“Arma virumque cano,”
Just three words, but they introduce
one of the greatest works in literary history:
The Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil.
Arma virumque cano translates roughly as:
My story is about a man and war:
Followed by more than 60,000 words in 9,896 lines of Virgil’s epic poem.
Charles Dickens, in A Tale of Two Cities, starts his novel with the words:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,”
Followed by a long list of intriguing contrasting comparatives, setting the stage for the narrative arc of the novel.
Similarly, The King James Version of the Bible starts with the words:
“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.”
In storytelling, a brief introduction summarizing a story’s content is a tradition that dates back over 2,000 years.
This literary technique continues to be dramatically effective.
__ Dennis Mellersh, Business Journalist and Editor
Creative thinking and the creative process 