I mean, it doesn't leave much room for the rest of the novel, but maybe that's the point.
Makes for a good cold open where you want to inform the reader of some detail that the book's characters aren't privy to.
It's very post-modern. You start with the ending, and then the rest of the book is how everything that happened led to her untimely demise.
it’s barely post-modern. it’s a boring and overused tv plot technique that makes me groan whenever I come across it. build up excitement, tension, drama, create an interesting scene, then throw it all away with a “how did we get here” and a roll back in time
Post-modernism is 50 years old, and refers to the modernity of the first half of that century. Of course it feels cliché and outdated in 2022.
Re:Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
by rintakumpu on Friday December 16, 2022 @08:48AM
(#34014415)
Yes. And I was so happy when Squid Game didn't do that.
Re:Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
by BellsOnSunday on Friday December 16, 2022 @12:59PM
(#34017820)
Yep. That's me. I bet you're wondering how I got myself into this situation...
Re:Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
by willi59549879 on Friday December 16, 2022 @11:12AM
(#34016225)
three weeks earlier... i don't like when stories start that way
Maybe the novel's about the bears?
Re:Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
by bryanrasmussen on Friday December 16, 2022 @12:20PM
(#34017282)
Sadly the girl was not just any wanderer in the woods, she was the daughter of the psychotic and vengeful huntsman, thus began a game pitting bears and man in a contest for supremacy that would change the enchanted forest - forever.
Re:Worst Opening Sentences of 2022
by AnimalMuppet on Friday December 16, 2022 @12:23PM
(#34017326)
The bears being pursued by humans because they ate the girl, and therefore having to leave their nice home and live life on the run.
Starring Liam Neeson as the hunter...
Goldilocks
They ate his little girl... Now he's pissed.
Coming to a theater near you.
Plot twist: Was a frame job by the Big Bad Wolf.
My all-time favourite is the dishonourable mention for 2004 Children's Literature:
As he entered the room within which so many a wild night of their sweltering love affair had been spent, the White Rabbit regarded her with benevolent eyes, her posture such that he suspected something was wrong, but before he could speak Alice unburied her face from her trembling hands and between her intense sobs he made out the words, "I'm late . . . I'm late."
Perfect. Simply perfect.
The opening sentence of (what would be) the worst novel is different to the worst opening sentence of a novel.
The Children's & Young Adult Literature Winner for 2022 [2] is actually a good opening sentence:
> Three bears arrived at their den to discover a yellow haired girl sleeping, and as she was neither too hot nor too cold, neither too soft nor too hard, but just right, they ate her.
[1]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/about
[2]: https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2022