One Sentence

As I often tell my students, it only takes that one tantalizing first sentence to loosen the stones of the dam and release a flood of creative activity in the brain. One strong, jaw-dropping, earth-shattering, I-want-to-read-more sentence. I just finished Charles Frazier's Nightwoods and, Wow!, what a first sentence: "Luce's new stranger children were small and beautiful and violent." Frazier introduced us to sentences readers want to take time to ponder when he wrote Cold Mountain. My favorite author, Edith Wharton, was a master at first sentences - simple - but they always leave you yearning to know more: "Selden paused in surprise." (The House of Mirth) "I had a story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story." (Ethan Frome) An author I met at the South Carolina Book Festival in May, Ron Rash, wrote a first sentence for a phenomenal book (soon to be released as a movie) called Serena. Here goes: "When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father's estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton's child."

A great first sentence does not have to always be in a creative fictional story. Entice readers of essays, articles, and even letters with a fine first sentence: "Every girl and boy has a dream." (article recently written for a local magazine). "We are living in post-Christian times." (City on a Hill, Philip Graham Ryken) "When Bob Burnham received word that his three daughters on their walk home from school were heading straight into a riot in Odessa, he jumped onto his bike and raced through explosion, gunfire, and columns of riot police." (WORLD, May 31 2014)

Remember the song from the claymation Santa Clause movie, when the young reindeer is learning how to walk: "Put one foot in front of the other ... and soon you'll be walking out that door ..." Writing is like that. Set that initial cornerstone first sentence, and soon other sentences can be added to it to create something worth reading.