Writing Talk, No. 1 - Starting with Beginnings

Have you ever laminated a whale?

I haven't, but I have tried writing opening sentences, quite a few actually.

• “Don’t die on me!”
• Space is s---.
• Before he died, Bravo had one thought: space tasted like cordite and blood.
• The waves lapped at the rusting hull of the ship; serpent tongues in a sea of glass.
• I was born in space, I’ve lived my entire life in space, and I figure I’ll die in space too. 
• Boom.
• Ehco Corrallo was the son of the warlord.
• Even the reactors stopped eventually. 
• The traffic is humming and swirling.
•  I let go of the tether and begin to drift into the silence; the darkness; the black; the endless, hopeless, gorgeous void.
• In another time and another place a Warlord’s son walked with ghosts.
• Stryker stepped through the doorway, his armor brushed the walls.
• The ocean churned and rushed, and the world ended.
• Seia looked into his eyes and she saw blood there.
• There was a war.

Though I usually use a more compact format because I like the punch of shorter sentences, I've also experimented with more sprawled, and more inclusive, openings. 

• This is a story about many things; it’s about bravery, friendship, love, confusion, loss, terror, tragedy, challenge, sinking, rising, fighting, falling; a story about the son of the warlord, a story about the foreseer’s daughter, the story of a country, it’s the story of a year, a story about a beginning, and a story about the end. 
• The moon rose over Corrallada; the moon rose over a place torn by a war, a land as harsh as it was beautiful; the moon rose over the city where Ehco had been born, and had trained to be a warrior; It hovered over the mountain where the Warlord fell and let Corrallada slip into ruin.

It's really whatever you want it to be; your opening sentence is important, but no more than your second or third; you can put everything in the first sentence, make it a hundred words long if you want, or you could use action or humor or just the slightest description in a short sentence, and use the next few paragraphs to fill in the questions that your opening sentence raises. Or go with something in between; whatever you choose to do is right, as long as it's right for you and your story.