Incipit
Narratology & storytellingThe opening lines of a narrative — the ones that set the voice, the reading pact and the book's promise.
Example
"Call me Ishmael."
The incipit is a narrative's first words, first page or first scenes. It's strategic ground: in a few lines it sets the narrative voice, the tone, the genre, and signs a tacit contract with the reader — this is the kind of story you're getting, and this is how it will be told.
Famous openings often fit in one sentence ("Call me Ishmael," "It was a pleasure to burn") because one sentence is enough to make a voice heard. The incipit's classic functions — inform, intrigue, seduce — pull in opposite directions; every opening is an arbitration between them.
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