What Does Your Story’s First Line Promise?

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Image by Ramdlon on Pixabay

In their latest podcast, the Writing Excuses hosts continue their exploration of “promises as a structure” by looking at the promises made by the prose of a story’s first line, first paragraph, and first page. What does your first line say about the rest of your book? Did you mean for it to say that? Is your first line writing checks that your later chapters can actually cash?