I’ve heard a lot of theories about what makes a first line great. I’ve read a lot of compelling first lines and tried to imagine how I could pull off a similar effect. I’ve read countless stories by other writers, including many novices, who are obviously trying to find this magic and usually, trying too hard.<\/p>\n
What I’ve come to realize is this: The purpose of your first sentence is to get people to read the second.<\/p>\n
That’s it. When you overthink it, trying to make the first sentence some awesome catapult that flings readers through the entire book, things are likely to go wrong. Even when I go back and look at wonderful first lines, none of them will propel me further than a few pages if there isn’t something to back them up. In fact, when I teach workshops on beginnings, I have to go look up famous first lines because I almost never remember them later on. The few I do remember are memorable because the book had a rereadable quality to it that caused me to give the story (and the first line) a second look. I assure you that the first line didn’t have to create this feeling on its own.<\/p>\n
So when you sit down to write your first line, put it in perspective and lift the weight of the world from its thin shoulders. In fact, if you’re struggling with that first line, move on to the second and come back later to finesse the first.<\/p>\n
As far as what kinds of things will make someone want to read the second line, I’ll put some thoughts together next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve heard a lot of theories about what makes a first line great. I’ve read a lot of compelling first lines and tried to imagine how I could pull off a similar effect. I’ve read countless stories by other writers, including many novices, who are obviously trying to find this magic and usually, trying too […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[48,49,638],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips-for-writers","tag-first-lines","tag-opening-sentences","tag-tips-for-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}