The Opener

When I lived in South Georgia at the start of this decade, I used to read the Savannah Morning News almost every day. I noticed a strange pattern in the writing. Almost every front-page story started with a paragraph that consisted of a single short sentence, usually no more than five to seven words. I think it was the paper's attempt to be distinctive, to move away from the stilted gray traditions of its counterparts, but to me it came across as a cheap gimmick. The ledes were short but I generally found them neither clever nor snappy. Since then I've avoided starting stories that way.

These days I tend to err on the other side of things. My first paragraphs often contain at least one pretty long sentence, and often they have multiple sentences. This is the sort of thing for which I've seen the New York Times take some criticism. Readers are said to be turned off when you start out too dense. But it often feels right to me.

I'd like to hear from you all on this topic. As a reader, do you prefer it short and simple at the top, or do you appreciate something that twists and turns? As a writer, how do you decide this stuff? Do you have certain structures that you fall back on at crunch time? (For example, when I'm stumped I tend to fall back on a single sentence with two commas.) Let's share some of our techniques here.