Getting started

Back in journalism school we were taught that the first paragraph of any news story was the most important. Not only must it be good enough to entice readers to move on to the second paragraph, but it must give them the gist of the story in case they didn't. It was called the Inverted Pyramid. Put the most important facts first, then add less important details in descending order. Few readers get to the end of any story, but that's OK. They will know the basics if they read only that first paragraph.

In most other kinds of writing, writers want you to get to the end and don't want to reveal too much too soon. A murder mystery, even if written by a former newspaper reporter, rarely begins with a line like, "The butler did it." Still it is necessary to write a first paragraph that will entice readers to keep going.

That's why most writers, like reporters, give a lot of thought to opening lines. This is true of novelists, poets, short story writers, magazine writers and writers of every kind of nonfiction book (with the possible exception of most academic writers, who seem to think they need to be boring all the way through). The better the opening lines, the greater the chance readers will get hooked and want to continue reading.

Because writers give so much attention to opening lines, I as a reader like to do the same. Recently I have encountered two novels with exceptional opening lines. Let me share them with you.

The first is from Scott Spencer's Willing, reviewed here two days ago:

"So there I was, Avery Jankowsky, New York City, early twenty-first century, not terribly well-educated in light of all there was to know, but adequately taught in light of what I had to do. I wasn't someone you could push around, but I was not a leader, not a standout. I was a face in the crowd, a penitent on the edge of a Renaissance painting, a particularly graceful skater in a Breughel, the guy in the stands at the World Series, right behind the crepe bunting, his hand on his heart and his eyes bright with belief during the singing of the national anthem. Why would you even give him a second look? But you do. ..."

It goes on like this. I've given you only about half of that paragraph, but it is enough. If you are a reader who wants a murder, or at least a hint of conflict, in the opening lines, you know already this book is probably not for you. But if you enjoy novels by writers who can really write, this tells you to keep going. It could get interesting.

Now here are the opening lines Charles Dickens wrote for Nicholas Nickleby:

"There once lived in a sequestered part of the county of Devonshire, one Mr. Godfrey Nickleby, a worthy gentleman, who taking it into his head rather late in life that he must get married, and not being young enough or rich enough to aspire to the hand of a lady of fortune, had wedded an old flame out of mere attachment, who in her turn had taken him for the same reason: thus two people who cannot afford to play cards for money, sometimes sit down to a quiet game for love."

Again there is nothing here that even hints at the novel's plot. Godfrey Nickleby, in fact, soon fades from the scene and so doesn't even qualify as a main character. The lines tell us very little, yet how could one not want to keep reading?