Is “it was a dark and stormy night” really such a bad opening line? Workmanlike, efficient, establishes scene and mood.
Doesn’t cut to core tension the way “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or “happy families are all alike…” do, but it’s not bad.
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The parenthetical is amazing. Here’s my modern rewrite: “The weather was bad (oh btw this was London fyi)”
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That’s not a rewrite since it loses most of the info of the original: night time, specific kind of bad weather, dark (so likely moonless).
I’d go with “it was a dark and stormy night in London”



