I decided today that the break was over. After doing a slightly major overhaul of my rough draft (changing the ummm....point of view), I took a bit of a break to let the story marinate from this new viewpoint. And now it's time to go back to it.
So I sat down, opened up the latest draft that I had...and knew instantly that I needed to rewrite the first sentence.
The first sentence is what sets the tone of the book and draws you in. It has to be engaging, without fully revealing. It has to set the stage, without being a very simple descriptive but possibly throw-away line. The importance is shown just by how many first lines there are: Tolstoy (the happy and unhappy families), Dickens (best and worst of times), Austen (searching for a wife), Melville, Nabokov, and many, many more.
In order to get into the spirit, I went through several novels and read the first lines. Of course now I have hindsight, but I could instantly see where one novel was slightly more contemporary, others darker, some lighter with just the faintest tinge of humor, and others more melancholy. Each first sentence fit perfectly with the story I had read.
Many articles I've read always talk about the first five pages and how important those are. And yes, they are important, because it confirms that attention garnered from that first sentence will be held. How many times though have you gone to the store, found a slightly interesting book, opened it and read that first sentence, only to put it back on the shelf?
I've done it a few times. Not necessarily always because it didn't draw me in...sometimes it just didn't seem like the kind of book I was in the mood to read. There it is again. Mood. Tone. All of that for a whole 200ish page book set out in the first sentence.
Yeah. No pressure there.
So now that I've even increased my pressure after my brief 10-minute research around my apartment, I need to get back to my first sentence. Especially since happy and unhappy families has already been taken.
So I sat down, opened up the latest draft that I had...and knew instantly that I needed to rewrite the first sentence.
The first sentence is what sets the tone of the book and draws you in. It has to be engaging, without fully revealing. It has to set the stage, without being a very simple descriptive but possibly throw-away line. The importance is shown just by how many first lines there are: Tolstoy (the happy and unhappy families), Dickens (best and worst of times), Austen (searching for a wife), Melville, Nabokov, and many, many more.
In order to get into the spirit, I went through several novels and read the first lines. Of course now I have hindsight, but I could instantly see where one novel was slightly more contemporary, others darker, some lighter with just the faintest tinge of humor, and others more melancholy. Each first sentence fit perfectly with the story I had read.
Many articles I've read always talk about the first five pages and how important those are. And yes, they are important, because it confirms that attention garnered from that first sentence will be held. How many times though have you gone to the store, found a slightly interesting book, opened it and read that first sentence, only to put it back on the shelf?
I've done it a few times. Not necessarily always because it didn't draw me in...sometimes it just didn't seem like the kind of book I was in the mood to read. There it is again. Mood. Tone. All of that for a whole 200ish page book set out in the first sentence.
Yeah. No pressure there.
So now that I've even increased my pressure after my brief 10-minute research around my apartment, I need to get back to my first sentence. Especially since happy and unhappy families has already been taken.
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