Growing up, we were taught to give books the first sentence test. If that first sentence drew us in we’d move on to the first paragraph. I consider that mindset excellent training for authors running the editorial gauntlet.
Here are a few examples of good openers. While I may not love every one, it’s a good collection, made even more useful by the side-by-side comparison with other great literature.
My afternoon disappeared with a giant sucking sound, so please enjoy this story about hope, the power of community, and doing what you can where you are.
Lieutenant Auri Murr knew the exact moment when her grandmother died.
She was on duty in engineering when Grandma Shanna’s dappu-wood bead on her kin-necklace cracked: a sharp, dry, quiet sound, unmistakable to anyone from Darmindu Colony. It could have woken Auri from a sound sleep.
I’d planned to finish a new drabble for today but instead alternated between day job work and reloading news on Hurricane Ian. We have family friends there and neighbors with homes in that area, but even if we didn’t I’d be worried for the people who live there.
For those in the path of the storm, keep your family (pets too!) safe until the sun shines again.
The impact day broadcast of the actual test will start on Monday, September 26 at 6 p.m. EDT, which you can watch on NASA TV, a livestream on NASA’s YouTube channel.
On Monday (Sept. 26), the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft will slam into a small space rock called Dimorphos — on purpose, at a staggering 4 miles (6.6 kilometers) per second. The exercise comes in the name of planetary defense, which aims to protect human civilization from any large asteroid that may be on a collision course. For the mission to succeed, scientists need to measure exactly how much the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger companion, Didymos, speeds up. And the DART spacecraft won’t be in any shape to make that measurement itself, so mission personnel are relying on ground-based telescopes to track the aftermath of impact.
If this trial run works, terrific, but even failure would better prepare us to defend Earth.
“Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book…”
The Booker prize-winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy, Dame Hilary Mantel, has died aged 70, her publisher HarperCollins has confirmed.
Mantel was regarded as one of the greatest English-language novelists of this century, winning the Booker Prize twice, for Wolf Hall and its sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which also won the 2012 Costa book of the year.
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Writer and broadcaster Damian Barr said her death is “such a loss”.
“With every book she redefined what words can do,” he tweeted, adding: “She’s the only person I ever interviewed that speaks in whole, flawless paragraphs. I can’t believe we won’t have another book from her.”
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“The pen is in our hands. A happy ending is ours to write.”
Fall starts at 9 p.m. ET Thursday, a day officially known as the autumn equinox.
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Twilight Surprise
The sky burns down, A rim of coals glowing gold and red, Limned with orange again And kissed with hints of pink. The clouds reflect tangerine and plum, Overshadowing the silent glory. Darkness and light, Balanced upon this equinox, Dance together like old lovers … … and beget beauty.
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