The most important sentence (Zinsser)
January 28th, 2008 | Published in Quotes, Writing
The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead. And if the second sentence doesn’t induce him to continue to the third sentence, it’s equally dead. Of such a progression of sentences, each tugging the reader forward until he is hooked, a writer constructs that fateful unit, the “lead.”
–William Zinsser, On Writing Well, p. 55.