READ THE FIRST EIGHTY PAGES OF DUFF MCKAGAN’S IT’S SO EASY FOR FREE
Remember Motley Crue’s The Dirt? Of course you do, it’s like the single greatest thing ever written by anyone anywhere in the history of writing or even conveying stories via grunts and finger painting on cave walls. And Neil Strauss, the guy who put it together, clearly understands storytelling as an art form; for one of the cardinal rules of telling a story is “Grab your reader right from the start,” and Strauss certainly accomplished that. Here’s the entire first paragraph of The Dirt, told from the point of view of Vince Neil:
“Her name was Bullwinkle. We called her that because she had a face like a moose. But Tommy, even though he could get any girl he wanted on the Sunset Strip, would not break up with her. He loved her and wanted to marry her, he kept telling us, because she could spray her cum across the room.”
BRILLIANT. A++++ WDBWA. In just four sentences, Strauss has pretty much assured that you will read the rest of The Dirt. This paragraph has sex, it has humor, it makes immediate reference to other members of Motley Crue, and it offers a “Psst! Wanna hear some gossip?” tone that allows the reader to feel secure that he or she did not waste his or her money. No wonder this thing was such a high seller.
Now, let’s contrast this with the opening paragraph of It’s So Easy and Other Lies, Duff McKagan’s new autobiography, the first eighty pages of which are now available for free download here:
