From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 7:14:47 PM UTC-4, bre...@sff.net wrote:   
   > Hmm. First paragraph of the novel I wrote this year:   
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   > Although his wife's palate was discriminating to a nicety, neither Jack    
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   > Wragsland nor Marilee cooked. Their virgin oven still had the    
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   > energy-saver stickers on the door, and Jack kept paperback poetry    
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   > anthologies inside. His breakfast reading goal was to catch up on all    
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   > the verse he had missed by traveling almost 170 years into the future.   
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   > Clearly it meets the rule.   
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   > First paragraph of the novel I wrote last year:   
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   >   Calla did not need to look at her phone while texting, so she actually    
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   > saw it happen.  One moment the road in front of the car was more or less    
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   > clear, except for Ponpet�s standard killer gridlock. The monumental    
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   > stone triumphal arch commemorating her grandfather dominated the traffic    
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   > circle they were stuck in.   
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   >   Then, flicking into existence like the special effect in a movie, was    
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   > a totally odd man.  In a long black coat and tall hat, he looked    
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   > something like the young Abraham Lincoln.   
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   I read a book named _Hooked_.   
   It was about openings, and the idea that you can compel an editor to    
   read the ms. by writing an opening with so many qualities.   
   What aspects of these openings do you think tries to achieve this, or at    
   least to draw the reader in?   
   When I look at them with this question in mind, I can see that some aspects do   
   this, and some less so.   
   I don't mean to say that it's possible to pack all desirable qualities into an   
   opening of every variety of story; often, I think, it isn't.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)