The importance of opening paragraphs

It can never be overstated just how important opening paragraphs are. Faced with a string of innocuous words dealing with a mundane subject, or “I didn’t mean to kill her…” or “The red house on the hill stood out like a beacon. Were the tales she had heard about it true? Amanda shuddered…” which opening are you drawn to? It is commonly recognised that enigmatic first sentences do draw the reader in…
”In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit,” for instance – you can just imagine lots of frowns on lot of faces. J.R.R. Tolkien knew his craft when writing ‘The Hobbit.’ “It was a pleasure to burn” was another frown-maker: courtesy ‘Fahrenheit 451’ written by Ray Bradbury. And what a draw is the sentence – “The man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” From Stephen King’s ‘The Gunslinger.’ All food for thought before you start your next short story/novel!

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