I had reached the age of six hundred and fifty miles.

Christopher Priest, Inverted World.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

It was a pleasure to burn.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451.

I don't have to say much, do I, writers? You can tell what I'm getting at here. After all, I picked these three sentences almost at random. (Not quite, the first one stuck in my mind and started me thinking. Inverted World, to my mind, is one of the great science fiction novels of all time.) What do they have in common?

They're first sentences, of course. Openings to books. And they're famous. What else do they have in common?

They make it awfully hard to put the book down.

After you've read something like that, you can't look away. Your attention is snared. You're in a trap, and you'll have to read your way out. A long, long time ago, somebody told me that was the way to make sure you got readers. And in this internet age, where I swear you've got about 10 seconds before somebody hits the mouse button, it's truer than ever.

So my lesson for this week – I'm lazy – is: after you've written everything else in your story, essay, novel, whatever, go back and make sure your opening paragraph snares the attention like that. Of course, you want to make sure the rest of what you write lives up to the promise of that first sentence. You wouldn't want to be accused of false advertising, now, would you?

So go do that thing. And, wait, before you run off…

• Do you have a favourite opening sentence? If you do, write it down here and tell us about the book – and whether that first sentence paid off for you.
• Would you like to write a first sentence, run it by us, and see if it grabs us as readers? Be our guest. Use us for guinea pigs. Plenty of space there.

Now, I've got a first sentence to write…see you in about a week…

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

01.06.15 Front Page

Back Issue Page