Grab em by the throat and don’t let go.
That’s what we try to do in the first line of a post because we bloggers are in a strange position. We want to move froma bog to website where we can sell advertising but to do that we need lots and lots of readers. And to get lots of readers we need tons of content. And if we post tons of content are posts can easily be misse. So all we have is one line to sell you on reading the post. Ten seconds tops and you’re hooked or you’re gone.
I was thinking about this while reading last week’s issue of New York and finding myself unable to get past the first sentence time after time. For goodie (“Julian Casablancas is at an impasse” is how a profile begins, there is way too many “The Shower is a thing of beauty” first line on article about homelessness.
Looking at our own posts I was very impressed with how Helen Bach grasps the concept of the first line full throttle. Here are some of her recent ones:
Sometime I’m stunned at my psychic abilities—
Music is a business. Yeah it may look like booze and broads
I take more shit for what I like than most
I made a vow to not insult music in 2010 sound unheard
Makes you want to read more, right? Kinda drags you howling into its vortex…
And that’s the art of the post… we want you to read and if you don’t like watcha reading to read something else…