on Jane Friedman site:

The first paragraph of a book is quite possibly not only the most important impression a reader will get of your book, it’s also the gateway for you to figure out where to start telling your story. And if you can identify the right place to start, you’re far ahead of the curve.

I went through my bookshelves and read the first paragraph of over a thousand books. This actually takes less time than you would think, and I would highly encourage you to do it with your own bookshelf. After all, most books have three paragraphs per page, so if you read a 333-page novel, you have read about 1,000 paragraphs. I mean, if you really want to become an expert at something (and first paragraphs are an excellent thing to excel at), then why not study a wheelbarrow’s worth of the best examples?

I wanted to do several things:

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