The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

That’s the opening of IT by Stephen King, and this one’s so much fun.

He starts big. Cosmic. Existential. “The terror.”

And then he shrinks it down to a child’s paper boat in the street.

You can see it’s a long clause (38 words), so it triggers the blue highlighting in Writhm. But it’s also punchy because it’s got all these small concrete images — the boat, the gutter, the rain — which keep it grounded and specific.

What can we learn from this?

Here are 2 takeaways you can try in your own writing:

#1. Try contrasting scale. Start big (“the terror”), end small (“a boat”). That zoom-in creates suspense.

#2. Try interrupting yourself more. Take a shorter sentence and inject some parentheticals or asides to experiment with building tension. In this case, it was when the first sentence doubted itself when it said “if it ever did end”. That doubt and uncertainty creates suspense.

Watch the video for the full visual breakdown 👇

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