Call me Ishmael … Herman Melville
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … Charles Dickens
It was a dark and stormy night … Snoopy
Throughout history, a memorable opening line helps a book move into the upper echelon of literature. The opening line doesn’t guarantee success, but it doesn’t hurt, so without revealing your well thought-out, wonderful book title, how about sharing your opening sentence with us.
We all know the importance of a great title, whether on the front of a book, or the top of a blog article, but we tend to forget the impact the opening sentence has on a reader. The title gets them to buy the book, but the beginning sets the stage and draws a reader into the narrative, so time spent on it is imperative.
What do you say? Share?
[tags]writing, titles[/tags]
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Dave J. (64 comments.) // Nov 20, 2006 at 9:48 am
Somewhere recently I read that one of the secrets of good blog posts is short first paragraph. That’s really stuck with me because I tend to jump in and try to explain everything right away.
Like public speaking…slow down, take a breath.
2 Larry Hendrick // Nov 20, 2006 at 10:45 am
I’ve never read that, but thinking about it, it makes sense, at least for blogs. I know my tendency is to read the first sentence or two and make a quick decision as to whether I’ll read the rest. I think it’s a bad habit that comes from using a news reader. That great big number of unread posts when I open the reader motivates me to speed read or skip more than maybe I should.
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