Før, imens eller efter, du skriver din bog, er der to ting, der altid ligger dig meget på sinde: Titlen og fortællingens første linje. De to ting skal altså bare sidde lige i skabet, det skal rulle godt over tungen og ikke mindst skal det være mindeværdig. Og hvordan er det lige, at du sørger for, at det bliver netop sådan?
Der er ingen fast opskrift eller regel for, hvordan du kan gøre det helt perfekt, men det er muligt at søge inspiration. Det kan man enten gøre i bogreolen eller på internettet, hvor der er masser af spændende sider. Er du i legehumør, kan du prøve at finde din næste title på en random generator, som denne.
Du kan også lade dig inspirere af samlingen af fantastiske første linjer, som jeg har samlet på internettet fra bøger, jeg har læst.
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man And The Sea
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”J. D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye
“All children, except one, grow up.” J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years Of Solitude
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
“It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell, 1984
“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventyfirst birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.” Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
“I still remember the day my father took me to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time.” Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind
“A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins of a word of praise in exchange for a story … a writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.” Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel’s Game