Getting the first line right

David, from San Fran­cis­co, CA, writes:  “You always talk about rewrit­ing. Can you give me an exam­ple of what you do?”

I’ll try.

Years ago, when I wrote The True Con­fes­sion of Char­lotte Doyle, for some rea­son (I don’t know what that rea­son was,) I kept track of some of the book’s line changes. Here then are the changes to the very first line of the book. I list them from the first time I wrote a line, to what appears in the pub­lished book.

1. Many years ago I was accused of murder.
2. It’s hard to believe that I was once accused of murder.
3. No one believes me when I say I was once accused of murder.
4. Look­ing back, I’d hard to believe I had any­thing to do with murder.
5. How many girls are ever accused of murder?
6. How could I, a girl, have any­thing to do with murder?
7. Not many girls are accused of mur­der and found guilty at a trial.
8. Few girls of thir­teen are accused of mur­der let alone found guilty
9. Not every thir­teen-year-old girl is accused of mur­der, brought to trail, and found guilty.

I no longer know how long a time peri­od elapsed for all these changes. I do recall that the book took more than a year to write. Pre­sum­ably, these changes hap­pened over that peri­od of time.

The cru­cial thing to note is there is noth­ing wrong with any of these sen­tences. The point is, the last sen­tence, which is the pub­lished one, is just much more read­able, engag­ing, and dri­ves right into the sto­ry. It is what I have in mind when I write about rewrit­ing, and that “Writ­ers don’t write writ­ing. They write reading.“

And, of course, the process of writ­ing is rewriting.