Want a good way to start your book?
Sometimes, seeing a book’s opening unfiltered through the act of choosing it (reading the blurb, seeing the cover and the author’s name) reveals its essence more directly.
The following quotes are openings from four books. Two are novels, two are nonfiction.
As a fun exercise, see if you can identify a) which of the four following quotes are from fiction, and which are nonfiction, b) how they make you feel, and c) whether you’d want to read on.
#1: The greatest hunger in life is not for food, money, success, status, security, sex, or even love from the opposite sex.
#2: The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock.
#3: The French painter and writer Paul Gaugin–by most accounts mad, bad, and dangerous to know–suffered acutely from cosmological vertigo induced by the work of Darwin and other Victoria scientists.
#4: I am already at an age and additionally in a state where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night.
How did you do?
I’ll post the sources next week, or if you’d like to know sooner just drop me a line: info[a]awritersroadmap[dot]com
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