Writers are often told to find the perfect opening sentence. That advice can be dangerous. Sometimes the perfect sentence arrives too early. You write something beautiful, sharp, mysterious, emotionally charged. It sounds like the beginning of an important story. You become attached to it. Then you spend the next thousand words trying to make the story deserve the sentence.

That is so backwards! A strong opening should invite the story forward, not force the story to walk backward.

When a sentence feels unusually clever, dramatic, or profound, ask yourself: Did I discover this sentence, or did I manufacture the story to justify it? There is nothing wrong with writing a spectacular line. Just don’t let it become your boss.

Try this experiment. When you begin a new piece, write the opening sentence you think belongs there. Then write five completely different opening sentences beneath it. Make one ordinary. Make one strange. Make one embarrassingly simple. Make one that begins in the middle of an action. Make one that seems almost too quiet to matter.

Then keep writing from each. You may discover that your original “perfect” sentence was merely the most noticeable one, not the most useful. Good writing isn’t always the sentence that makes the reader stop. Sometimes it’s the sentence that makes the reader continue.

You see…The writer’s job isn’t to impress the story into existence. It’s to listen closely enough to discover what the story was already trying to say.

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