Good Advice #7
What do these openings to classic novels have in common?
See the child. (Cormac McCarthy) Call me Ishmael. (Herman Melville) They’re out there. (Ken Kesey) Everybody Lies (Michael Connelly)
They all are in active voice and all address the reader as if in conversation. McCarthy and Melville take it a step further, demanding action on the part of the reader.
And all create tension, incredibly, with just three words. That tension might be lost if those words were buried inside a lengthy paragraph. All are isolated visually, by intention.
As William Zinsser, the man who first made the case “Less is more” points out, reading is a visual experience before it is an audible one, where you actually hear the words on the page. Your mandate is to eliminate clutter. Spacing, paragraph length, white space, and font are at your disposal to make the read digestible. Familiar language. Nobody should be pulling out a thesaurus.
Good advice?
Your first page is foreplay, not a subpoena. Treat it as such.
