MUCOLYTIC

N. Scott Peck famously started a book with, 'Life is difficult,' and it became a bestseller. Can you imagine if he started with 'Life is easy'?

Would anyone have picked up a copy? By saying life is difficult, Scott Peck effortlessly struck a universal chord. Anyone reading it gets a feeling that someone has just said something that's so true, something no one else has said before, at least not as eloquently.

The first sentence is clearly essential. But this is assuming a lazy and impatient readership.

It doesn’t mean it’s the rule. Can writers also assume the patience of some reader and thus, no need for a bait? Can stories start with an unprepossessing first sentence?

Then there’s also the problem of a gimmicky opener that proves to be a turnoff.

Shut my face for now and answer the ff. quiz that I got from the PW mailing list (courtesy of C. and http://writeronline.us/puzzles/puzzle-7-29-04.htm):

1. Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife.

2. The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.

3. Garp's mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested in Boston in 1942 for wounding a man in a movie theater.

4. Call me Ishmael.

5. Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.

6. Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her.

7. Not long ago, there lived in London a young married couple of Dalmatian dogs named Pongo and Misses Pongo.

8. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

9. Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene . . .

10. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .