Forum / Is the beginning of your story a bombshell or a dud?

Jim Harrington
Jun 11, 01:24pm

You decide.

http://www.everydayfiction.com/flashfictionblog/

RW Spryszak
Jun 11, 04:50pm

When reading for Thrice my rule is that weak openings are 99% instant death. I'm willing to accept plopping me right down in the middle of it from the start, tease me with a bit of quirk, engage me with a conversation already in progress, or give me something to puzzle over. But the whole idea is hook me. If I'm not on the line by the third paragraph I start to skim. If I skim, you're chances just got worse. If something is redeemable because it gets good later I'll tell the writer that whether they want to hear it or not. So I can be kind, you see.

Engage me. It really doesn't take much more than the writer's intention.

Great article.

Ann Bogle
Jun 11, 08:41pm

I attended AWP Chicago and stayed at the Palmer House, where Johns Hopkins hosted a literary recital in of the suites. I had the chance to meet and hear wonderful writers, including the brilliant Rae Bryant. Somehow a group of us landed in my smoking room on the 16th floor after the reading. Each person brought a bottle, and we dj'd music on youtube on my laptop. A party. While two of the men were on a tequila run, another man, a whiskey drinker, challenged me to give him a good first line, one that I had written. So I went to my Fictionaut stash and tried to read him one after the other. He hated every single one -- and a lot of these were the openings of nicely published stories. I felt the weirdest form a delight to be missing so badly with this man, who teaches fiction at U of Utah. I mean, he has a great job, and he is apparently quite a writer, but maybe in a more traditional vein, I don't know. He's from Arkansas and id's as a hillbilly, what the other writer with us said to put it in perspective. After trying 20 times with a first line, I won his acceptance with one of them. It was so fun shooting lines at him like whacking ping pong balls at a moralist.

RW Spryszak
Jun 11, 09:06pm

>shudder> I'd never been seen at a writer's conference or anything like that. I'm from the b. traven school of literary socialization...

W.F. Lantry
Jun 11, 10:11pm

Ann, I really, truly, wonder about all this. Perhaps for people who believe in plot and character and conflict and catharsis and all that, it's meaningful. Perhaps.

Or maybe people aren't being wholly exact in what they say they're looking for. In comedy, one is told to start the skit "just after you've jumped out of the plane without a parachute." And that may hold true for certain genres of fiction, but certainly not all.

If it did, no-one would have kept reading after a first line like "Whole sight, or all the rest is desolation." Wouldn't even make it out of the slush pile... ;)

I really hope we're doing more with readers than setting them on a roller coaster and pulling the switch. Readers aren't fish, we shouldn't try to 'hook' them. I really hope there are much larger goals than reeling them in and frying them up... ;)

Best,

Bill

Ann Bogle
Jun 12, 12:16am

100 best first lines from novels at American Book Review:

http://www.americanbookreview.org/100BestLines.asp

Best last lines are listed at the website, too.

Thanks, Bill, for the John Fowles first line. I looked it up and looked up B. Traven, too, and read twice Jim Harrington's post (that got us started).

I read The French Lieutenant's Woman in a course called Counter-environmental Fiction at Binghamton University in the 80s. The syllabus included Fowles, Cather, Robbins, O'Toole, and Percy.

The first line of The Second Coming is, "The first sign that something had gone wrong manifested itself while he was playing golf." I loved that book; its first line doesn't "give it away" so much as "bring it back."

I bought Ha Jin's Waiting due to its first lines, and the first paragraphs of Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor caused me to feel I had never written any line, first, last, or middle.

The beginning and ending matter most to most teachers.

I hold on to my trigger line, a tangent that takes me into the main body, until I rewrite it to serve as a real opening or delete it.

James Lloyd Davis
Jun 12, 12:38am

I would imagine that the man who wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman and other well-received works could, some eight years later, begin a novel in any way that pleased him and still find a publisher.

The rest of us, plebeians without as much reputation or history of publishing success as Mr. Fowles, should probably try not to count on the value of the readers' expectation.

A hook doesn't necessarily make a writer a hooker. In a highly competitive and rapidly diminishing field, you can either be quixotic or published.

As much as I love and applaud the romantic notions of the don, as a writer, I would choose the latter.

RW Spryszak
Jun 12, 01:08am

Just from an editor's viewpoint... I read a lot of bad fiction. Make me notice you or perish. All there is to it.

W.F. Lantry
Jun 12, 01:28am

Thanks, Ann, for that list. Fascinating stuff.

From here, it looks like the best first line hint of what a book will be like is a tie: either Tristram Shandy or The Sot-Weed Factor. Worst indication: Catch-22. ;)

For some reason, when I think of Lolita, I remember it starting with "Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury..." Maybe that's the prologue? And then there's something about the ape in the jardin des plantes...

James, I'm persuaded the field is constantly expanding. If it weren't, there wouldn't be room for a doofus like me! ;)

RW, I don't envy your having to face the slush pile. Whatever gets you through the night, as we used to say... ;)

Best to all,

Bill

John Riley
Jun 15, 02:48am

Great link. They should have included the opening sentence of "Absalom Absalom"

"From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office beacause her father had called it that — a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them."

David Ackley
Jun 15, 07:30pm

Ann's point above that "the beginning and ending ," matter to most teachers should be taken as a warning label: whenever these propositions start to be taught or taken as received wisdom, they should be jettisoned. Formula is the death of art. Editors are free to reject stories for boring first lines, last lines or any other reason they wish. It seems to me they do both themselves and their readers a disservice by approaching a form that needs to be balanced among its parts as if the first sentence, paragraph or page were all that mattered. They aren't, it's how they fit the whole that matters. Ditto for last lines.

The last line of Ray Carver's greatest story, "Cathedral," is barely worth quoting: "It was really something."

David Ackley
Jun 15, 07:58pm

As to the list of 100 best first lines, it appears it might have been derived by taking a list of 100 "great books," mixed with a few old warhorse first lines, such as "Happy families are all alike....," (something Tostoi himself probably didn't even believe.) "Lolita fire of my life, loins," whatever, is much less powerful than the opening of the same author's INVITATION TO A BEHEADING, (" In accordance with the law, the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper.") which doesn't get a mention.

The first line of "The Stranger," is entirely flat and makes no sense unless the following line is quoted, a fact which seems to have escaped the List Makers. " Mother died today. [Or maybe yesterday,I'm not sure.]"

I just read the best book I've read in some time, W.G. Sebald's AUSTERLITZ. The first line, judging by the fact that I don't remember it was unmemorable, and in fact only a few lines might have been worth quoting. The entire book is extraordinary, an axe taken to the frozen waters of the soul in something like Kafka's phrase.

There may be in fact very little relation between the quality of the writing line by line, beyond some minimal degree of syntactical craft and competency, and the ultimate quality of a work. Consider one of the few arguably great American novels, Dreiser's AMERICAN TRAGEDY, legendary for Dreiser's poor style.

I suppose these attempts at rules ( Knock 'em dead with the first line.) can be a comfort to editors, maybe even beginning writers and certainly teachers-- who, having been one, I can assure you, are often in dire need of pronouncements to fill the yawning hours--but they have little to do with a work in its making, where one finds that every line matters,that a perfected line can fuck up an entire story, and that often the most innocuous lines to read are the most important to the outcome, and come at the greatest cost in the writing.

Dolemite
Jun 15, 08:48pm

"I suppose these attempts at rules ( Knock 'em dead with the first line.) can be a comfort to editors, maybe even beginning writers and certainly teachers-- who, having been one, I can assure you, are often in dire need of pronouncements to fill the yawning hours--but they have little to do with a work in its making, where one finds that every line matters,that a perfected line can fuck up an entire story, and that often the most innocuous lines to read are the most important to the outcome, and come at the greatest cost in the writing."

Spot on!

RW Spryszak
Jun 15, 09:00pm

It's a tough old world. People who don't mind reading mediocre shit can plow through boring and tedious openings all they like. Good writing is good from word one, not "wait around and see what develops," or "wait wait, here's where I say..."

I reject the idea 100% that I'm doing a disservice to myself or my readers by putting a lot of weight on the opening and the opening line of a piece. In fact I call bullshit on that argument. I view what I do as saving our readers from tedium, amateurs, and a lack of ability masquerading as ostentatious, "experimental" writing, and whatever service or disservice it has to do with me is totally unimportant.

I read everything I receive from start to finish. But if you want a good chance with me, don't let me sit around waiting to find out if you can write or not. Conversely, a great start followed by pages of mired crap makes me even angrier. So there is that.

The plain fact is that, in the real world, you're going to self-publish forever if you can't get past the watchdog. So get past the watchdog. It's for your own good.

Ramon Collins
Jun 15, 09:24pm

Thanks to Jim H., this thread really has some meat on its bones. It’s educational to read writers write about writing. Right?

"Beginning writers write for themselves. Educated writers write for the readers. Professional writers write for the editors.”

This ol’ chestnut makes sense because if you don’t catch the editor’s eye early on, you’ll only have Friends & Family for readers (as with 99% of online fiction writers).

And, face it, if you don’t have an agent you’re not going to earn one cryin’ dime. I’ve been an online “hobby” writer for about 15 years; spent over $1,000 and earned $125. I write because I’m a Dinosaur who likes to read and write -- people who do this are an Endangered Species.

Thank you, Ann, David, Matt and Jim.

Ann Bogle
Jun 15, 10:12pm

A brainy thread. I love this. My mind is yawning in every direction, asking for a mother worm. I agree with Ackley about literature: Dreiser (that is SO right) and the perfect line that fucks up the story, and I agree with Spryszak about the slush pile. It might be easier to write well a long story, than to tell a long story poorly and yet break hearts with it.

Ramon Collins' chestnut is a useful one. Audience of self (very stubborn pro's get away with this); audience of the readers (a little wide); audience of the editor (but who IS the editor? What about editors who don't edit?). Still, I will keep it in mind and think of a test for it.

David Ackley
Jun 15, 10:41pm

Bob, I have no problem at all with your establishing your own standard for your taste and magazine, one I have both passed and failed, to provide truth in labelling. I've been rejected by a lot of magazines and accepted by a few and this never bothers me. I don't want to be confused with someone who actually gives a shit if a particular editor likes or does not like a particular piece.

I do have a problem with editors( or anyone else) as happens here, promoting a subjective standard as if it contained universal prescriptions for art. What you find boring, I assume you might be willing to admit, is something that someone else, indeed possibly legions of others might find interesting, compelling or heartbreaking. Maybe not. In any case, it is so. I've been reading Beckett's letters, and the number of editors and then critics who initially failed to get him, no doubt finding him boring, is enough to fill an Irish pub.

Nevertheless, you're obviously entitled to establish and enforce the standards for you and your magazine. But if you don't wish to offer them up for challenge, what are we doing here?

John Riley
Jun 16, 01:24am

When I first read THE GOOD SOLDIER I was instantly intrigued by the famous first sentence: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” But when I convinced a book group I was in to read it a few years ago three of the other four members said they knew from the first sentence it would be a boring book and couldn't read more than a few pages.

James Lloyd Davis
Jun 16, 03:18am

I love a good bar fight, primarily as a spectator sport, but that's usually impossible. I prefer to watch, but even a passive observer can get whacked upside of the head by a flying chair. A life lesson I learned in the Butterfly Club in Hong Kong, ca 1965.

Besides, why should everybody else have all the fun? As artists, we should embrace the discipline of working through the pain for the greater glory of honest expression. If we don't weigh in with opinions, we may never learn enough about ourselves to stand corrected when we should.

No doubt, one man's 'universal standard of quality' is often another's sleeping pill. It's hard to throw aside weighty opinions drenched in stentorian words, but in the bottom line, concerning what we really like to read as opposed to what we should? Will we ever be perfectly honest?

Taste is ruled by prejudice and personal bias, qualities that, in other context, can be considered as rooted in the baser elements of our psyche. How do we measure success in writing? My guess would be... when we reach an intended audience. Do we want to appeal to the wider audience? Or do we target a specific segment of the population? How we answer that question will rule the relative value we place on the construction of our work.

We are all so different. There are no singular, universal truths in what we as writers do, but we can be certain of one thing, putting a reader to sleep during the first 10 to 25% of our word count is probably not a good idea.

It wouldn't diminish the power of content worthy of the intellectual level of, say, Beckett, to use every trick and gimmick to bring the largest number of possible readers to that higher plane. One of those gimmicks would be to hook the unwilling mind with prose that appeals to base universal human prejudices, but ultimately compels and drags them into the cathedral of the mind, interests them long enough for them to learn a thing or two about something they might never have otherwise considered.

That's the bottom line in my own personal reason for ever getting involved with this writerly business in the first place. I want my reader to think about something I believe in. It's... personal propaganda, yeah, but all knowledge begins with conversation, the trading of ideas.

If I can make someone think about something he or she never thought about before, I believe I've done good. And if they are entertained along the way, what's the harm?

RW Spryszak
Jun 16, 07:36am

I don't think it is too much to ask a writer to do good writing right from the start. If people want to have a standard by which they will allow shit to try and pass for art that's their business. If people want to call me out for demanding that a writer entertain me instead of serving their own self that is also their business. I don't have any magic key to what is or isn't worthwhile reading, nor do I have any axiomatic definition of "art."

In my first posting here I said "When reading for Thrice my rule is that weak openings are 99% instant death." And so far no argument has persuaded me that this is either wrong headed or unfair.

But I have read a lot of whining.

Be good right from the start or piss off. It's all I've ever really said. Others can sit around and hope something develops. When I'm in my role as an editor that's what is expected. When you come to Thrice that's what you'll get.

And as a writer, trying to give my best is why I'll go through 37 re-writes if I have to. Just because I wrote something doesn't make it sacrosanct.

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jun 16, 11:32am

"I don't think it is too much to ask a writer to do good writing right from the start."

On anything s/he submits, absolutely.

My experience also on the reading end of the slush pile is that the first paragraph almost always indicates the quality of the remaining ones. There is the 'hook', of course, the interest factor, and there is the prose itself. I DO read EVERY piece from beginning to end, and about two-thirds of those immediately go into the 'sorry, a pass this time' category. The major culprit is the first page: too much throat clearing and/or poor writing (typified by turn-offs such as excessive passive voice [generally indicating leading with backstory], too many characters, non-identifiable characters and objects [a plethora of it and s/he], and mediocre word choice and syntax.

The remaining third get reread in hopes there is someting to salvage through editing. Because that is the job of the editor.

I am less concerned about a stellar first line, though that helps. But that first line better have purpose and point me to the rest of the story, and it better not be gobbledy-gook.

But I admit--I do get annoyed when I sense writers are not sending their best work, and not their closely proofed and edited worked.

"I want my reader to think about something I believe in." Absolutely. An impossible task, however, if the writing is incomprehensible (yours is not, JLD).

Fascinating convo here--feel like I'm in class. A good thing. Peace...

Marcus Speh
Jun 16, 09:07pm

Edith Wharton said about the short story form:

“Instead of a loose web spread over the surface of life [French and Russian art] have made it, at its best, a shaft driven straight into the heart of human experience.”

…this implies a fair amount of sharpening and deliberating when shaping the tip of said shaft. A dull tip will not stick. It will not separate the chaff from the chill.

This discussion inspired me to go back, which I very rarely do except to toot my own horn and look at some first spears that I’ve recently thrown at the world.

Here are first sentences of 10 flashes recently published but created between 2009—2012. I’ve not included proper short stories, because I think what holds for the short form is even more true for the very short, except that flash is a (much) shorter spear (sometimes only a toothpick really). Because of the reduced length of the whole, the first sentence has more responsibility than in other longer forms.

My observations based on the opening sentences below are personal and private; they may parallel your own developments with regard to the short form; this is just a journal entry prompted by the debate.

(2009)

«The child sits at the lake shore and everything is happening around him.» [1]

«Johnson had found a way to store energy in its purest form.» [2]

—The oldest flashes [1,2] from 2009 seem to me to have the vaguest beginnings. The pieces attached to them are more dreamlike, as if didn’t know that I had a wand in my hand. Only just having begun to write, I was in actual fact groping for technique, theme and tension. I would write about anything in a bit of a haze. The pieces end much like they begin, often abrupt, like a sudden weather change.

(2010)

«I sat on top of a Sycamore tree, comfy, and looked around, aimed here and there without any real passion for aiming until a girl appeared.» [3]

«He wonders if the billboard yelling “drink – drive – go to jail” is an incitement for a young Kerouac.» [4]

—The flashes [3,4] written in 2010 are not as vague as the previous ones. Their weakness to my mind’s current eye is their realism and in their chattiness. Rather than setting the scene, I was exploring a set scene. There was little thought of character: flash is not a canvas for full portraits. My search for theme was coming to an end, too. And this was the last year when I’d write a flash purely based on single thought, like a flame of magic bursting forth. My technique was pretty shaky: when I look at these today, I’d like to trim them further or (more my current mindset) use them for much longer stories. As for tension, I find them rather limp, the pace slightly off.

(2011)

«Above my head, the swallows flew.» [5]

«After twenty years of marriage K. had given H. everything except children.» [6]

«The fire-man cometh, the children cried and began to dance as their parents had danced and the parents of their parents before them.» [7]

«In the night after the killing, Ali washes himself in a bowl.» [8]

—The four samples of 2011 [5,6,7,8] are technically more advanced, they carry more complex messages. The first sentences reveal some of that. Already at the start you’ve arrived at some of the deeper meaning. The themes are all existential. The tension is palpable. It feels as if with regard to flash I’ve come to my end of the triple of {theme, technique, tension}, for now anyway.

(2012)

«This spring I will forsake all donations in the form of soft compliments.» [9]

«This morning, I walked across the square that had once been in the No Man's land separating the sectors of Berlin when I noticed an old man by the side of the road who pointed upward and said, “This is where they show the best movies.”» [10]

—As of 2012, I’ve abandoned flash as an art form. What I’ve written in this vein this year, like [9, 10], are occasional pieces only, usually prompted by curiosities, circumstances, calamities…my attention has wandered to stories of (a lot) more than 1000 words. I no longer write based on an opening (or closing) sentence. I carry stories around in my head for weeks at a time now, often I don’t write them.

The craft of the first sentence follows different rules in the realm of the longer short story, I think. Opening sentences are still important, but opening paragraphs are key to creating that special, visceral force, which pulls the reader in or…not, because there’re so many other reasons why people may read on (or not). The heightened sense of shaping stories in a small space will, of course, stay with me and may, for some time, even dominate my writerly sensibility—a little like the first spells a magician has learnt perhaps, which will always be a foundation, good to remember, good to dream upon.

[1] Listen (2009), Mad Hatters Review, http://bit.ly/K4NeuT
[2] The Passage (2009), Mad Hatters Review, http://bit.ly/K4NeuT
[3] Sniper (2010), Dogzplot, http://bit.ly/Mf3whu
[4] The Serious Writer in Texas (2010), Tuck Magazine,http://bit.ly/K3wZhB
[5] Ginger (2011), Mad Hatters Review, http://bit.ly/K4NeuT
[6] Mother's Day (2011), THIS, http://bit.ly/LNO62m
[7] Candy (2011), fwriction:review, http://bit.ly/wlTupR
[8] The Sodomized Dictator (2011), http://bit.ly/zfyRb9
[9] Spring Things To Do (2012), Yareah Magazine, http://bit.ly/HT8hzb
[10] The Berlin Party is over, 1961 (2012), Tulpendiebe, http://bit.ly/JInbJm

David Ackley
Jun 17, 05:29pm

Marcus,
It's too bad this thread seems to have been abandoned by all just when you gave it cause for renewed interest. Examples are always helpful when a topic threatens to spin itself on the wings of rhetoric or the sluggish feet of mud-wrestle into one state or another of abstraction. Your analyses of them added, leading toward new thoughts and some clarifations:

Here's one:
I couldn't read the first lines without going to the stories, and both readings ended up confirming the proposition that a first line is merely a door opening into a story.

In most cases if I read the first line, I am already committed to reading the whole story.

Which leads me to think that a first line is only as good as the story it opens, and the judgement of whether it is "good" writing follows simply on how, and how well, in hindsight, it fit with the rest.

After each of your stories, the first line had dissolved into some sense of the whole, and what remained was the full impression of the piece, how much I felt and reacted to the theme, along with some startling moments or images in the story.

These are all good pieces, and I think it would be as useful for any writer, as it was for me, to read them together with your comments and come to their own conclusions.

Marcus Speh
Jun 17, 06:09pm

Thanks for coming back to play, David and for the close reading and commenting. It was probably Linda's fault that I wrote this because she said the thread felt like class...and I've never ha writing class...wrote this largely for my own pleasure and perhaps because I'm forever fascinated by the workings of the mind.

I think you might be right when you put the value of the entry sentence in the context of the whole piece. Didn't you mention Sebald somewhere? I've discovered and read him, too, in the past few months and he's helped me re-evaluate some of my own qualifiers that had become encrusted by prejudice...because he's quite different, you know. Also his art is rather independent of genre, long or short form...I mean to write about this on my blog...

David Ackley
Jun 17, 06:31pm

Since it seems to bear on the discussion of whatever "good" writing might be, Marcus, I have to offer up this passage( and a number of like passages) from Sebald's AUSTERLITZ.
" I remember, said Vera, Austerlitz added, one such hawker, a man called Saly Bleyberg..." He has, you see, Austerlitz narrating a story told him by his old nanny, Vera, but in a way that seems unbearaby awkward, with the coupled reference to each narrator by name( " Said Vera, Austerlitz added...") a passage that would be shredded in any creative writing class. But oddly, the repeated use of this device, though never entirely losing its clumsiness, has a curious effect on the reader, it begins to make a point. I won't say what that is, but it does seem to be an instance where what is--by almost any known standard poorly written-- comes to seem deliberate, purposeful even, and brings home to the reader something that might not be achievable in any other way.

James Lloyd Davis
Jun 17, 08:42pm

I think that short fiction, especially, needs a punch or two to flag down a passing reader. I can offer two examples from flash fictions I posted here in the past that seem to have attracted some readings when I had them up. (They've been off the board for a while.)

First is "Foreplay" a story that starts out with dialogue:

“Lately?” He says, “I can't write anything without a body count.”

Here's the whole thing: http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/james-lloyd-davis/foreplay

Second is "Women? Don't get me started." It is a story written entirely in dialogue form like some guy talking in a bar. It begins:

Man loves a woman? Kill her in a heartbeat.

Here's the hull thin': http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/james-lloyd-davis/women-dont-get-me-started

Snappy dialogue and a catch line are bait. I think the merit of the stories lay in the body, not the come-ons, but every short piece is in competition with soooo many others, here and pretty much elsewhere.

This kind of writing, dialogue centered and idiomatic always seems to succeed and genre writers get lots of mileage from the use of them. I like to engage a reader, lull him or her to a state of mild satisfaction while burying subliminal messages that will make them think. These two pieces are not all that deep, but would serve as a beginning for something stronger.

I'm not aiming for the LCD, but I am trying to get a reader to keep moving through my work. In a novel, you would use other, and even sensational props to keep the reader going, but you have a lot of space between these sensualistic, stylistic, hallucinogenic bumps to make literary history, if that's what you really want.

I know people tend to sniff at the idea that such things are necessary, but time and the readership will tell.

Marcus Speh
Jun 17, 08:54pm

@david sebald is known for this style, which seems peculiar even to germans but is, as you point out very effective, especially over the long haul, though his strength is the novella, or the novel built up from different novellas (that is also a german thing, novellas have always been favorites in the german canon). many german critics cannot abide sebald's style and say he sounds like a 19th century man...interestingly he got famous abroad first, against the german critics, partly because of his courage regarding topics no other german would write about, but he is a master tylist, and his god is kafka.

@james thanks for the samples, these are both very effective it seems to me, especially to draw the reader in, and i've always felt that you do this superbly well even if the subject isn't mine and if the dialog is a million miles from any place i'll ever be. i've truggled with dialogue for a long time and i'm much too cautious and unsure to begin with it...but perhaps i'll write something in JLD fashion and see where it goes...

James Lloyd Davis
Jun 17, 09:08pm

Yes, Marcus. Go for it. I find it's pretty easy. You just talk to yourself and write it all down as you go.

John Riley
Jun 17, 10:52pm

The opening sentence of Sebald's THE EMIGRANTS:

"At the end of September 1970, shortly before I took up my position in Norwich, I drove out to Hingham with Clara in search of somewhere to live."

It doesn't grab you by the ear but before you realize it you've read the next sentence and the next and you slip along inside his voice and don't look up. His openings are either anti-hooks or the most effective hooks possible.

I haven't read much Hemingway since I was a teenager but still think "Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton" to be one of American lit's great first sentences. It tells you most of what you need to know about Cohn in the first sentence. Is it a hook? I don't know.

See ya
Jun 23, 06:31pm

I have no clue which WORDS are duds in my books and stories. Lordy, to have any grasp of an entire sentence would be a miracle.
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