That Dratted First Line

Apparently my younger brother is going to write a novel because like ten minutes ago, he said that he had a writing question for me. He wanted to know how I start a novel. "With a setting? A character? A description? Dialogue? What?" And I was just like, "Uh...you expect me to have one solid answer for that?"

I start to explain about how it's different for each novel I start, and within that...there are a lot of differences. For my first draft of The Ill-Fated Princess for NaNoWriMo, I began with a more fairy tale-ish introduction to the three princesses. In the second draft, I started with a scene with an ironic first line that I still really like. It depends on the tone you want, possibly your character, if your novel is plot- or character-driven, I told him.

And then he says no, he's not talking about a paragraph but a sentence. And I was just like, "Uh...don't you know the first sentence is like notoriously difficult?" And he says, "So I'm not an idiot?"

Uh no, Dan. You are most definitely not an idiot.