Be sure to choose your options, as opposed to the options running the show

The opening three grafs from a post by Frank Bruni, former columnist for the New York Times, and currently writing a weekly blog. He moved to North Carolina for a university teaching gig, which is the setting for the following:

My grass-challenged front yard is too dense with trees. I knew that the landscape consultant would tell me that, and I wasn’t surprised when she suggested an irrigation system, maybe a bit of soil replacement, possibly some rerouting of the runoff from my gutters.

But when she pointed to a subtle churn of the lawn in various spots and said that I had moles? That threw me. And that’s when I finally accepted that I hadn’t bought a house.

I’d bought a zoo.

The post goes on to detail his dealings with raccoons, woodpeckers, and other small creatures that we don't encounter quite as much in urban areas.

Let me simply note a few choices the writer made here, all of which help get readers into the story. First, we have a clever adjective to make it clear that there is not much grass in the yard. He could have written "bare front yard," but he wanted to emphasize the lack of grass. 

He included three suggestions from the landscape architect, and three examples always produces a pleasing rhythm. The simple transition of "but" moves readers from the expected to the unexpected.

And that final four-word sentence/paragraph makes readers pause, as if a speaker were pausing for dramatic effect.

One piece of writing "common wisdom" is that the more important our claim or statement, the more powerful the short sentence can be. Of course readers want to know much more about what Bruni means by a zoo, and that launches the rest of the post.

Bruni might have dropped us directly into a scene where he is battling those moles, or some other woodland creatures, but here he wanted to begin with the metaphor of his house and property as a zoo.

There are lots of choices writers make and the key is not just mindlessly go with your default, whatever that may be.

I once heard a poet claim in a lecture that it is very difficult to foul up a poem that begins with the word "when." I can see the point, as that very first word starts writers on a journey exploring a specific time, often in the past.

But it is unlikely that starting every piece of writing with "when" will lead to success.

One of my goals in writing classes is to present the toolbox, so to speak. It is up to the user/student/writer to decide which tool will be right for the job.