# It was the worst of lines...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-the-worst-of-lines/565620>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [December 28, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-the-worst-of-lines/565620 "2010-12-28T17:26:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-the-worst-of-lines/565620/1 "2010-12-28T17:26:19Z")

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The corrolary.

Opening lines to book(s) that made you question the sanity of continuing further…

So - while I can’t remember any off the top of my head - I’m sure others can.

“It was a dark and stormy night” - Snoopy

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**Author:** ![Gray\_Ghost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@Gray\_Ghost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gray_Ghost)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-the-worst-of-lines/565620/2 "2010-12-28T17:44:49Z")

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From **Tim Powers** ’s otherwise excellent novel, _Declare_, comes this gem of an opening sentence:

> [@](#):
>
> The young captain’s hands were sticky with blood on the steering wheel as he cautiously backed the jeep in a tight turn off the rutted mud track onto a patch of level snow that shone in the intermittent moonlight on the edge of the gorge, and then his left hand seemed to freeze onto the gear-shift knob after he reached down to clank the lever up into first gear.

The book gets good after the first 100 pages or so, but getting to that point, through sentences like that, was a bit of a slog.

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**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-the-worst-of-lines/565620/3 "2010-12-28T17:47:46Z")

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> [@simster](#):
>
> The corrolary.
> 
> Opening lines to book(s) that made you question the sanity of continuing further…
> 
> So - while I can’t remember any off the top of my head - I’m sure others can.
> 
> “It was a dark and stormy night” - Snoopy

[And a whole lot of other authors, most notably Madeline L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night)

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**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-was-the-worst-of-lines/565620/4 "2010-12-28T18:06:09Z")

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I read a lot of fan fiction (I know, I know). You know you’re in trouble when the writer can’t even bother to use proper spelling, punctuation, and/or grammar.