First Lines Meme
Sep. 1st, 2008 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maychorianBecause I'm freakin' weak. And you can always count on me to blather on about my own writing.
Meme: Post the first lines of your last twenty stories and look for patterns.
1. One of the great things about being retired, Jack thought as he sat down in his rocker on the cabin's porch with a newspaper and a steaming cup of joe, was that all the news he read was about good ol' planet Earth.
2. When Sam was sick, all was bustle and noise: Sam's fretful whining, John and Dean's anxious attempts to help, the blare of the TV or radio, one of the older two reading aloud, the fevered tossing of blankets, and harsh, demanding coughs.
3. Sam first discovers it at Uncle Bobby's place.
4. Davin had never seen a ship so doomed fight so hard.
5. It might have been Daniel who started the post-it notes, as he seemed to have never-ending supplies tucked away in his desk.
6. When the Tiger taught the Hunter the ways of the woods, the Wolf was displeased.
7. When the world was young, Obora the Bear explored her vast snowy domain, striding through the deep white drifts, seeking nothing but to see what there was to see.
8. In the beginning, the Prism was not known to the other gods, imprisoned as she was in the world of the incorporeal—it would be some time before the Bear would travel far enough north, exploring her frozen domain, to meet the goddess of dreams in the lights of the northern sky.
9. Qui-Gon pressed against the jailer’s mind, bringing his will to bear subtly but forcefully.
10. Iluak was on the ice when Arctic Wolf came to her.
11. “First time here, I take it?”
12. One day Daniel just got in his car and started driving.
13. They didn't ask each other how they had gotten where they were.
14. Viara Clovenoak grew up in the lake country northeast of Lyseria and west of the sea.
15. They didn’t hear about it until Tuesday.
16. She liked to hear him sing.
17. Colonel Jack O’Neill stepped through the gate and scowled at the landscape.
18. “Let’s make cookies.”
19. The moonlight wasn’t as lovely anymore.
20. The cursor blinks white on a dark blue screen.
Yeah, so this? Quite the mish-mash. I had to go back two years for some of these. There are SPN fanfics, SG fanfics, SW fanfics, a Farscape fic, two crossovers, some original stuff, and various stories for the Wrath & Gunfire D&D setting I'm writing with my friends.
Patterns? Hmmmm. Not all that easy to find, actually. Apparently I change my writing style whenever the mood strikes me.
Well, that's not fair. The stuff I wrote for Wrath & Gunfire has its own distinct flavor, a rather high-falutin', legendary kind of voice. My original stories tend to start with the name of the character and a feel for the setting, though not always. I thought that I would find more stories that started with a line of dialogue, because I like doing that, but surprise, only two.
I seem to be more willing to be vague when it's a fanfiction. I'll start with just a pronoun, or something that seems completely random (19-20). This is especially true if it's a short fic. For longer fics, I tend to start it off with a more serious kind of feeling, saying who the character is and where they are right away.
I do like a sense of place and setting. Looks like I have a description of where this is taking place in the first line more often than not.
And yeah, that's all I can see, really. I hope this was interesting to someone besides me, but I have my doubts.
Meme: Post the first lines of your last twenty stories and look for patterns.
1. One of the great things about being retired, Jack thought as he sat down in his rocker on the cabin's porch with a newspaper and a steaming cup of joe, was that all the news he read was about good ol' planet Earth.
2. When Sam was sick, all was bustle and noise: Sam's fretful whining, John and Dean's anxious attempts to help, the blare of the TV or radio, one of the older two reading aloud, the fevered tossing of blankets, and harsh, demanding coughs.
3. Sam first discovers it at Uncle Bobby's place.
4. Davin had never seen a ship so doomed fight so hard.
5. It might have been Daniel who started the post-it notes, as he seemed to have never-ending supplies tucked away in his desk.
6. When the Tiger taught the Hunter the ways of the woods, the Wolf was displeased.
7. When the world was young, Obora the Bear explored her vast snowy domain, striding through the deep white drifts, seeking nothing but to see what there was to see.
8. In the beginning, the Prism was not known to the other gods, imprisoned as she was in the world of the incorporeal—it would be some time before the Bear would travel far enough north, exploring her frozen domain, to meet the goddess of dreams in the lights of the northern sky.
9. Qui-Gon pressed against the jailer’s mind, bringing his will to bear subtly but forcefully.
10. Iluak was on the ice when Arctic Wolf came to her.
11. “First time here, I take it?”
12. One day Daniel just got in his car and started driving.
13. They didn't ask each other how they had gotten where they were.
14. Viara Clovenoak grew up in the lake country northeast of Lyseria and west of the sea.
15. They didn’t hear about it until Tuesday.
16. She liked to hear him sing.
17. Colonel Jack O’Neill stepped through the gate and scowled at the landscape.
18. “Let’s make cookies.”
19. The moonlight wasn’t as lovely anymore.
20. The cursor blinks white on a dark blue screen.
Yeah, so this? Quite the mish-mash. I had to go back two years for some of these. There are SPN fanfics, SG fanfics, SW fanfics, a Farscape fic, two crossovers, some original stuff, and various stories for the Wrath & Gunfire D&D setting I'm writing with my friends.
Patterns? Hmmmm. Not all that easy to find, actually. Apparently I change my writing style whenever the mood strikes me.
Well, that's not fair. The stuff I wrote for Wrath & Gunfire has its own distinct flavor, a rather high-falutin', legendary kind of voice. My original stories tend to start with the name of the character and a feel for the setting, though not always. I thought that I would find more stories that started with a line of dialogue, because I like doing that, but surprise, only two.
I seem to be more willing to be vague when it's a fanfiction. I'll start with just a pronoun, or something that seems completely random (19-20). This is especially true if it's a short fic. For longer fics, I tend to start it off with a more serious kind of feeling, saying who the character is and where they are right away.
I do like a sense of place and setting. Looks like I have a description of where this is taking place in the first line more often than not.
And yeah, that's all I can see, really. I hope this was interesting to someone besides me, but I have my doubts.
