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PAPA GUNNER’S STORY TIME
Become a Big Brain Writer By Crafting Killer First Lines
Dangle your wormy words to hook the reader
I have a small penis.
The size of my penis isn’t relevant to the rest of this piece, but it got your eyes to this word. And this one. Hopefully, it’ll carry you all the way to the end.
That’s the power of a first line.
A vacuum cleaner sucking in the pop-tart crumbs of your attention.
As writers, we are bombarded by the idea that every line needs to be quotable. We’ve always understood that, no matter the sentence, it should look good as a tattoo.
That’s not true.
Only the first line needs to be good.
A good first line is like a catapult, propelling the reader a good distance. Gotta calibrate it just right or else you’ll miss the mark. Too poor an opening and they’ll fall short of the end. Too good, and you’ll launch them right past the end of your book into god knows where. Another book?
