ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
Everyone has.
It Has Been Great Fun
- Thread starter EveningStar
- Start date
It's like the old joke...What did Paul Revere say at the end of his famous ride? Whoa.....
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
Sounds like Bill and Ted's answer.
I love fatuous answers. Like starting a story, "Once upon a time, matter met antimatter. Once."
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
How many stories start that way?
"Twice upon a time, there was a temporal paradox...."
Of course one of my favourite stories for short quips is, "REPENT, HARLEQUIN! cried the Tick-Tock Man". Totally great classic sci-fi.
Of course one of my favourite stories for short quips is, "REPENT, HARLEQUIN! cried the Tick-Tock Man". Totally great classic sci-fi.
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
I do like stories that turn the classic opening on its head.
All humour aside, my favourite all time opening paragraph to a novel is in Rebecca by Daphne DeMaurier. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. We would not talk of Manderley, I would not tell my dream. A cloud, hitherto unseen, came upon the moon, and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. Nature had come into her own again and little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers."
More to topic, for C.S. Lewis, it would be "Once there was a boy named Clarence Eustace Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
More to topic, for C.S. Lewis, it would be "Once there was a boy named Clarence Eustace Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
How did he ever come up with these names?
It's not hard when you're British. We have some real hoot honkers.
ShastaoftheNineRealms
Active member
Perhaps you're right, I mean all of their names do sound deeply British.
A lot of more interesting names come from old occupations, the middle english language, or place names. LIke James of That Ilk. They also come from what are to us obscure Biblical sources. Ebeneezer Scrooge, for instance, was named after the "Stone of Remembrance" that told future Israelites that here is where God delivered their ancestors. There was also a time when it was in vogue to name women after virtues, like Comfort Darcy, Patience Worth, or Mourning DeVere. One of my distant ancestors was named William Toothacher. Makes you wonder if he was a dentist...