Animate a moribund lead sentence: don’t let your first impression become a last impression

Perhaps you’ve heard the expression “a first impression is a lasting impression”? Well, be forewarned: in writing, a first impression can become the last impression if you fail to whet the reader’s desire to keep reading.

If only I had a dollar for every dull first sentence I’ve ever read, such as:

The book I chose to write about is ...

My book report is about …

In contrast to coma-inducing lead sentences like those two above, check out the opening of Simon Winchester’s book The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary:

Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history took place on a cool and misty late autumn in 1896, in the small village of Crowthorne in the county of Berkshire.

Now this is a lead sentence guaranteed to generate desire in a reader to keep reading (as opposed to “The book I chose to write about is The Professor and the Madman…). How can any reader not want to learn how and why “one of the most remarkable conversations in modern literary history” took place in some remote English village nobody has ever heard of before? What’s the story behind that? Winchester, of course, continues to deliver throughout the opening chapter (the preface, actually) until we discover at the end that the meeting was between a famous lexicographer and the doctor who has helped him enormously in the task of creating his monumental dictionary -- a doctor who turns out (unbeknownst to the lexicographer) to be an inmate in an asylum for criminal lunatics. Modern literary history isn’t your cup of tea? Try the same technique with a different topic: “Popular myth has it that one of the most remarkable events in sports history took place on a dusty field in 1972, in an abandoned oil-company town in Oklahoma.” If you are a sports fan, wouldn’t you want to find out about this event lost to obscurity?

Notice too how Winchester (or maybe his book editor) knows how to pique interest using the book’s subtitle, which juxtaposes the salivating terms murder and insanity with the august Oxford English Dictionary. How can such unlikely things be paired together, the book browser wonders?

There are, of course, probably more than a thousand and one ways to entice the reader’s interest at the start of a piece of writing, but one of them certainly is NOT “The book I chose to write about is…”

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.

Your essay vs. Kim Kardashian

Source: photo taken by the author.

Hey writer, did you know that you’re in competition with Kim Kardashian? Yup. Right now, while you’re in school, your college professor or high school English teacher gets paid to read your compositions. But after your formal schooling ends, no one will ever again have to read what you’ve written. So you better make damn sure your writing is interesting; otherwise, the attention of your potential readers will wander to other obligations or pastimes, whether that pile of laundry that needs washing or the latest issue of People magazine with a cover story about – you guessed it – Kim Kardashian.

Gaining (and holding) the interest of readers is a step-by-step process that begins with your title. Every piece of writing should have a title, and it should be a title that makes someone curious to read what you’ve written. Start with a working title that you know will change later on. Personally, I like to write a piece first, and then search out an interesting phrase or line from my own composition to use as a title. Of course, there are bad titles. Here’s one: “English Composition 101 Comparison-Contrast Paper.” Yawn! Frankly, that title makes me want to crack open that People magazine and see what the Kardashians have been up to lately. You can do better.

My own theory is that a compelling title will persuade a reader to read your first sentence. An interesting first sentence will buy you a reader’s attention through your first paragraph. That captivating first paragraph will convince a reader to read a few more paragraphs. And so on. In this way, you can coax a reader through your piece. The first sentence is the most important sentence, and the first paragraph is the most important paragraph.

One important caveat: Never let cleverness supersede clarity and accuracy. If your writing can be clever in addition to being clear and accurate, then that’s great. But clarity and accuracy ALWAYS come first.

Now, I can only hope you have read all the way to the end of this blog post and that People magazine has remained unopened on the coffee table!

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.