The past is a foreign country -

but do they really do things very differently there?

William Fitzstephen, writing in the late twelfth century:
'The only problems that plague London are the idiots who drink to excess and the frequency of fires.'

Student life in Oxford and Paris is described in a biography of Richard Wych, bishop of Chichester, born in 1197: 
‘Such was his love of learning that he cared little or nothing for food or raiment. For, as he was wont to relate, he and two companions who lodged in the same chamber had only their tunics, and one gown between them, and each of them had a miserable pallet. When one, therefore, went out with the gown to hear a lecture, the others sat in their room, and so they went forth alternately. Bread and a little wine and pottage sufficed for their food. Their poverty never allowed them to eat meat or fish except on a Sunday or some solemn holy day, or else in the presence of companions or friends. Yet he has often told me how he never afterwards, in all his days, led such a pleasant and enjoyable life.’

At Westminster School in the thirteenth century, in the morning the boys were required to say their prayers ‘without shouting and confusion …. Whether they are standing or sitting in the choir let them not have their eyes turned aside to the people, but rather toward the altar; not grinning or chattering or laughing aloud; not making fun of another if he does not read or sing psalms well; not hitting one another secretly or openly or answering rudely if they happen to be asked a question by their elders. Those who break the rules will feel the rod without delay…. Again whoever at bedtime has torn to pieces the bed of his companion or hidden the bedclothes, or thrown shoes or pillow from corner to corner, or roused anger or thrown the school into disorder, shall be severely punished in the morning.

And when John Bond was contracted to build a house for Thomas Bloxwych in Temple Balsall Warwickshire in 1415, ‘sometimes he came to his work around prime (early morning) and sometimes around sext (midday).’

It is a truth universally acknowledged -

- that the opening lines of a novel must grab the reader's attention immediately.

Having chosen a name for my central character, and decided exactly when the story is to take place,  I'm now thinking about the first chapter.

Most editors and agents agree that the novel should begin when the action begins. So no long scenes of introspection as the heroine looks back over her life to this point (that's what flashbacks are for, after all). She needs to start her new job/meet the hero/find the body within the first few pages.

It's unlikely that the extended infodump with which Jane Austen began her first published novel, Sense and Sensibility, would get it beyond the slush pile today. Nor the long and convoluted sentence with which Dickens began his first published novel:

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity, and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious documents confided to him has been conducted.

Other authors managed to be more concise in their opening lines: 

In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army.

I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.

'Oh damn!' said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus.

Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

Mr and Mrs Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the East Portico of St Paul’s at Covent Garden.

Dorothy L. Sayers managed to compress the most information about character and setting into the smallest number of words. She was an advertising copywriter who knew how to get a message across succinctly.

It's desirable to include dialogue as early as possible, but that means someone has to be provided for the character to talk to.  Lord Peter is speaking to a taxi driver, who is there solely for that purpose and plays no further part in the story. 

I already know that my character will have a friend and what the friend's personality will be.  I think that instead of introducing her later, as I originally planned, she and my central character will bump into each other, and have a conversation, in the first few pages.

Now I need to decide on the friend's name  - and on the opening sentence.

The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month

1914
'Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!'

February 1918
'Then we walked for miles over the duckboards till finally we got to Glencorse Wood and Polygon Wood. These consist of a few score of torn and splintered stumps only. But the view of the battlefield is remarkable. Desolation reigns on every side. Litter, mud, rusty wire and pock marked ground.... The Passchendaele ridge was too far away for us to reach but the whole immense area of slaughter was visible. Nearly 80,000 of our British men have shed their blood and lost their lives here during 3½ years of unceasing conflict.... Death seems as commonplace and as little alarming as the undertaker. Quite a natural event, which might happen to any one at any moment, as it happened to all these scores of thousands who lie together in this vast cemetery, ennobled and rendered forever glorious by their brave memory.' 

November 1918
'It was a few minutes before the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. I stood at the window of my room looking up Northumberland Avenue towards Trafalgar Square, waiting for Big Ben to tell that the War was over....  And then suddenly the first stroke of the chime. I looked again at the broad street beneath me. It was deserted. From the portals of one of the large hotels absorbed by Government Departments darted the slight figure of a girl clerk, distractedly gesticulating while another stroke resounded. Then from all sides men and women came scurrying into the street. Streams of people poured out of all the buildings. The bells of London began to clash. Northumberland Avenue was now crowded with people in hundreds, nay thousands, rushing hither and thither in a frantic manner, shouting and screaming with joy. I could see that Trafalgar Square was already swarming. Around me in our very headquarters... disorder had broken out. Doors banged. Feet clattered down corridors. Everyone rose from the desk and cast aside pen and paper.... The tumult grew. It grew like a gale, but from all sides simultaneously. The street was now a seething mass of humanity.  Flags appeared as if by magic. Streams of men and women flowed from the Embankment. They mingled with torrents pouring down the Strand on their way to acclaim the King. Almost before the last stroke had died away, the strict, war-straitened, regulated streets of London had become a pandemonium.'

1923
'I had a walk round and eventually sat on a seat on the Embankment. I must have dozed off because it was dark as I woke up, so I decided to stay put till morning. I woke as the dawn was breaking and what a sight it was. All the seats were full of old soldiers in all sorts of dress - mostly khaki - and a lot more were lying on the steps, some wrapped up in old newspapers. Men who had fought in the trenches, now unwanted and left to starve were all huddled together.'