Fic appreciation: beautiful sentences
Borrowing and expanding # 9, memorable lines, from frozen_delight's fic appreciation meme <3-- because I love (love!)
well-crafted sentences. And how they speak to one another, make the whole.
From ad aeternum by alethiometry (Summary: Jess waits for Sam where she hopes he'll find her someday.):
"Posting cryptic comments on ghost-sighting YouTube videos from a metaphysical IP address had sounded like a lot of fun."
For its deft use of past perfect to give a sense of space and time.
*
From Paying for Time (Summary: Dean is old and forgetful. Sam is dead and maybe a ghost.):
"Sam was forty.
Sam woke up."
This one needs context--check out the use of short declaratives in amberdreams quiet, non-linear curtainfic. It also has a great, understated closing line.
*
From a western, i guess by obstinatrix:
"So. Picture the scene: two brothers roll into a saloon, dirt on their boots and blood in their mouths. They've rough-ridden wild over half the Wild West, Route 66 and Lincoln County road, and they've sure as hell gotten right to Armageddon more than once. You can get anywhere if you keep driving."
More than one sentence, but you know--the voice, the rhythms. The title shrugs off legend; the author gets that tone and rolls with it; happens in the phrases and radiates out.
*
From Crooked Young by Theboys. (Mind the tags; underage, dark):
"Mouth’s red like cherries, the kind on milkshakes. Maraschinos, Dean thinks they’re called."
For its sorta offhand interior deconstruction of a cliche.
*
From Sam Winchester's Guide to Blood Magic, or How the Rockies Were Made by thursdaysisters:
"He said nothing, drumming his fingers to the music as he stole glances at Sam and the growing inkstain on his right hand as he wrote in a spiral-bound notebook, diagramming an unnatural history of America."
For the way the phrases build breathless to that unnatural history.
*
From Welcome to Fog City by candle_beck:
"They traveled several hundred miles farther into the young summer. Everything was differing shades of green and gold, small clapboard houses swallowed by kudzu, pocketed ponds gleaming like coins at sunset."
For deft little sonically-sensitive swatches of scene-set & just a little figurative.
*
From West of Omaha by laughablelament:
"Trees and fence posts whip past, twilight blur."
For the way this opening line smacks the action right out there, like it's a verb.
and from Memory Foam:
"Eyelashes. Lips. Sam? African dream root vivid. Beard burn. Zipper."
No explication needed; you're there.
*
From The Babel Fish Has Forsaken Us:
"Down goes her hammer on her shale-stone base, and out comes lightning. It’s purple and white, smooth as diamond but with jagged cuts that she makes with angled swings of the iron hammer."
For the repetition & rhythm that gives life to this beautiful piece of slipstream by indiachick. For the "down" and the "out."
(Or this line: "The house knew no secrets then, and stood as clean as a scraped out egg." For the metaphor, slant but clear.)
*
From kalliel's gorgeous outsider-POV Like Water:
"She is as old as the boardwalk, as the sea. She is as old as the desert, as the dams on the Owens River, as the angels this city was named for."
For: sentence-level character sketch, person and place, knowing rhetoric that's bigger than this character thinks she is.
Or--plainspoken aphoristic:
"All of the worst ghosts, of course, are familiar."
from This is a ghost story.
(the "all of"/"of course" really gets me.)
*
From Sand Between Our Toes by frozen_delight:
"He stretches out his hand, the gesture encompassing the boundless sea ahead, the endless beach to their sides."
For the careful use of adjectives in the interests of the whole narrative, for the sound, and for the time & memory in them.
So so many more to appreciate, too! For next time.
well-crafted sentences. And how they speak to one another, make the whole.
From ad aeternum by alethiometry (Summary: Jess waits for Sam where she hopes he'll find her someday.):
"Posting cryptic comments on ghost-sighting YouTube videos from a metaphysical IP address had sounded like a lot of fun."
For its deft use of past perfect to give a sense of space and time.
*
From Paying for Time (Summary: Dean is old and forgetful. Sam is dead and maybe a ghost.):
"Sam was forty.
Sam woke up."
This one needs context--check out the use of short declaratives in amberdreams quiet, non-linear curtainfic. It also has a great, understated closing line.
*
From a western, i guess by obstinatrix:
"So. Picture the scene: two brothers roll into a saloon, dirt on their boots and blood in their mouths. They've rough-ridden wild over half the Wild West, Route 66 and Lincoln County road, and they've sure as hell gotten right to Armageddon more than once. You can get anywhere if you keep driving."
More than one sentence, but you know--the voice, the rhythms. The title shrugs off legend; the author gets that tone and rolls with it; happens in the phrases and radiates out.
*
From Crooked Young by Theboys. (Mind the tags; underage, dark):
"Mouth’s red like cherries, the kind on milkshakes. Maraschinos, Dean thinks they’re called."
For its sorta offhand interior deconstruction of a cliche.
*
From Sam Winchester's Guide to Blood Magic, or How the Rockies Were Made by thursdaysisters:
"He said nothing, drumming his fingers to the music as he stole glances at Sam and the growing inkstain on his right hand as he wrote in a spiral-bound notebook, diagramming an unnatural history of America."
For the way the phrases build breathless to that unnatural history.
*
From Welcome to Fog City by candle_beck:
"They traveled several hundred miles farther into the young summer. Everything was differing shades of green and gold, small clapboard houses swallowed by kudzu, pocketed ponds gleaming like coins at sunset."
For deft little sonically-sensitive swatches of scene-set & just a little figurative.
*
From West of Omaha by laughablelament:
"Trees and fence posts whip past, twilight blur."
For the way this opening line smacks the action right out there, like it's a verb.
and from Memory Foam:
"Eyelashes. Lips. Sam? African dream root vivid. Beard burn. Zipper."
No explication needed; you're there.
*
From The Babel Fish Has Forsaken Us:
"Down goes her hammer on her shale-stone base, and out comes lightning. It’s purple and white, smooth as diamond but with jagged cuts that she makes with angled swings of the iron hammer."
For the repetition & rhythm that gives life to this beautiful piece of slipstream by indiachick. For the "down" and the "out."
(Or this line: "The house knew no secrets then, and stood as clean as a scraped out egg." For the metaphor, slant but clear.)
*
From kalliel's gorgeous outsider-POV Like Water:
"She is as old as the boardwalk, as the sea. She is as old as the desert, as the dams on the Owens River, as the angels this city was named for."
For: sentence-level character sketch, person and place, knowing rhetoric that's bigger than this character thinks she is.
Or--plainspoken aphoristic:
"All of the worst ghosts, of course, are familiar."
from This is a ghost story.
(the "all of"/"of course" really gets me.)
*
From Sand Between Our Toes by frozen_delight:
"He stretches out his hand, the gesture encompassing the boundless sea ahead, the endless beach to their sides."
For the careful use of adjectives in the interests of the whole narrative, for the sound, and for the time & memory in them.
So so many more to appreciate, too! For next time.