First Sentence Meme
A meme I got from (who is angevin2 on LJ), and .
Post the first lines of your last 21 fics.
1) For Grantaire, the revolution isn't the one that Enjolras is always talking about, the one that--somehow--through science and education will help the poor (and never ask who will pay for this), overturn Louis-Philippe (even though, as kings go, he's not that bad) and force the world to progress if they die (because people apparently never die in vain if they die for a good reason).
2) Eight-year-old Cassiopeia Black isn't interested in pairing up with anyone.
3) When she walked into her room in her mother's house, eager for a nap after a five-hour flight, Ana wasn't expecting to see purple smoke flow out of an air conditioner and re-shape itself into a short, plump, dark-haired and olive-skinned woman in what most people would describe as a pink harem girl costume, but that was what she got.
4) In Kate Mortimer’s opinion, Harry Percy-generally known, to the other boys, at least, as Hotspur-is remarkably silly.
5) Ever after, Cassiopeia remembered nineteen-twenty-three as a bad year, for that was the year that she discovered that something was deeply wrong with her brother Marius…or with the way that people reacted to Marius.
6) Mya Stone knows that Alayne wants to be sorry that Robert Arryn is dead, though she’s not quite sure why.
7) ”Yes!”
8) As the tributes wait their turn for their televised interviews, Clove notices the anger and envy in the eyes of the girl tribute from District 12, the fear in the expression of the child from District 11.
9) Both gates stand on the far edge of the Dreaming-
10) During an afternoon hunt, Khutulun spotted the soldiers, their metal headdresses and garments gleaming in the sunlight, riding giant lizards toward the city known as Amphissa Nova.
11) When I said Grandma had been devoured by a wolf,/They all believed--
12) There is a power in dreams.
13) When Mike Nelson wakes up that morning, he doesn't expect to find Gypsy talking cheerfully to a young blonde girl of fourteen or so who's wearing black robes and a truly insane hat that momentarily distracts him.
14) The sex thing, in Crowley's opinion, quite often wasn't worth the effort.
15) A cursed princess, kissed by the prince who loved her.
16) Having spoken at some length about his determination to immolate himself on a funeral pyre and rid the world of himself and his evil, the Creature sprang toward my cabin window.
17) She woke gasping for air in a crystal casket as a prince's warm lips pressed eagerly against her chill, slack ones as his servants, embarrassed, looked anywhere but at the prince and herself.
18) The thing you gotta understand is that Violette and Sebastien were trouble right from the beginning.
19) When Dane Amleth, the captain of Her Majesty's Starship Elsinore, died, without warning, in the ship's solarium, the crew-with the exception of one person--was upset but not shocked.
20) Edward Aumerle Lancaster--Aumerle to everyone in the family, because the Lancasters, for all their money and influence, are not imaginative when it comes to naming, and they're rather overrun with Edwards and Edmunds--is the first to notice that once Richard Kent-Bordeaux walks into the boardroom of Lancaster Holdings, Ltd., Flintshire Division, to settle a horrific lawsuit and the looming bankruptcy of the company by handing over the reins to their cousin, Henry Lancaster, Henry can't take his eyes off of the man.
21) Her name was Constance.
CONCLUSIONS
-- I don't write exclusively in one fandom. Les Mis, Harry Potter, Shakespeare (Henry IV Part I, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Richard II), ASOIAF/A Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Sandman, Badass Women in History, the paintings of Laurence Alma-Tadema. fairy tales, MST3K, Good Omens, Frankenstein and Fifty Shades of Grey are all represented.
-- Most of the fandoms I write in these days are small ones.
--I love AUs and fix-it fic. A lot. Numbers 3, 4, 7, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 would all qualify as AUs.
-- I have a habit of writing from the point of view of minor characters, which I know costs me readers.
-- My opening sentences can be of any length, but if they're long, they'll be a paragraph long.
-- I have a habit of establishing the story's time, setting, characters and situation in the first sentence (or, failing that, the first paragraph following the first sentence).
-- I have a strong preference for third person.
-- The shorter fics tend to be present tense, but the longer ones tend to be set in the narrative past. Number 18 is an exception, and that's because I was deliberately going for a Runyonesque tone.
-- Of the twenty-one stories listed, thirteen are the stories of and are told by women. (Numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 17, 19, and 21.) Of the remainder, #9 features an omniscient narrator talking about Morpheus and the Dreaming; #12 is a multi-chapter story told by male and female characters; #13 is about two female characters as seen by a male one (Gypsy and Luna Lovegood, through the eyes of a VERY confused Mike Nelson); #14 is told by a mostly sexless (though apparently male) demon about himself and a mostly sexless (though apparently male) angel; and #18 is a re-telling of Twelfth Night from the point of view of a minor male character. Only #1, #16 and #20 feature male characters through the eyes of other male characters.
--A few are relationship fics (#1, #2, #4, #6 and #14) but most are pretty short. Nothing I've listed would qualify as solidly romantic or erotic.
***
Post the first lines of your last 21 fics.
1) For Grantaire, the revolution isn't the one that Enjolras is always talking about, the one that--somehow--through science and education will help the poor (and never ask who will pay for this), overturn Louis-Philippe (even though, as kings go, he's not that bad) and force the world to progress if they die (because people apparently never die in vain if they die for a good reason).
2) Eight-year-old Cassiopeia Black isn't interested in pairing up with anyone.
3) When she walked into her room in her mother's house, eager for a nap after a five-hour flight, Ana wasn't expecting to see purple smoke flow out of an air conditioner and re-shape itself into a short, plump, dark-haired and olive-skinned woman in what most people would describe as a pink harem girl costume, but that was what she got.
4) In Kate Mortimer’s opinion, Harry Percy-generally known, to the other boys, at least, as Hotspur-is remarkably silly.
5) Ever after, Cassiopeia remembered nineteen-twenty-three as a bad year, for that was the year that she discovered that something was deeply wrong with her brother Marius…or with the way that people reacted to Marius.
6) Mya Stone knows that Alayne wants to be sorry that Robert Arryn is dead, though she’s not quite sure why.
7) ”Yes!”
8) As the tributes wait their turn for their televised interviews, Clove notices the anger and envy in the eyes of the girl tribute from District 12, the fear in the expression of the child from District 11.
9) Both gates stand on the far edge of the Dreaming-
10) During an afternoon hunt, Khutulun spotted the soldiers, their metal headdresses and garments gleaming in the sunlight, riding giant lizards toward the city known as Amphissa Nova.
11) When I said Grandma had been devoured by a wolf,/They all believed--
12) There is a power in dreams.
13) When Mike Nelson wakes up that morning, he doesn't expect to find Gypsy talking cheerfully to a young blonde girl of fourteen or so who's wearing black robes and a truly insane hat that momentarily distracts him.
14) The sex thing, in Crowley's opinion, quite often wasn't worth the effort.
15) A cursed princess, kissed by the prince who loved her.
16) Having spoken at some length about his determination to immolate himself on a funeral pyre and rid the world of himself and his evil, the Creature sprang toward my cabin window.
17) She woke gasping for air in a crystal casket as a prince's warm lips pressed eagerly against her chill, slack ones as his servants, embarrassed, looked anywhere but at the prince and herself.
18) The thing you gotta understand is that Violette and Sebastien were trouble right from the beginning.
19) When Dane Amleth, the captain of Her Majesty's Starship Elsinore, died, without warning, in the ship's solarium, the crew-with the exception of one person--was upset but not shocked.
20) Edward Aumerle Lancaster--Aumerle to everyone in the family, because the Lancasters, for all their money and influence, are not imaginative when it comes to naming, and they're rather overrun with Edwards and Edmunds--is the first to notice that once Richard Kent-Bordeaux walks into the boardroom of Lancaster Holdings, Ltd., Flintshire Division, to settle a horrific lawsuit and the looming bankruptcy of the company by handing over the reins to their cousin, Henry Lancaster, Henry can't take his eyes off of the man.
21) Her name was Constance.
CONCLUSIONS
-- I don't write exclusively in one fandom. Les Mis, Harry Potter, Shakespeare (Henry IV Part I, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Richard II), ASOIAF/A Game of Thrones, Hunger Games, Sandman, Badass Women in History, the paintings of Laurence Alma-Tadema. fairy tales, MST3K, Good Omens, Frankenstein and Fifty Shades of Grey are all represented.
-- Most of the fandoms I write in these days are small ones.
--I love AUs and fix-it fic. A lot. Numbers 3, 4, 7, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 would all qualify as AUs.
-- I have a habit of writing from the point of view of minor characters, which I know costs me readers.
-- My opening sentences can be of any length, but if they're long, they'll be a paragraph long.
-- I have a habit of establishing the story's time, setting, characters and situation in the first sentence (or, failing that, the first paragraph following the first sentence).
-- I have a strong preference for third person.
-- The shorter fics tend to be present tense, but the longer ones tend to be set in the narrative past. Number 18 is an exception, and that's because I was deliberately going for a Runyonesque tone.
-- Of the twenty-one stories listed, thirteen are the stories of and are told by women. (Numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15, 17, 19, and 21.) Of the remainder, #9 features an omniscient narrator talking about Morpheus and the Dreaming; #12 is a multi-chapter story told by male and female characters; #13 is about two female characters as seen by a male one (Gypsy and Luna Lovegood, through the eyes of a VERY confused Mike Nelson); #14 is told by a mostly sexless (though apparently male) demon about himself and a mostly sexless (though apparently male) angel; and #18 is a re-telling of Twelfth Night from the point of view of a minor male character. Only #1, #16 and #20 feature male characters through the eyes of other male characters.
--A few are relationship fics (#1, #2, #4, #6 and #14) but most are pretty short. Nothing I've listed would qualify as solidly romantic or erotic.
***