# Workshop --- First Sentences with Jay Nicorvo %title Workshop - First sentences with Jay Nicorvo Starting sentences with "It is..." (or was, etc) 1. Only add a third word --- "It was television." 2. Stretch it out, less than ten words --- "It was television, pure and simple, without dispute." 3. Let it ramble --- "It was television, pure and simple, without dispute, and though some may dispute that, I maintain that it stands still as the platonic ideal, a metonym for all shows that come after, the Ur-show that took a genre, a medium, a generation away from tenuous explorations and shoved it without remorse into the world we inhabit today, and one might wonder, should such a thing not have happened, how unfortunate and insipid our lives-in-entertainment might be today." 4. Now replace that sentence without "It is" to be more evocative --- "Television, pure and simple, without dispute. There's no way that we can take what we had from that show and say anything but. I maintain that it *still* stands as the platonic ideal, a metonym for all shows that came after. It was the Ur-show that took a genre, a medium, a generation away from the tenuous explorations and shoved, without remorse into the world we inhabit today. And one might wonder, should such a thing not have happened, how unfortunate and insipid our lives-in-entertainment might be today."