Write Craft #2: The first sentence

And other writing craft tips

Me writing in my studio in 2015.

Write Craft is For The Writer in All of Us

I have a mission for the Write Craft newsletter which is published the last Wednesday of each month. That mission is to bring out the writer in each of us. Yes, that’s right. Everyone landing upon this newsletter knows how to write and read. We know how to tell stories.

Some of us would like to publish our stories and others just write for pleasure or to share stories with their closest friends. Either way, writing is a way to engage the brain. It’s a way to make sense of the world and to entertain ourselves.

Writing is a craft as much as it’s a literary art form. And when we learn this craft we not only can excite others with our stories, but we also have a deeper appreciation for the written word rather that is in the form of a memoir, an article, or a novel.

In this newsletter, we will explore crafting the first sentence. And no, authors don’t usually keep the first sentence from the first draft. It’s just meant as a vehicle to get us from point A to point B. It’s one of those darlings that we toss in the trash and rewrite several times.

When done right, the first sentence is a hook to keep the reader intrigued. It sets the tone for the first chapter and for an entire novel. This sentence bears the weight.

We want our readers to remember the first and the last sentences of our stories, whether that’s long or short form. A first sentence can make or break the entire story. I bet that sounds dramatic and a bit weighty but I find it’s true.

The novel might be a good read but will readers revisit it in later years? Will they be haunted by that introduction sentence? Remember that first impressions are everything in the literary world.

Photo by Olga Stalska on Unsplash

Favorite First Liners

"Barrabás came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy."

This sentence introduces a strange beast, Barrabas and Clara, two characters that appear in Isabel Allende’s House of Spirits.

House of Spirits is a magical realism novel from the Chilean author, Isabel Allende and one of her most remembered novels. For me this was also the novel, that introduced me to Latin American authors and poets.

When I first read the sentence, I wanted to know who Barrabas was. It’s a strange name and who is Clara? Why were they living next to the sea?

I also like the part about Clara’s delicate calligraphy which is a unique way of saying that Clara kept a diary of her childhood experiences. And later the reader learns that Clara didn’t have an ordinary childhood.

The author also wrote an essay about writing short fiction and in that essay, she mentioned that the first sentence of a short story makes or breaks the story. She even went as far as saying that if the first sentence isn’t carrying its weight, the story will fail.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

How many of you read Charles Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities in high school or at a university? I read the novel for a high school English class. That was 46 years ago and I still remember it. It’s also one of the most popular quoted first lines of any novel.

Tale of Two Cities was set in London and Paris during the French Revolutionary War. It’s a sprawling novel that delves into some heavy topics told by a Victorian author who focused on the common man and justice. So, often the sentence is used in political or economic context during our modern era.

The sentence is intriguing because the reader is left with the question about what makes those times the best and the worst? It’s dualistic and provocative. And if you’ve not read the Victorian classic novel, now’s the time. Dickens was a fantastic storyteller who refrained from writing cheap drama.

"I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods."

This sentence introduces Truman Capote’s short story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The words convey a wistfulness as well as nostalgia. As you might know, Capote focused on Holly Golightly, a young free spirited woman with a dubious profession and mysterious past.

The narrator is revisiting his old neighborhood in Manhattan where he first encountered Golightly. Not only is he remembering her, he’s also waxing nostalgic for his days as a struggling novelist. The narrator sounds road weary (been there and done that). However, he’s also witnessing the changing of times and the loss of innocence.

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

J. R. R Tolkien’s introductionary sentence to The Hobbit plops the reader into space, a hole in the ground. In this children’s fantasy novel, Tolkien doesn’t waste words or his reader’s time. This sentence grabs the reader’s attention despite it’s simplicity and brevity. In fact, the sentence is economical in that it sets the tone and the rhythm while also moving the story forward.

The reader might ask who is a hobbit? Why is the hobbit living in a hole in the ground? And where is this hobbit leading me?

While the author originally wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a thesis about the Finnish language which became his elven language, he created worlds upon worlds. He opened his readers up to the fantasy genre and etched his stories in the memories of everyone who read the books, a good many.

And to think it all starts with that first sentence.

(If you like exploring the concept of first sentences, I encourage you to go find classic novels in print, not online, and study the first sentences).

Photo by Pereanu Sebastian on Unsplash

Crafting the First Sentence

I’m betting it’s a rare event that an author keeps the first sentence that appears in the draft of a short story or especially, a novel. During the writing of a novel, an author first spills out the story—gets the words down on a page. Usually an author has a daily word count to meet.

Some authors write their first draft through automatic writing or channeling what drifts into their minds. Other authors use timelines, story boards and work out their character develoment before typing their first words.

I’ve had writing instructors tell me to craft the first and the last sentences after completing several drafts. And much of what authors write is deleted anyway during the rewrites and the editing process. (Which is my favorite part of crafting a story).