Today YA author Joe Lunievicz is guest blogging here. I enjoyed reading his post; I hope you do, too! I think openings in books are just as important as Joe does. Take it away, Joe!

Don’t get me wrong – I love book covers. When I’m browsing in bookstores book covers are the first thing that either attracts me or pushes me away from a book. But after the cover it’s all about the opening line.

I know, as a writer, that I have to grab the reader right away. This has been brought home to me over and over again in writing classes and workshops, but it never really hit me until I read Scar Lover by Harry Crews. The first line is, Pete Butcher had not meant to speak to her. The next two paragraphs begin like this: He felt a little chill on the back of his neck, and with the chill came the thought that she wanted to tell him something. And, People were forever telling him something he did not want to hear. Something bad. And we’re off and running. I had to read this book because of the first line and what followed in the first three paragraphs. But the first line has to hook.

So I spend time on my first line.

I spend a lot of time on it and I think most writers do too. Andrew Smith, author of Ghost Medicine, In the Path of Falling Objects, and The Marbury Lens, has told me he rewrites his first lines over and over again until they are perfect.

So what should the first line do?

It needs to grab the reader, yes.

But it also needs to give a frame for all that will come. It’s a tall order, in just one line. In the case of the protagonist, Pete Butcher, in Scar Lover, the woman he meets and speaks to becomes the whole reason for the tale. It tells us about the trepidation of the protagonist, the hesitancy he has to meet new people because of the horrible things he has been told in the past, and the importance of chance in what is to come.

Look at Cheryl Rainfield’s opening line in her novel, Scars.

“Someone is following me.” I gulp air, trying to breathe.

Right from the start we are on a chase. The protagonist – Kendra – is afraid and we can tell immediately that she is also in danger. She’s talking to her therapist but the feeling of being not-believed, of being trapped begins with the gulping of air and continues in the next few sentences with, a voice that stings, hands that twist, words that are spit and lips that are dry. Everything follows from the opening line. In Cheryl’s case the tension level of the story is high from that opening line, continues with sensory details that speak to strong emotions, and promise a narrative that will not release us until the very last line of the book. Scars does just that. It grips, makes it hard to breathe, and makes us worry what will happen to a girl who is always looking over her shoulder to see who is following her.

In the case of my book, Open Wounds*, it took me four years to find the first line, even though revisions continued on other parts of the book for three more years. But when I found that line I knew that was the way I wanted readers to start the journey of Cid Wymann – the protagonist of my story.

“It begins with blood and ends with blood,” begins Cid’s tale. It’s 1936 and seven year old Cid Wymann has been looking at an advertisement in The New York Times for the movie, Captain Blood starring Errol Flynn – the Heath Ledger of his time. But Cid’s mother, we also find out within the fi

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