“I hold them gently and whisper a soft apology before I slit their throats.”

When I put that on my facebook page, one follow-up response said that it would make a great first line to a murder mystery. In reality, my comment wasn’t that exciting, I was actually talking about our roosters and it described the routine I perform before we harvest them. With background knowledge, the line turns from being macabre to well, one that is sort of sad. It loses all of its power.

But the fact is, it would have made a GREAT first line to a book because without that background knowledge, it allows one’s imagination to create all kinds of scenarios (of which harvesting a rooster probably doesn’t even make it into the top ten.)

It got me thinking about how incredibly important that first line of a book is.

In my role…