How to Write an Opening Sentence

I was a journalist for 15 years on trade magazines, and not surprisingly journalist training pays a lot of attention to story leads.

One thing that the post neglects to say is: "it depends entirely on the type of article you are writing" a hard news story will have a different lead to a feature, column or colour piece.

Most traditional news stories are structured so that can be 'cut from the bottom' - get the salient facts into the first sentence and broaden out from there, so that if your piece gets cut for the sake of space, the sub knows that (s)he can safely cut the bottom paragraph first, then if more space is required, cut the paragraph before that, and that, so that if at the end of the day, your previous page 1 lead has been trimmed to a 1 sentence news in brief, the original opening sentence will still get the story told.

With the demise of paper, 'cutting from the bottom' isn't so relevant, but the same discipline still holds true when writing a story for the busy reader.

All that said How do you write the opening sentence? For a news story, or press release, my first editor gave me the best advice I ever received:

"Imagine you're walking into a pub to meet your friend and the story you're writing has just happened. Your friend is intelligent, inquisitive, but not necessarily an expert in your detailed field. You sit down, pick up your pint and say: "You'll never guess what - XXXXXXX"

That XXXX is your opening sentence.

... or at least it's the first draft. The exercise is good way of immediately revealing what your mind thinks are the most important elements or a sometimes very complex story.

Iain Banks manages to provide both one of the most memorable opening sentences:

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

and my favourite opening paragraph (or two):

"Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed.

Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is . . . just to try and explain."

From The Crow Road and Espedair Street respectively.

Most people stop reading something after the first few sentences. In that crucial 10 to 15 seconds, a book (or essay, or article, or blog post) has to make, and win, a subconscious appeal to your attention. Your reader's attention span is like a snotty doorman at a hot club. Your opening sentence needs to grab his interest and sneak the rest of the piece into the door.

Consider the following examples from fiction:

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984

"It was a pleasure to burn." --Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." --Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Or these examples from nonfiction:

"Air-conditioned, odorless, illuminated by buzzing flourescent tubes, the American market doesn't present itself as having very much to do with Nature." --Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma

"I like to take my time when I pronounce someone dead." --Jane Churchon, "The Dead Book"

"Out of nowhere I developed this lump." --David Sedaris, "Old Faithful"

This is not to suggest that opening lines should be pure gimmickry, or that they should be conceived entirely apart from the rest of the piece itself. Provocation for provocation's sake is a game of diminishing returns. Rather, the opening line should immediately intrigue the reader by establishing a compelling tone -- one that the rest of the work will follow.

Compelling does not necessarily mean brief, though in modern practice, the two are frequently corelated. That being said, some of the best opening lines in literary history are long and winding. The key is setting up intrigue, however many words that may take.

The first thing I did was apply this recursively to the article itself.

"When I was a 25-year-old Senior Editor of The Mother Earth News, I did a lot of rewrite editing."

Not bad! Started with an anecdote that got me interested. And it worked—I was interested enough to continue reading. Great article with some excellent writing suggestions for anyone.

Just wanted to add that this advice will necessarily change with the times. Something sounds trite and cliche if you've heard it (or something like it) too much. Most of the things that sound trite and cliche now sounded great the first time you heard them. That's how they got repeated enough to become trite and cliche in the first place.

If everyone followed the advice in this article, the advice would be terrible. Most people don't, so it's probably pretty safe for now. The general advice though, is to pay attention to what feels overdone and then don't do that. And don't stop paying attention, because it will definitely change.

"Simply tell the reader what the subject is."

There's an awful lot to be said for the practice of forswearing cleverness and just writing exactly what you want the reader to know.

I think beginning an academic or a research paper with a question or something like "Some people say..." or "Recently" or "Nowadays" is often a very good strategy even though it might be clichéd, because telling the reader exactly what is going to follow in the text is very much expected. When I read with the sole intention of finding a specific piece of knowledge, I want to be able to tell from the introduction (or the abstract) whether I will find that piece of knowledge in the given text.

That being said, I think all other kinds of texts should be as story-like as possible, in the sense that they should be gripping and interesting from the very first sentence -- I want to be a little bit lost and not know where exactly the writer is taking me. In this case, I really like the idea of jumping straight into a scenario (or anecdote), I remember having been suggested by my teachers in middle school to do so. Having opened the text with a scenario, you can also use it in the conclusion to wrap things up and let the reader know how the story ended, given the conclusions reached in the body of the text.

My book recommendation is "How to write a sentence (and how to read one)", http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/01/27/how-to-wri... It has whole chapters on both first and last sentences.

Here's one of my favourite opening lines (all right, make it paragraph!)

The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one today and it would ne indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Master of Dodge City. It is the oldest hand gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designed task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it’s also probably the best hand-gun ever made.... When a Peacemaker Bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits your thigh bone and you are lucky to survive the torn arteries and the shock, then you will never walk again without crutches.. And so I stood motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker colt that started this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh...[1][2]

---- Alistair MacLean, when 8 bells toll

[1] http://jimalexanderwriting.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/first-li...

[2] http://docmo.hubpages.com/hub/Writing-Tips-1-Seven-Hooks-to-...

This article inspired me to go back over the posts on my blog and look at just the opening sentences. I found lots of ones that are, in retrospect, duds. But here's a few that I still like:

> You would think iteration, you know looping over stuff, would be a solved problem in programming languages.

> Every now and then, I stumble onto some algorithm or idea that’s so clever and such a perfect solution to a problem that I feel like I got smarter or gained a new superpower just by learning it.

> Ever since I decided to mesh the worlds of static and dynamic typing together in Magpie, I’ve been wondering when the gears would really grind together and halt. Today is the day.

> My little language Magpie has a feature that may at first seem really limiting: all functions take exactly one argument and return one value, no more, no less.

I spend a lot of time thinking about this because I think with blogs you have a very narrow window of time to get the reader's attention before they "TL;DR" your post and move on. I usually write about programming languages, which isn't known to be a riveting topic, so this isn't easy. Going back over them, I think there is a pretty strong correlation between having a strong start and getting decent traffic.

Absolutely loved this post. The opening sentence is just as important as the headline and subheadings. Great copywriters (and blog editors, evidently) know this. Coming up with original, compelling opening sentences isn't always as easy as it sounds.

Fantastic read.

This kind of reminds me that, although I'll read a lot about programming and startups, I haven't learned anything about writing (formally) in many many years.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for books about writing non-fiction? The OP refers to a few book about writing fiction, which sound interesting (and that may be helpful), but I was wondering if there was something similar that targeted maybe copy-writing and just general business writing.

How do you write an opening sentence that makes me keep reading the next few sentences, really?

Microscopic attention span - that's what will characterize most online readers if you're writing something online. In this context, any thought of "literary value/quality" is useless. As opposed to the OP, most are writing for maybe readers that have not real intention whatsoever to keep on reading. I know people that when they see an email longer than 5 lines of text on their display from someone unknown, they just throw it away without bothering to read it at all!

The questions I'd like answered are:

- How can you write an opening sentence that the reader's semi-conscious mind decodes even before he decides to keep on reading or not (with a 90% probability of the second outcome), and makes him change his mind and keep reading instead?

- Should I just add a "TL;DR" section on top of every long article I write because most people will not read it anyway, and hopefully at least this short message will get across? Or will this be a spoiler and make all readers just scan the "TL;DR" and nobody will read the full article now?

- How to prevent the "scan to see how long it is and decide not to read it if its too long regardless of title or content" way of thinking of a larger and larger portion of the population (and not necessarily the most ignorant: a very smart person told me that we won't read something longer than a paragraph because "if you can't summarize it in a couple short sentences, the I'll assume you don't know enough about what you are writing for me to worth investing the time and attention to read it") So then, are we all condemned to write only "elevator pitches"?

- Will overdoing it by using interesting "reader engagement tactics" just make the reader believe that I'm actually trying to sell them something and stop reading because of this assumption?

From reading good writing, and by looking at opening sentences specially I came to the conclusion that the best way to start a chunk of text is by starting to say what you want to say. Just say what you have to say and don't think about it as an "opening sentence". By thinking of structure you lose perspective of the most important thing in any writing, the message.

My favorite writers get to the point quickly and effectively. Adding cruft is unnecessary and disrespectful to readers and usually only serves to make you feel better about your writing.

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Here's a video on writing I got a lot out of. It also touches on opening sentences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLi7gXZ5aEc

I always liked Jay McInerney's opening sentence from Bright Lights, Big City: "You’re not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning."

Of course writing fiction (for entertainment) is different from writing nonfiction (for information). For excellent fiction first-sentences: "Doro discovered the woman by accident when he went to see what was left of one of his seed villages." --Wild Seed, Octavia Butler. It introduces the main characters, and shows you their relationship and their relative importance to the plot of the novel.

Thank you. I worked for the tech magazine for a couple of years and can recall pretty much the same experiences. Which is strange, since language was not English. However that problems and solutions listed seems to be language-agnostic.

Take not that this applies to writing good landing page copy. It is very useful for commercial writing.

It was a dark and stormy night.

I've been writing 'seriously' for about 17 years.

I think what the OP says is great advice. The list is especially useful for beginner writers, because it gives them a specific guide to follow.

I was taught the value of an introductory sentence and paragraph differently. I was told to simply "Be specific!" If you have a look at his dos, this simple phrase is put to use in all of them. The don'ts are the opposite: they're vague. I default to this be-specific phrase when I write.

Having said that, writing is such a tricky thing. All throughout my academic history, I've been taught the 'principles' of style only to have to unlearn half of them and adapt to a new 'standard'.

As a few people have written, context matters.

In the end (and in practice), you have to consider your audience, how much time you have to write (if it is your job, because there are hundreds of content mills), develop your own style (this itself is a trite/clichéd remark), but most importantly, have a reason to write that word or punctuation. This last concept is what I adhere to, which is why I only write short stories and poems. Novels are a completely different beast, though I am working on one slowly but surely.

I can read Shelley and Keats and love every expressed emotion. Most people will tell me, "But it's soooooo cheeeesy!" Damn right it is. So? What's your point? Context. Business writing is not creative writing is not poetry is not a short story is not a novel. Likewise, romanticism is not modernism is not postmodernism is not magical realism is not anything.

If you think about it, writing is a very depressing art form. It is one of few skills that has a low price tag in a society yet is valued by everyone. "Oh, he's a great writer! Found his book for cheap at a used bookstore! $1 for a classic!" The only writers that make a good chunk of change are the Stephanie Meyers or the sci-fi writers that pump out a book a month. Author mills. It is rumoured that it took Ezra Pound about six months to write a three-verse poem. Can people even tell the difference? Some say they can.

It's difficult to go in to an interview and act like I really know how to write. My use of grammar and style is poor. I edit a lot. Revise, revise, revise. It takes me an hour or more to write a short paragraph. It doesn't come naturally to me. The only thing I do better than others is spell correctly.

There is an ongoing joke that is repeated pseudosincerely: the worst thing you can do is take advice from a writer.

So what do I know.

PS: One of my favourite opening sentences comes from Camus's L'étranger:

Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. (Mother died today.)

This one is from Kafka's Der Prozess:

Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne daß er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet. (Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.)

Should you ask a question as an opening sentence?

The air was sultry.

Like that time someone told us how to design a well-designed site in 30 minutes, I decided whilst clicking through "How to Write an Opening Sentence" that I would read the first sentence and then decide whether I should listen to the guy on "how to write an opening sentence".

It read:

>"When I was a 25-year-old Senior Editor of The Mother Earth News, I did a lot of rewrite editing. "

I decided against it, so I didn't read any more of the post.

I will, however, tell you how you could write that sentence well:

"When I was 25, I spent three weeks figuring out how to get my articles to stay at a low reading angle, instead of getting flung back in my face by an impatient editor: the experience was invaluable, and it's time I shared how to write a good opening paragraph."