Re-writing & First lines

Goals:

1. Identify the purpose of first sentences: First lines in an essay, and first/topic sentences in a paragraph.
2. Introduce a simple process of re-writing which is meant to make your writing better in small steps...not best.
3. Giving and receiving feedback on your writing with peers.

First lines / first sentences

The internet is full of advice for writing first lines / topic lines...

• Purdue OWL offers practical advice about writing paragraphs, including topic sentences.
• Lists of favorite favorite first lines show ways of "hooking the reader in".

Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu,...

-Ha Jin, Waiting (1999).

The first sentence in a paragraph / short essay is a kind of mini-summary about what the paragraph is about. It has to convey something about what the paragraph is about. But it does not need to tell the reader everything that will be going on in the paragraph.

Is partying all about getting drunk?

Try to draw your reader in to your essay / story / novel with the first line. Avoid vagueness ("Something really interesting happened the other day".) and stating things that may be too obvious ("Now I will write about solar panels.") Instead include a specific detail or example.

Imagine, being promised that you could live in your friends house for the next few years only for him to tell you a month in that he is kicking you out and you have nowhere to turn.

This was not a first line, but part of an incident in which an unknown alarm was clanging in the basement...

I located it and read the instructions on the alarm. It read as follows "Alert for Tank: if flashing light and alarm is sounding immediately call 000-000-0000."

Process: "re-writing" not revising

Let's distinguish between two ways that people change what they've written. I'll call these:

• Revising - You are dissatisfied with what you've written and are determined to start over from scratch, or implement a completely different approach. At times this is necessary, but it is also vulnerable to writer's block as the task appears very big, and therefore vulnerable to procrastination and dithering. We will *not* work on such whole-scale revising in our course.
• Rewriting - This is a very easy to implement two step process to improve what you have already written, and can be applied to many different parts of what you have written. The idea is to focus on one piece of what you've written, for example the first line of an essay. The two steps are:
  1. Generate alternatives to what you have written--at least two new alternatives.
  2. Select the best one, and go with it.

  That's it! Stop! Go re-write something else if you still feel the urge!

  The process of re-writing may not lead to the very *best* writing that is possible, but it is guaranteed to make what you have written *better*. And often "Perfect is the enemy of good".

  Group editing

  In groups of 3, take turns. (We are not responding to grammar or spelling.) Each time:

  • One person will read for up to ~3 minutes the piece of writing which they brought while the others listen.
  • Listeners make notes about one thing you liked, and one part of the piece which you didn't understand, or was a bit vague, or could have been improved by giving an example or more detail.
  • After the reading, listeners take turns sharing one thing you liked.
  • Listeners take turns sharing ing the part they thought could be improved with more detail. All decide on one passage to work on.
  • Each person (listeners and reader) write one alternative.
  • All share and discuss.
  • [After class, author chooses one alternative, may tweak it lightly and writes that up.]
  • Discuss the first line. Does it convey something about what is being written about? What could be done to "draw the reader in" more?
  • [After class, author chooses one alternative as the basis for re-writing their first sentence.]