Here we have two characters, "Tallie" and "him." We have a life and death situation: When someone climbs over the railing of a bridge, they make suicide possible, as well as fatal accidents. Tallie has a choice to make – intervene or leave him to his fate? With suspense, tension, and high stakes, this sentence has all the elements of a hook.
Yet I find it fits my "seduction" category even better.
A first sentence that works as a seduction draws the reader in with beauty. There's a strong rhythm to this sentence. I read the stresses as almost alternating, like this: Tall'ie saw' him drop' his back'pack' and climb' ov'er the met'al rail'ing, the bridge'. The even rhythm of the first seven syllables breaks just as he begins to climb – when he crosses out of safety. "Metal railing" returns to that rhythm – the even pace matching the safety feature. Then, the only comma makes a gap, and the rhythm turns upside down, creating uneasiness and extra emphasis on the word "bridge" – even stronger than the usual weight on a final word.
The comma marks a hitch in more than one way. We pause a little when we read a comma. Did Tallie's breath also pause there? And there is a break in the wording. We expect extra words to fall between "the metal railing" and "the bridge." Strict grammar would add a preposition there to show how the words are connected, such as "the metal railing on the bridge," or "the metal railing of the bridge," or "the metal railing at the edge of the bridge." Those words are gone.
The missing words leave "the bridge" on its own, a little detached from the sentence. They create some ambiguity – now we have less guidance as to how the railing relates to the bridge. Do the words "the bridge" redefine "metal railing" so that the railing is the bridge? Is "the bridge" an exclamation? Or is "the bridge" like the state and "the metal railing" like the city, so that "the metal railing, the bridge" is like "North Tonawanda, New York?"
To leave out the small, dull words and create multiple possible meanings is a poetic device. So is paying attention to rhythm. This sentence has a kind of linguistic intensity that draws me in to savor the words, as much as the tension of the situation does.
Both tension and linguistic intensity continue through the entire book. The first sentence proved a good taste of the story to come.
Graphic design by Ken Silbert