When Sherry Swain was teaching writing to first-graders, she sometimes took a lesson from E.B. White’s classic, “Charlotte’s Web.”
She would read the first sentence “‘Where's Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.” and tell her students, “You know, that wasn’t E.B. White’s first draft. His first attempt started, ‘Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived on a farm.’”