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Urgent Opening Sentences from Classic Literature

• All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina)
   

• You don't know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,  but that ain't no matter (Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
   

• Dear Father and Mother: I have great trouble, and some comfort, to acquaint you with. (Samuel Richardson, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded)
   

• Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. (George Eliot, Middlemarch)
   

• Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

• I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. (Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome).

If you still don't understand the concept of "urgency," or "hook," or "attention-grabbing," read Sherri Szeman's article from The Writer (reprinted in The Writer's Handbook 1997) about how to get urgency into your work: "Urgency: Good Writing Needs It."  And by the way, urgency applies as much to non-fiction and poetry as it does to fiction.

Reading attention-grabbing opening sentences and great titles can not only improve your book's overall quality, but it can also help you with your pitch.

Evaluate your opening sentence.  If you read only that sentence, would you want to continue reading?  Be honest with yourself.  Otherwise, you'll never succeed in the writing world.

Ask your friends to read it.  Ask strangers in the library and in bookstores to read it: ask them if they'd like to continue reading the book. 

If they say "yes," you're on the right track.

If they ask where they can buy your book, call RockWay immediately.  We want to hear that pitch and that opening sentence.

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