First Page Pop!
The first few sentences you write may determine whether your book is published or even read
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”-Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”-George Orwell, 1984
“Call me Ishmael.”-Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too.”-Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere
“All children, except one, grow up.”-J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
“When I think of my wife, I always think of the back of her head. I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brain, trying to get answers.”-Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
“There’s a raccoon on my head.”-Wade Rouse, At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream
“Even though I was a grown woman now — a married mom in her thirties — there was nothing like seeing my family’s summer cottage again.”-Viola Shipman, The Summer Cottage
We all have favorite opening sentences to a book. These only scratch the surface for me.
There’s a reason we remember them: They set a tone, a mood, an unease, or a feeling of hope for the next few hundred pages.
Opening lines are important to a reader and an author.
For a reader, they may ultimately determine whether you buy the book you just picked up in a bookstore, or whether you even read the copy of the novel you checked out at the library.
Openings are especially important to an author. If we get them right, the champagne cork seems to pop, and words flow.
Openings are even more important to a first-time author (or magazine essayist, short story writer, etc.).
This is because a newbie writer only gets one chance and a short amount of time to make that chance county by capturing the attention of a busy literary agent or editor.
I call this “First Page Pop,” and it’s one of the most important lessons I can teach writers: Every! Word! Must! Count!
I often joke that first-time authors write an entire book that nobody wants to read, but it’s true. As a new author, you must complete a manuscript first. And it must be damn good, from the first page to the last. But that initial page must sing like Celine.