Hacker News Reader

Comment by teleforce | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that the author of the article did not include the classic "It was a dark and stormy night" [1]. Granted it's probably a bad way to start a novel, but it's a famous and a catchy way to start a novel to get the reader's attention.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night

View on HN

It's kinda amusing that this particular opening line is considered terrible in English literary tradition. I would argue that it's the rest of the sentence that makes it a terrible opening — it keeps going on about the weather while most people presumably would rather start reading about the main character and his actions at this point already, — but the line as quoted is perfectly fine on its own.

Agreed. "It was a dark and stormy night.", full stop, would be a perfectly cromulent opening sentence in its own right. It's punchy, fairly evocative, and it has excellent meter.

Well, I don't know many stormy nights that are not dark... I am not a writer but usually, the idea is to limit repetition, especially in the opening line.

You're not wrong, but I get a different feeling from "dark and stormy" than just "[i]t was a stormy night". The former is almost foreboding, and maybe suggests a particularly long night - perhaps winter? I don't get that from the latter.

You can convey the same feeling in a more effective way, but I don't think it's awful.

I've been living out in the country for the last year and I can say that out here nights do have different qualities depending on the phase of the moon, etc.

Please notice that the line is not "It was a stormy and dark night". Or is "On a bright sunny morning, in downtown New York" also a bad opening?

I have seen several storms during the daytime which were not dark. Living in the north I've also seen nights that were not dark at all.

Yes, but I think here they refer to not daylight. That's how I always read it :D

While we are on the topic, this sentence has spawned the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest, in which participants try to come up with the most atrocious first sentences to hypothetical novels [0].

Although I personally much prefer the Lyttle Lytton Contest [1] which is pretty much the same but with tight restrictions on the maximum length of the sentences. Highly recommend reading through some of the winners over the years, there are some gems in there.

[0] https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/winners

[1] http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com