I ve always thought that the last sentence is the most important!! (I ve written some that I am personally proud of although I am yet to share any of my texts) Now I realize I should have thought of something to make the reader want to go til the last sentence before I think of publishing anything!
You're not wrong, Serge—I sometimes think the last sentence is the most important, too! Both sentences, the first and the last, can do a lot of work. I usually spend a lot of time tinkering with each.
Which editor? I like the echoing. As it was published, I just stop. And think. Hm, oh, I get it. Now there are few enough caribou that you actually CAN count them. And then the quote confirms that I figured it out. Eh. I like the words vanished and echo. Accurate AND poetic. Kills two caribou with one stone.
No caribou killing, Lynn! This made me wonder... when you edited NGM stories for all those years, what did you hope for out of a lede? Did you ever find that people made the same sorts of striving mistakes (I know I was guilty of overdoing it way too often)? Did you have a "type" that you thought was most effective?
Most memorable for me were the opening lines of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (which won a Pulitzer). It buoyed the reader and floated them into an energetic and unfiltered kid-mind, of one child-lord of back-alley brownstone playgrounds strung with fire escapes and drying clothes. It also burdens the reader with scenes of imminent sadness that you find yourself holding as a secret from the child. Although I don't write much, those types of openings are my favorite to use. You are a fantastic writer, Neil, and one of the things you do best is to put your reader in the scene. You own a unique dialog technique that completely slays me, putting me there with, say, some unfortunate on the banks of Lake Turkana. I would do that for the Arctic story opening too. The sentence selected allows me a convenient distance to sit here in my off-white office (and not on a low, lichen-mosaiced rock) and conger an image of abundance lost, much like the backs of the bass John Smith could have danced across the Chesapeake Bay on. Conveniently, it does allows me a little self-hate, the type the tints the world of a woke colonizer like myself--perhaps that is what the editor thinks will sell? But why not jerk me out of my seat and slay me, give me the hurt I would feel if I hunted hard for days with nothing to show for it, but watched those antler racks come off the bushplane ferrying SEAL-fit adventure sportsmen with rifles that kill at 800 yards? I might cry for that. I would definitely stick around for the rest of the story.
I don't know that one, Doug! Thanks for shining a light on it. I have been going through first lines lately in the books on my shelves, looking at how others have done it. I just rediscovered across a good one from Peter Hessler the other day, in his book "Country Driving." He wrote, "There are still empty roads in China, especially on the Western steppes, where the highways to the Himalaya carry little traffic but dust and wind." I am totally with you about transport in a first sentence—I want it there, to take me to a place, or into an idea. I want it loaded with things unsaid so my imagination can quickly build a world around it—even if that world soon gets torn down. Thanks for the kind words, too, Doug. Your thought about John Smith and the bass reminds me of a note that ecologists throw out from time to time, about how the forests once looked in North America. The way I've heard it is, "Before Columbus landed, the old forests were so thick that a squirrel could jump from New England to the Mississippi River without touching the ground." There are several versions of this; I don't think I've ever seen it as an opening line. But it gets to your other idea about something lost. Maybe that's what Oscar Hijuelos meant, too.
This was fun! I nearly hit the deck when I saw that picture of Kevin Costner with his crazy Dances With Wolves hair. (That movie was plagued by bad hair decisions.) But I don’t know if reading this piece salves my soul or ignites my writer’s angst. Because you’re my writer goals, and you… YOU… still, have doubts?? Sweet baby Jesus when does the self-doubt ever end? What level of proficiency or mastery do you have to reach to kill those demons? (This is rhetorical. I’m just an angsty baby writer running her mouth.) Can’t wait to read your NatGeo piece!! PS. First sentences, written by writerw of your calibre, should have a bit of poetry to them. Why not? Life can be so brutal. Beautiful language is a powerful antidote.
Windy, thank you for reading the piece! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I had forgotten about KC's hair until I saw that photo. I thought Kicking Bird's was way cooler. The self-doubt, I don't know that it ever fully goes away. But on good days what I've learned to do with the doubt is turn it into a kind of editor's voice—can this be better? How could it be better? Then, when a real editor comes along I have my sarcastic replies all lined up. Thanks also for your kind words! I agree—we need beauty amidst all the harshness. We need to be witnesses to it.
Many a Kindle sample has been "removed from my device" after a bad first sentence. I might have the reader's version of your addiction: I need to read a good first sentence in order for me to bother reading the second one.
I fell in love with Augustus McRae (or at least wanted to date him) with McMurty's tell-me-more-about-this-guy first line, "When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big one." Not sure what it says about me, but I was all in after that.
You haunt us, Louise. You're the one we worry about. But also the one we love—because you care about first sentences when I think many people just blow past them. That McMurty line is great. I still haven't read Lonesome Dove.
There’s another entry in this series… “titles.” I think I actually avoided Lonesome Dove for a long time because, as much as I love birds, I didn’t want to read about a sad one…
I ve always thought that the last sentence is the most important!! (I ve written some that I am personally proud of although I am yet to share any of my texts) Now I realize I should have thought of something to make the reader want to go til the last sentence before I think of publishing anything!
Thank you Neil!
You're not wrong, Serge—I sometimes think the last sentence is the most important, too! Both sentences, the first and the last, can do a lot of work. I usually spend a lot of time tinkering with each.
Which editor? I like the echoing. As it was published, I just stop. And think. Hm, oh, I get it. Now there are few enough caribou that you actually CAN count them. And then the quote confirms that I figured it out. Eh. I like the words vanished and echo. Accurate AND poetic. Kills two caribou with one stone.
No caribou killing, Lynn! This made me wonder... when you edited NGM stories for all those years, what did you hope for out of a lede? Did you ever find that people made the same sorts of striving mistakes (I know I was guilty of overdoing it way too often)? Did you have a "type" that you thought was most effective?
Most memorable for me were the opening lines of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (which won a Pulitzer). It buoyed the reader and floated them into an energetic and unfiltered kid-mind, of one child-lord of back-alley brownstone playgrounds strung with fire escapes and drying clothes. It also burdens the reader with scenes of imminent sadness that you find yourself holding as a secret from the child. Although I don't write much, those types of openings are my favorite to use. You are a fantastic writer, Neil, and one of the things you do best is to put your reader in the scene. You own a unique dialog technique that completely slays me, putting me there with, say, some unfortunate on the banks of Lake Turkana. I would do that for the Arctic story opening too. The sentence selected allows me a convenient distance to sit here in my off-white office (and not on a low, lichen-mosaiced rock) and conger an image of abundance lost, much like the backs of the bass John Smith could have danced across the Chesapeake Bay on. Conveniently, it does allows me a little self-hate, the type the tints the world of a woke colonizer like myself--perhaps that is what the editor thinks will sell? But why not jerk me out of my seat and slay me, give me the hurt I would feel if I hunted hard for days with nothing to show for it, but watched those antler racks come off the bushplane ferrying SEAL-fit adventure sportsmen with rifles that kill at 800 yards? I might cry for that. I would definitely stick around for the rest of the story.
I don't know that one, Doug! Thanks for shining a light on it. I have been going through first lines lately in the books on my shelves, looking at how others have done it. I just rediscovered across a good one from Peter Hessler the other day, in his book "Country Driving." He wrote, "There are still empty roads in China, especially on the Western steppes, where the highways to the Himalaya carry little traffic but dust and wind." I am totally with you about transport in a first sentence—I want it there, to take me to a place, or into an idea. I want it loaded with things unsaid so my imagination can quickly build a world around it—even if that world soon gets torn down. Thanks for the kind words, too, Doug. Your thought about John Smith and the bass reminds me of a note that ecologists throw out from time to time, about how the forests once looked in North America. The way I've heard it is, "Before Columbus landed, the old forests were so thick that a squirrel could jump from New England to the Mississippi River without touching the ground." There are several versions of this; I don't think I've ever seen it as an opening line. But it gets to your other idea about something lost. Maybe that's what Oscar Hijuelos meant, too.
This was fun! I nearly hit the deck when I saw that picture of Kevin Costner with his crazy Dances With Wolves hair. (That movie was plagued by bad hair decisions.) But I don’t know if reading this piece salves my soul or ignites my writer’s angst. Because you’re my writer goals, and you… YOU… still, have doubts?? Sweet baby Jesus when does the self-doubt ever end? What level of proficiency or mastery do you have to reach to kill those demons? (This is rhetorical. I’m just an angsty baby writer running her mouth.) Can’t wait to read your NatGeo piece!! PS. First sentences, written by writerw of your calibre, should have a bit of poetry to them. Why not? Life can be so brutal. Beautiful language is a powerful antidote.
Windy, thank you for reading the piece! I'm glad you enjoyed it. I had forgotten about KC's hair until I saw that photo. I thought Kicking Bird's was way cooler. The self-doubt, I don't know that it ever fully goes away. But on good days what I've learned to do with the doubt is turn it into a kind of editor's voice—can this be better? How could it be better? Then, when a real editor comes along I have my sarcastic replies all lined up. Thanks also for your kind words! I agree—we need beauty amidst all the harshness. We need to be witnesses to it.
Many a Kindle sample has been "removed from my device" after a bad first sentence. I might have the reader's version of your addiction: I need to read a good first sentence in order for me to bother reading the second one.
I fell in love with Augustus McRae (or at least wanted to date him) with McMurty's tell-me-more-about-this-guy first line, "When Augustus came out on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake - not a very big one." Not sure what it says about me, but I was all in after that.
You haunt us, Louise. You're the one we worry about. But also the one we love—because you care about first sentences when I think many people just blow past them. That McMurty line is great. I still haven't read Lonesome Dove.
It's really not ok that you still haven't read that. Please rectify while on your next remote posting.
There’s another entry in this series… “titles.” I think I actually avoided Lonesome Dove for a long time because, as much as I love birds, I didn’t want to read about a sad one…
Guessing I should not hold out hope that you’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird
Can't escape that one—they force you to read it in high school. McMurtry, not so much...
Lovely piece, I'm glad to have discovered your substack.
While reading your caribou story I was asking myself, how would this sentence of yours have worked?
"the caribou had once been “like bugs on the landscape,” plentiful and thick"
Perhaps you didn't want to quote anyone?
I look forward to more good reading and writing lessons from a nature writer!