If you’re like me, no matter your vocation, you understand the importance of first. It’s a knowledge ingrained in us early, probably learned around the time we were learning how to use a straw. (“That’s it, sweetie, wrap your lips around it and suck. Yay!”) First in the Olympics? Even a youngster knows that’s a gold medal around your neck. In business, first brand to market oftentimes means decades in the “gold medal” position, just ask Coke (sorry Pepsi). What about first impressions? (I once heard of a guy who tried to make a second impression because his first impression had been so bad she punched him in the nose – I’m not speaking from experience, of course, but do me a favour anyhow and DON’T ask Penny about this.) What about your first dance? Or the even bigger first kiss? (Okay, fine, your loss, Penny.) Golfer Arnold Palmer was once asked, “What’s the most important shot in a round?” Yeah, you guessed it; he responded, “The first shot.”
Naturally in golf you can hit your first shot in the woods, make a double bogey, but still shoot a great score. The same can be said about your brand getting second to market; through slick marketing and brand positioning, you can certainly still reach the coveted podium’s pinnacle. And your first kiss? I’d guess more than a few of those were botched (Penny will never know), but I have a sneaking suspicion some of those actually led to marriage.
What I’m getting at here is this: no matter the endeavour, our chances of success greatly improve when we get off to a strong start. I think the idiom “come out swinging” holds water here. The last time I checked, Secretariat didn’t exactly saunter from the starting gate; he bolted. It goes without saying, Usain Bolt bolted too, only in his case it was out of the starting blocks.
As a writer, this all-important “first” boils down to the first sentence in the work, whether a novel or short story. Is a first sentence really that important? According to Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez it is. He was of a couple of minds here, the first being that the first sentence influences the entire narrative, from page one, to page 300. Change a single word in the first sentence, and it changes the narrative on page 50, 100, 150 etc. though perhaps subtly, but it does change. The second of course is to get your work off to a strong start with a great first sentence. What makes a great first sentence? The answer to that I’m afraid is a blog unto itself. I will answer the question briefly through Ernest Hemingway, who once said about writing, and I loosely quote: “When the writing is good, you don’t know why it’s good, you just know it’s good. When the writing is bad, you just know it’s bad but have no idea why.”
Gabriel García Márquez wrote great first sentences. Do they get any better than his in One Hundred Years of Solitude? You be the judge:
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
Speaking of Ernest Hemingway, how about his start in The Old Man and the Sea:
“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”
And what about Joseph Heller’s brilliant novel, Catch-22? If this first sentence isn’t the epitome of short and sweet I don’t know what is:
“It was love at first sight.”
Great first sentences come in all shapes and sizes, from beautifully short (Melville’s 3-word start to Moby-Dick comes to mind) to breathlessly long (I am literally breathless just thinking about Raymond Federman’s 390-word start to Double or Nothing).
The bottom line is, we need to get out of the starting gate with a bang whatever we are doing. I read lots of novels that barely whimper from the gate. Some of them, well, they ultimately end up being forgettable. Conversely, some of them, despite their lacklustre start, actually turn out to be quite remarkable. I’m not being critical here. I can certainly be accused of getting some of my stories unintentionally off to ho-hum starts. I say “unintentionally” of course because no writer intends to get a work off to a ho-hum start. The “ho-hum” usually comes years later upon reflection.
Now, I’m not comparing myself to any of the literary giants and their masterful works, but if I’m honest I am rather fond of the start to my latest work, The “I laughed. I cried.” Christmas Collection:
“Irwin Brinn drove a functioning if not adequate eleven-year-old 1959 Volkswagen Beetle, rented a one-bedroom walk-up, owned no cat or dog, had no wife and certainly no kids, demonstrated not the slightest inclination for competition and therefore required no sporting accompaniments, but did possess a remarkably pleasant disposition for someone with so few attachments.”
I guess what I’m getting at here is, we all need to try our very best to get out of the starting gate strongly. And when we do, be persistent and don’t let up. No doubt this only helps our chances of success.
I will leave you with a short story I wrote. It is actually more along the lines of a short-short. I believe it is relevant to this blog; in it you’ll find a first kiss on a wedding night, a first kiss with a packhorse, and that all-important first line that isn’t too shabby if I do say so myself. It is titled “In Absentia” and I hope you enjoy it . . .
At the age of eighteen, Filipe Rojo Morales had the good fortune to marry the woman he hated. Her name was Bruna Cuervo and she was two years his junior. She smelled of fish oil and had the face and temperament of a mule. They lived in a town where nobody prospered. Everyone adored the town except Bruna Cuervo and Filipe Rojo Morales, who both desired to leave. It was this uncommon desire that brought them together.
They were married in September and shared their first kiss on their wedding night. That was when Bruna Cuervo, with her large mule teeth, accidentally bit Filipe Rojo Morales on the lip. The bite drew blood and Filipe Rojo Morales vowed never to touch his wife again, a promise he would manage to keep for exactly one year.
The day following their wedding they gathered their belongings. Bruna Cuervo’s dowry consisted of a cart and packhorse. They filled the cart and loaded down the packhorse with twelve heavy panniers. The panniers were so heavy that it broke Filipe Rojo Morales’s heart to see the animal bear such a burden, so he kissed the packhorse on the lips with what Bruna Cuervo noticed was unmistakable affection. She did not speak a word of this but spat at the ground in disgust.
Moments later they departed town and headed west. It was the direction a wandering gypsy had said held the key to a prosperous future.
Six months into the journey they arrived at a clearing. Behind them lay a breathtaking view of the mountain they had just descended. In the distance to the left lay a forest, a plenitude of wildlife feeding at its edge; to the right, what looked like a thousand acres of fertile black soil. Seeing the endless lake before them, with fish jumping like heavy rainfall hitting water, they suddenly stopped in their tracks.
“The gypsy was right,” Bruna Cuervo whispered, her eyes fixed on the breathtaking sight.
Filipe Rojo Morales wasn’t listening. “I will build a raft big enough for the three of us to cross,” he said with an affectionate stroke of the packhorse’s mane.
Bruna Cuervo spat at the ground in disgust. “You should have married a horse.”
“I married a mule!”
“Puta el caballo!”
Filipe Rojo Morales was red with rage. He held a stake that he had fashioned to a fine point over the past several months from the wood of a trumpet tree. He raised his hand and, wanting nothing more than to drive the stake into his wife’s heart, he instead drove it into the ground and stormed off.
For six months the brooding couple did not speak. Filipe Rojo Morales hunted and they ate rabbit and grouse. When he had luck and hunted well, they ate venison. He crafted a traditional net made from the packhorse’s hair and the hemp that grew wild in the forest, and he thanked the packhorse for his sacrifice with a kiss. When he hunted poorly, he worked the net and fish were abundant. At first Filipe Rojo Morales had great difficulty eating fish. They were a strong reminder of his fish oil-smelling wife who, unbeknownst to him while he hunted, was tending a garden. As her tomatoes and carrots and potatoes ripened, she garnished the meals. Gradually the trout, once disgusting, began to taste palatable, and then appetizing, and then succulent. Bruna Cuervo too started garnishing herself. A red rose in her hair, a string of what appeared to be pearls around her ankle, and once, when she exited her tent wearing a white flowered dress, her husband thought she almost looked beautiful. They fell into a pleasant routine. In the mornings they sat silent around the stake and watched the sun creep over the mountain. In the evenings they watched the sun disappear like magic into the lake.
One morning the start of something strange happened. A bearded man came down from the mountain and wandered past them. Instead of continuing on, he drove a stake in the ground and began harvesting wood from the forest. Soon he had a small, sturdy hut constructed. Then two Indians emerged from the forest and they too drove a stake into the ground and began building, their hut a little sturdier and larger than the bearded man’s. Gradually others followed. Before long a dozen huts that began looking more like elaborate homes had been constructed. A family of Mexicans even built a store that sold dry goods. One morning the Indians and the bearded man started digging a well at the centre of town. When it was almost finished, the Indians asked the bearded man for the name of the town. The bearded man did not know so he led them over to the strange man who had spent many months just watching.
Filipe Rojo Morales sat stone-faced in their presence, his mule-faced wife at his side. When they asked a second time, Filipe Rojo Morales mumbled something. It was the first word he had spoken in six months.
“Pardon, Señor,” said the taller of the two Indians.
“Absentia,” repeated Filipe Rojo Morales like a hoarse little tree frog. “The town is called Absentia.”
The three men left satisfied and returned to finish the well.
Bruna Cuervo, wearing her pretty white flowered dress, went into her tent to get out of the sun. Filipe Rojo Morales followed her in, and for the first time in a year, on their wedding anniversary, he broke his promise and touched his wife.