11 Comments

A fantastic post, full of practical and applicable information. Not just the why, but the how, which in my opinion is most important. I will be applying this to all future works. Thank you for creating this!

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Thanks William, very kind of you

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I've thought about this post for a bit

and I think I disagree. The first sentence is important, but there are things besides that that really decide if someone is going to read your post

1) The title

2) the packaging (images, font, spacing, length, etc.)

3) I don't think anybody ever really reads just one sentence, its usually 3 or 4. if I'm right, then it makes more sense to consider that than just 1 sentence.

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Yes I agree with you.

The standard book comes with:

Cover art, Tyopgraphy (as you have already mentioned)

A Tag Line

Premise/1-3 paragraph sales pitch

But first sentences are important, and there is a technique to writing them, which hopefully I helped to illuminate.

Other posts are planned to explain tag lines, premises, etc.

Graphic design is pretty complex, but obviously a huge part of selling the book.

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There are a lot of variables to study, and I think it's best to isolate them and master them with focus and depth.

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I've thought about writing a column about Titles, Subtitles, but it seems difficult to teach.

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that would be useful,

it certainly showed me that I don't have an eye for a good sentence

I wonder if contrasting good and bad variations would be useful. I'm pretty sure I'd get a lot out of seeing two first sentences, one thats better and seeing why thats so

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There are some exercises you can do to learn precision; one is to practice the first word of every sentence, or the last word of every sentence.

You can try starting sentences with nouns, or verbs.

Like if I was writing about betrayal:

"Betrayal doesn't come cheap."

"Quietly he considered treason, and the dangers to come."

"Stressed, he reflected on his options, rapidly dwindling — perhaps treason would save him... "

"The prospect of treason, never appealing, now seemed like his only option."

Rhetorical fragments:

"Fear. Terror stirred inside him; the chance his treason would be exposed."

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One thing you can do is find stories you admire, and write down on paper how their sentences start in the first 20 sentences. Then you can compare daily news articles, poorly written, and then see how they will usually start with basic, inefficient openings such as:

"The

The

Then

So

Later

The

And"

Very repetititve.

It's tough to retrain a basic process of thinking like this, you just have to be patient with yourself and forgive any frustrations. These decisions occur automatically on a subconscious level. You can fix them by making the process conscious, retraining it, internalizing it, and it gets to be a reflex.

But the process is slow to learn.

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Your Dune quote a decent Hook maketh 😉

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Thank you!

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