kind of novel you're writing. If you're writing a humorous novel, there should be something humorous right on the first page. Look, for example,

@Dunderdale623

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The way you open a novel largely depends on what kind of novel you're writing. If you're writing a humorous novel, there should be something humorous right on the first page. Look, for example, at Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens:

It was a nice day.
All the days had been nice. There had been rather more than seven of them so far, and rain hadn't been invented yet. But clouds massing east of Eden suggested that the first thunderstorm was on its way, and it was going to be a big one.

It tells you right from the start that there's going to be humour in this book, and that the theme is going to be somewhat biblical.

Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book, which is meant to be more scary, opens with

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.

Gaiman's Stardust, which is sort of (but not really) a fairy tale, starts

There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart's Desire.
And while that is, as beginnings go, not entirely novel (for every tale about every young man there ever was or will be could start in a similar manner) there was much about this young man and what happened to him that was unusual, although even he never knew the whole of it.

This opening gives us both the fairy tale aspect in the first line, and the more advanced aspect in the next.

Whatever your book is, it must tell the reader right from the start "this is what I am". It can start slow: Stardust starts with the MC's father, before he's married. It can start thrilling, like Graveyard Book. It can start with a prologue, like Good Omens. But however it starts, it must introduce itself, and be honest about it. Having read the first page or two, the reader should have an idea not of what is going to happen (that's boring), but of what kind of experience they should expect.

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