{"id":97,"date":"2026-10-01T10:15:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/on-first-lines\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T10:15:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T10:15:51","slug":"on-first-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/on-first-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"On First Lines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Watch anyone browse a bookshop and you will see the same ritual. Pick up the book, turn it over, open to the first page and read a single sentence. Sometimes that sentence is enough.<\/p><h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A promise, not a summary<\/h2><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Great first lines rarely explain. They make a promise about voice, about mood, about the kind of attention the book will ask of you.<\/p><blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The rain had been falling on Harrow Point for three days before anyone thought to mention it.<\/p><cite>Opening line, Houses of Quiet Weather (a demo novel)<\/cite><\/blockquote><p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That sentence tells you the book is patient, a little wry and interested in what people do not say. Everything that follows keeps the promise.<\/p><p class=\"fo-demo-note wp-block-paragraph\"><em>A demo article for the Foliowick theme. The books mentioned are fictional.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What makes an opening sentence work, and why we read so many of them before choosing a book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demos.wpruby.com\/foliowick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}