[Meme] First Lines Meme
Found via 
asukaskerian and
ceescedasticity.
Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories. See if there are any patterns. Tag your favorite authors!
I suck at tagging, so whatever. Play if you want to!
1. Responsibility
"Thank you again for coming downriver from Beruna," Susan said to Skipper Sharpeye, curtseying to the Otter and her crew.
2. A Splash of Color
Stokey's Academy of Magic was too new to have many traditions, but the students and faculty were working hard to make up that deficit -- primarily by declaring any particularly interesting accident 'a new tradition!' and egging people on to repeat it the next year.
3. Truth or Dare
"I still say this is an idea so bad the English language recoils in horror at attempting to describe it," Dave said as he sat cross-legged on the far corner of Rose and Kanaya's decadently oversized bed.
4. Who Contract the Habit of Eating
Rose's phone bleeped halfway through her attempt to choreograph yet another chess game (she really should have picked a different structural theme, regardless of the lovely, useful symbolic baggage chess invoked in readers' minds) and she gratefully abandoned her work to check the flurry of incoming messages.
5. Cardcaptor Uhura
Nyota's comm vibrates halfway through a warp navigation quiz.
6. Almost at Odds with Morning
"Damz at the dam, haha," Latula says, her nasal, put-on drawl so immediately identifiable that you don't bother to turn your head.
7. Rekindling
"You don't have to inconvenience yourselves," Sasuke said yet again as he and Sakura started to clear away the mess of dinner, stacking the bowls and utensils, carrying them from the tiny table across the tiny kitchen, and dropping them into the equally tiny sink.
8. But Every Hour Is Saved from That Eternal Silence
Susan stretches in her chair, groaning as her vertebrae pop and realign.
9. Have Dominion
"Good morning, Helen," said a nasal, snorty voice as Helen lifted the latch and swung open the door of the little outhouse she and Frank had built to tide themselves over while the dwarfs and various nature spirits argued over the location and dimensions of their eventual castle.
10. A Problem That You'll Undertand
-- gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --
GG: Dirk, are you busy?
11. Narutostuck: Triptych
1. There is a giant pearl-white egg in the middle of the forest, nestled on a bed of dried moss and propped upright by a ring of granite boulders still scored by the deep marks of massive claws.
12. Narutostuck: By Which a Shattered World
After the assault on the Uchuukage's compound, you find Roxy sitting on the cracked and soot-stained front steps of Kyokuchou-no-kami's shrine.
13. And Carry On
Kanaya stalked through the corridors of Battleship Retribution, her lime-and-black coat billowing dramatically behind her as she fumed over the obvious power play that had diverted her to the bridge to make and receive needless reports rather than letting her go straight to her moirail upon her return from her latest off-ship mission.
14. Narutostuck: Family Planning
"Wait, but, does that mean you didn't want us?"
15. Narutostuck: Riptide
"There reelly is no way to salvage this, is there?" Feferi asked rhetorically as Aradia held the painted Anbu operative slightly out-of-step with normal time.
16. Noblesse Oblige
"I never wanted to be anyone's Queen," Jane says as she and Dave sit on the gray, game-construct platform, studiously ignoring the battle planning session behind them.
17. Don't Get Caught
"Miss Weasley, I see you're looking better," Professor McGonagall said as she sat neatly beside Ginny's infirmary bed and tucked the skirt of her robes aside.
18. For what you have tamed
As the council drags on, five dozen people (because Narnia has no mechanism, yet, for winnowing representatives to manageable numbers) arguing over whether to allow the descendants of refugees back into the country, and if so how to identify valid claims and what to do about finding them places to live, Tumnus feels a small, warm weight settle against his side in the slightly too-large armchair set back in a corner where he can avoid the disapproving stares of those who collaborated less fully with the Witch.
19. Narutostuck: No Child Left Behind
The testing happens on Dave's birthday.
20. In what distant deeps or skies
One side effect of working communications is that Dave gets first look at all incoming transmissions -- or at least, his sorting algorithms do, and they flag up anything that looks hinky and/or just plain interesting.
-----
I don't think there's any particular pattern. Mostly I am trying to introduce the characters, the physical and temporal setting, the scenario/plot, and the mood, in as efficient and interesting a manner as possible, but which element makes it on-screen first (and how many of them I try to jam into a single sentence) is a tossup.
One could argue that there's a minor pattern (8 of 20 samples) wherein I attach setting and/or plot information to a line of dialogue instead of letting the dialogue stand alone, but that's just one of many methods to squeeze more than one of the four necessary elements into a single sentence -- in those cases, the characters (speaker and addressee) plus whatever else -- so I don't think I'd personally make that argument.
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)
asukaskerian and
ceescedasticity.
Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories. See if there are any patterns. Tag your favorite authors!
I suck at tagging, so whatever. Play if you want to!
1. Responsibility
"Thank you again for coming downriver from Beruna," Susan said to Skipper Sharpeye, curtseying to the Otter and her crew.
2. A Splash of Color
Stokey's Academy of Magic was too new to have many traditions, but the students and faculty were working hard to make up that deficit -- primarily by declaring any particularly interesting accident 'a new tradition!' and egging people on to repeat it the next year.
3. Truth or Dare
"I still say this is an idea so bad the English language recoils in horror at attempting to describe it," Dave said as he sat cross-legged on the far corner of Rose and Kanaya's decadently oversized bed.
4. Who Contract the Habit of Eating
Rose's phone bleeped halfway through her attempt to choreograph yet another chess game (she really should have picked a different structural theme, regardless of the lovely, useful symbolic baggage chess invoked in readers' minds) and she gratefully abandoned her work to check the flurry of incoming messages.
5. Cardcaptor Uhura
Nyota's comm vibrates halfway through a warp navigation quiz.
6. Almost at Odds with Morning
"Damz at the dam, haha," Latula says, her nasal, put-on drawl so immediately identifiable that you don't bother to turn your head.
7. Rekindling
"You don't have to inconvenience yourselves," Sasuke said yet again as he and Sakura started to clear away the mess of dinner, stacking the bowls and utensils, carrying them from the tiny table across the tiny kitchen, and dropping them into the equally tiny sink.
8. But Every Hour Is Saved from That Eternal Silence
Susan stretches in her chair, groaning as her vertebrae pop and realign.
9. Have Dominion
"Good morning, Helen," said a nasal, snorty voice as Helen lifted the latch and swung open the door of the little outhouse she and Frank had built to tide themselves over while the dwarfs and various nature spirits argued over the location and dimensions of their eventual castle.
10. A Problem That You'll Undertand
-- gutsyGumshoe [GG] began pestering timaeusTestified [TT] --
GG: Dirk, are you busy?
11. Narutostuck: Triptych
1. There is a giant pearl-white egg in the middle of the forest, nestled on a bed of dried moss and propped upright by a ring of granite boulders still scored by the deep marks of massive claws.
12. Narutostuck: By Which a Shattered World
After the assault on the Uchuukage's compound, you find Roxy sitting on the cracked and soot-stained front steps of Kyokuchou-no-kami's shrine.
13. And Carry On
Kanaya stalked through the corridors of Battleship Retribution, her lime-and-black coat billowing dramatically behind her as she fumed over the obvious power play that had diverted her to the bridge to make and receive needless reports rather than letting her go straight to her moirail upon her return from her latest off-ship mission.
14. Narutostuck: Family Planning
"Wait, but, does that mean you didn't want us?"
15. Narutostuck: Riptide
"There reelly is no way to salvage this, is there?" Feferi asked rhetorically as Aradia held the painted Anbu operative slightly out-of-step with normal time.
16. Noblesse Oblige
"I never wanted to be anyone's Queen," Jane says as she and Dave sit on the gray, game-construct platform, studiously ignoring the battle planning session behind them.
17. Don't Get Caught
"Miss Weasley, I see you're looking better," Professor McGonagall said as she sat neatly beside Ginny's infirmary bed and tucked the skirt of her robes aside.
18. For what you have tamed
As the council drags on, five dozen people (because Narnia has no mechanism, yet, for winnowing representatives to manageable numbers) arguing over whether to allow the descendants of refugees back into the country, and if so how to identify valid claims and what to do about finding them places to live, Tumnus feels a small, warm weight settle against his side in the slightly too-large armchair set back in a corner where he can avoid the disapproving stares of those who collaborated less fully with the Witch.
19. Narutostuck: No Child Left Behind
The testing happens on Dave's birthday.
20. In what distant deeps or skies
One side effect of working communications is that Dave gets first look at all incoming transmissions -- or at least, his sorting algorithms do, and they flag up anything that looks hinky and/or just plain interesting.
-----
I don't think there's any particular pattern. Mostly I am trying to introduce the characters, the physical and temporal setting, the scenario/plot, and the mood, in as efficient and interesting a manner as possible, but which element makes it on-screen first (and how many of them I try to jam into a single sentence) is a tossup.
One could argue that there's a minor pattern (8 of 20 samples) wherein I attach setting and/or plot information to a line of dialogue instead of letting the dialogue stand alone, but that's just one of many methods to squeeze more than one of the four necessary elements into a single sentence -- in those cases, the characters (speaker and addressee) plus whatever else -- so I don't think I'd personally make that argument.
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)