After the opening line, what comes next?

So, what's the next line?

From writers to editors, from agents to teachers and writing coaches, from publishers to Internet bloggers, everyone in the writing and publishing industry stresses the importance of a good opening line. It's almost as if you don't nail the opening line, you might as well give up and go home. While I doubt readers care as much about this as writers do, I don't doubt its importance, which is why I -- like so many writers -- sweat that first line.

Oddly, we don't tend to get as insane with what comes next -- the second line. And why not?

That question came to mind thanks to a friend and former colleague.

The venerable sage Joe Boyce was a Chicago cop back in the late 1960s -- sit back and contemplate that for a second. A black cop in Chicago in the late 60s -- before getting the journalism bug. He spent time at the Chicago Tribune before heading off to Time magazine, and then finally to the Wall Street Journal before retiring. He's a musician now and enjoying retirement.

Last month, on his Facebook page, he started posting a one-sentence prompt -- the opening sentence -- and asked his friends to write the next line. But one line only.

Some people wrote an interesting sentence, full of thought, full of promise. But frankly, some people wrote unimaginative, boring stuff. They seemed to give it no thought at all. And other people failed to read his instructions fully and wrote more than one sentence.

But I took it seriously. And I followed Joe's  instructions.

Regardless of the prompt, I tried to write something as compelling as the first sentence. Because it's the next sentence and the next sentence and the next that makes for good, consistent writing and storytelling. I knew that, of course, but Joe just reminded me of it. Your writing can lose a reader at any point. Therefore, the next sentence is always important.

So, Joseph, thank you, as always, for keeping it real.

And to everyone else, thanks for reading. And keep writing.