So I said to myself, “Self, I don’t like the opening of Alien Blue.”
“Self,” I answered, “In an ideal world, where you didn’t have to figure out anything else, like who was in the scene, who was talking, et cetera, what would your first sentence be?”
“Hm…good question, self,” says I. “But I think it would be, ‘Ask anybody here tonight, and they’ll tell you, aliens and beer don’t mix.'”
“Well, self, you start out with that, and I guarantee you the rest of it will just fall into place.”
Sure enough, it did.
That’s a good opening line for a query letter too, actually.