Pick some of your favorite books. Type the first sentence as written. Then add “And then the murders began.” Does it make things better? Here are a few examples:
Catch-22
It was love at first sight. And then the murders began.
Moby Dick
Call me Ishmael. And then the murders began.
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. And then the murders began.
Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. And then the murders began.[edit_reason]Another thing to make things funny is to put (in your pants) after every book title. Try it, folks![/edit_reason]
A Clash of Kings
The comet’s tail spread across the dawn, a red slash that bled above the crags of Dragonstone like a wound in the pink and purple sky. And then the murders began.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody’s expense but his own. And then the murders began.
Doesn’t always work, does it? (Although, the in your pants thing might, what with the book’s title)
This had more executions than murders, but same thing.
A Tale of Two Cities
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other wayin short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. And then the murders began.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. And then the murders began.
Doesn’t sound very nice, does it? And didn’t the murders already begin?
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. And then the murders began.
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing youll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I dont feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. And then the murders began.
Slaughterhouse Five in your pants
All this happened, more or less. And then the murders began.
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. And then the murders began.