Writers on how they write: Orhan Pamuk

The Wall Street Journal has a great article: “How to Write a Great Novel”, reflections by 11 novelists on how they approach writing. I’ll feature one writer per day, highlighting their process with a key excerpt from the article.

Today’s writer is Orhan Pamuk whose novels include “Darkness and Light” and “Mr. Cedved and his Sons”.

Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk often rewrites the first line of his novels 50 or 100 times. “The hardest thing is always the first sentence — that is painful,” says Mr. Pamuk, whose book, “The Museum of Innocence,” a love story set in 1970s Istanbul, came out last month.

I’m sure we’ve all read about the importance of a first sentence in a novel. But if a novel can be 200, 500, 700 pages or more, and a script tops out at 120, isn’t it arguable that a screenplay’s first sentence is even more important than a novel?

How much consideration do you give to your script’s first sentence?

[Originally posted November 10, 2009]