Fic Meme: first lines of finished and unfinished drafts
Nicked from misscam: Post the first lines from your 25 most recent drafts. Although in this case, I used first paragraphs if they seemed to work better.
I am lame and thus there are only 19. I could have included more finished ones, but I couldn't be bothered chasing up links, really. And I have quite a few fics that have quite detailed plots and yet no actual first line written, so I couldn't include them. Some BSG, Doctor Who (various incarnations), Babylon 5, Harry Potter and Water Rats
1. When Zak suggests they play for dares instead of money, Lee knows it’s a bad idea.
(BSG, Truth or Dare, Lee/Kara, Zak/Kara)
2. Sam looked at the photo for a long moment, then back at Lee. “Tell me,” he asked suddenly. “You and Kara. Did it happen before she married me, or after?”
(BSG, Lee/Kara, post Maelstrom. May or may not end up being called “Photograph” but that’s the filename for now. And despite the first line Sam’s really just a plot device.)
3. The first time, she doesn’t even know his name, but with a callsign like Apollo, she can’t resist the temptation to see if it suits him. (It certainly looks like it does.)
(BSG, Lee/Kara Five Things fic. I am so not happy with the first line yet. Have posted a scene in Wisteria’s porn battle if anyone wants more of a peek.)
4. Sam wondered, if it hadn’t been for Kara, whether he and Lee Adama would have even looked at one another twice.
(BSG, no title yet, Sam and Lee coming to a sort of understanding post-Maelstrom. Not quite happy with this line as it seems to sway towards slashy rather than friendship, which isn't what I was going for.)
5. When she returns from the dead, the question on everybody’s lips is this: Is Starbuck a cylon?
(BSG, drabble that isn’t polished enough to post yet.)
6. In her own defence, it had been a while. Despite the fact that pilots were noted for being an oversexed bunch, it was generally understood that fraternisation on the ground could lead to problems in the air. And the last thing you needed was to piss off someone who might very well hold your life in their hands the next day.
Not to mention that Kara was the type who preferred a nice clean break in the morning. Frakking someone who bunked four feet away from you did not make for easy closure.
(BSG, no title, homeless paragraph really but I think it was going to turn into smut. We’ll see, I guess.)
7. It happens.
He feels it happen, two microscopic organisms fusing into one new entity. The possibilities rearrange themselves.
And he is no longer alone in the universe.
(DW, Nine/Rose, “Moments in Time”. Was co-writing this with misscam and then we sort of lost interest. Pity really, because there are lots of parts that I love about that fic.)
8. Marcus drifted towards consciousness slowly. He felt… sore, and tired-the kind of bone-seeping tiredness of one who has slept far too long.
(Babylon 5, Marcus/Ivanova, “Genesis”. Posted a couple of chapters of this on FFN years ago but I’ve revised them a lot since then. Every few years I come back to this one and think about finishing, so you never know. But I hate this as a first line, really.)
9. She wasn’t sure at what point she realised she was dreaming. It might have been when the Doctor first kissed her; his mouth finding hers and exploring with reverence. It also might have been when he flicked open the buttons of her shirt and pressed against her with just a hint of demand. It was probably before he took her hand and led her to his bed.
(DW, Tegan/Five, This was gonna be a bit of angsty-eventual-smut where the Mara tempts Tegan with naughty dreams of the repressed blonde-haired one.)
10. In his first life he was young, rebellious and impetuous. As he grew, his family would shake their heads at him. “He will grow out of it,” they said.
(DW, untitled. A genfic, if you can believe that. Was going to be a bit of a reflection on all the Doctor’s past lives and loves. So okay, maybe not completely genfic.)
11. It's not fair.
How could I have found him after so long only to lose him? I never even told him I was glad to have him for a father. I never called him "Dad" or referred to him as my father. It was like I was trying to deny it.
(Water Rats! Probably not recent enough to be included but I was a little sad when I found it because it was the last ratfic I ever wrote on and it never got finished. Sophie angsting over Jack’s probable death in the finale.)
12. And so it came to be that the Doctor, accompanied by his erstwhile companion Charley Pollard, miscalculated the time-space coordinates for Gallifrey and ended up crossing his own future timeline.
(DW, untitled. Eight/Charley. A false start on fic exchange fic that ended up being “Almost a Paradise”. I wrote a fair bit of prose for the set up and I still kind of like the narrative voice. May or may not go somewhere, someday.)
13. The Eye of Orion is very old. Older than the Earth, definitely. Once it was the home of a thriving civilisation, but now it exists in perpetual silence.
(DW, Nine/Rose, Jack, Eight/Charley. Almost a Paradise of which I’ve only ever posted the first part, despite being 3/4 done with the second. Sadly I could never get the plot to work quite the way I wanted for the third and fourth parts, so it remains a WIP.)
14. General Susan Ivanova strode resolutely behind her husband’s coffin as it was carried through the streets of Tuzanor. He would perhaps have preferred a smaller, more private funeral, but he would have understood the Rangers’ need to honour their leader. It was a closed coffin; his remains were not inside. His ship had been vaporised in a Drakh ambush.
(Babylon 5, Marcus/Ivanova, “Ouroborous”. After Marcus dies in the future, Susan goes back to stop him dying in the past.)
15. In the spirit of going places that didn’t require lots of running away from angry mobs, the Doctor had been taking Rose on what he called a Concert Tour of Time.
(DW, Wild Ride, vespa smut I am still rather proud of.)
16. “Why are you kind to someone who calls you Mudblood?” he asked, frowning at her as she sat beside him at the lake’s edge.
(Harry Potter, untitled, Severus/Lily, Harry. Not sure that counts as the first line, this was going to be an EPIC and thus I have bits here, there and everywhere. Started before Deathly Hallows, and thus I TOTALLY CALLED IT.)
17. The Jaggorrian marketplace bristled with aliens of varying shapes, colours and sizes, but with one thing in common. They were all out looking for a bargain.
(DW, State of Mind, eternal WIP, I’m afraid. I had the idea of the Doctor encountering himself and losing his memory via the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, then encountering himself again and thus regaining his memory the same way. Then I lost interest.)
18. You thought it would last forever, but all the time you were being stalked by the wolf. Closer, ever closer.
(DW, Trust. Complete, but was going to have a twin fic called Betrayal. That’s not gonna happen now. Again, I lost interest.)
19. Throughout his nine incarnations, the Doctor had lost companions. He’d left some behind, some had asked to leave, and some had died. All, at some point or another on their travels, had come close to dying; it was in the brochure, after all. Travel with the Doctor, risk your life.
(DW, Nine/Rose, Greater Good. Probably got asked for sequel to this a hundred times. Strangely enough, I never felt it needed one.)
I am lame and thus there are only 19. I could have included more finished ones, but I couldn't be bothered chasing up links, really. And I have quite a few fics that have quite detailed plots and yet no actual first line written, so I couldn't include them. Some BSG, Doctor Who (various incarnations), Babylon 5, Harry Potter and Water Rats
1. When Zak suggests they play for dares instead of money, Lee knows it’s a bad idea.
(BSG, Truth or Dare, Lee/Kara, Zak/Kara)
2. Sam looked at the photo for a long moment, then back at Lee. “Tell me,” he asked suddenly. “You and Kara. Did it happen before she married me, or after?”
(BSG, Lee/Kara, post Maelstrom. May or may not end up being called “Photograph” but that’s the filename for now. And despite the first line Sam’s really just a plot device.)
3. The first time, she doesn’t even know his name, but with a callsign like Apollo, she can’t resist the temptation to see if it suits him. (It certainly looks like it does.)
(BSG, Lee/Kara Five Things fic. I am so not happy with the first line yet. Have posted a scene in Wisteria’s porn battle if anyone wants more of a peek.)
4. Sam wondered, if it hadn’t been for Kara, whether he and Lee Adama would have even looked at one another twice.
(BSG, no title yet, Sam and Lee coming to a sort of understanding post-Maelstrom. Not quite happy with this line as it seems to sway towards slashy rather than friendship, which isn't what I was going for.)
5. When she returns from the dead, the question on everybody’s lips is this: Is Starbuck a cylon?
(BSG, drabble that isn’t polished enough to post yet.)
6. In her own defence, it had been a while. Despite the fact that pilots were noted for being an oversexed bunch, it was generally understood that fraternisation on the ground could lead to problems in the air. And the last thing you needed was to piss off someone who might very well hold your life in their hands the next day.
Not to mention that Kara was the type who preferred a nice clean break in the morning. Frakking someone who bunked four feet away from you did not make for easy closure.
(BSG, no title, homeless paragraph really but I think it was going to turn into smut. We’ll see, I guess.)
7. It happens.
He feels it happen, two microscopic organisms fusing into one new entity. The possibilities rearrange themselves.
And he is no longer alone in the universe.
(DW, Nine/Rose, “Moments in Time”. Was co-writing this with misscam and then we sort of lost interest. Pity really, because there are lots of parts that I love about that fic.)
8. Marcus drifted towards consciousness slowly. He felt… sore, and tired-the kind of bone-seeping tiredness of one who has slept far too long.
(Babylon 5, Marcus/Ivanova, “Genesis”. Posted a couple of chapters of this on FFN years ago but I’ve revised them a lot since then. Every few years I come back to this one and think about finishing, so you never know. But I hate this as a first line, really.)
9. She wasn’t sure at what point she realised she was dreaming. It might have been when the Doctor first kissed her; his mouth finding hers and exploring with reverence. It also might have been when he flicked open the buttons of her shirt and pressed against her with just a hint of demand. It was probably before he took her hand and led her to his bed.
(DW, Tegan/Five, This was gonna be a bit of angsty-eventual-smut where the Mara tempts Tegan with naughty dreams of the repressed blonde-haired one.)
10. In his first life he was young, rebellious and impetuous. As he grew, his family would shake their heads at him. “He will grow out of it,” they said.
(DW, untitled. A genfic, if you can believe that. Was going to be a bit of a reflection on all the Doctor’s past lives and loves. So okay, maybe not completely genfic.)
11. It's not fair.
How could I have found him after so long only to lose him? I never even told him I was glad to have him for a father. I never called him "Dad" or referred to him as my father. It was like I was trying to deny it.
(Water Rats! Probably not recent enough to be included but I was a little sad when I found it because it was the last ratfic I ever wrote on and it never got finished. Sophie angsting over Jack’s probable death in the finale.)
12. And so it came to be that the Doctor, accompanied by his erstwhile companion Charley Pollard, miscalculated the time-space coordinates for Gallifrey and ended up crossing his own future timeline.
(DW, untitled. Eight/Charley. A false start on fic exchange fic that ended up being “Almost a Paradise”. I wrote a fair bit of prose for the set up and I still kind of like the narrative voice. May or may not go somewhere, someday.)
13. The Eye of Orion is very old. Older than the Earth, definitely. Once it was the home of a thriving civilisation, but now it exists in perpetual silence.
(DW, Nine/Rose, Jack, Eight/Charley. Almost a Paradise of which I’ve only ever posted the first part, despite being 3/4 done with the second. Sadly I could never get the plot to work quite the way I wanted for the third and fourth parts, so it remains a WIP.)
14. General Susan Ivanova strode resolutely behind her husband’s coffin as it was carried through the streets of Tuzanor. He would perhaps have preferred a smaller, more private funeral, but he would have understood the Rangers’ need to honour their leader. It was a closed coffin; his remains were not inside. His ship had been vaporised in a Drakh ambush.
(Babylon 5, Marcus/Ivanova, “Ouroborous”. After Marcus dies in the future, Susan goes back to stop him dying in the past.)
15. In the spirit of going places that didn’t require lots of running away from angry mobs, the Doctor had been taking Rose on what he called a Concert Tour of Time.
(DW, Wild Ride, vespa smut I am still rather proud of.)
16. “Why are you kind to someone who calls you Mudblood?” he asked, frowning at her as she sat beside him at the lake’s edge.
(Harry Potter, untitled, Severus/Lily, Harry. Not sure that counts as the first line, this was going to be an EPIC and thus I have bits here, there and everywhere. Started before Deathly Hallows, and thus I TOTALLY CALLED IT.)
17. The Jaggorrian marketplace bristled with aliens of varying shapes, colours and sizes, but with one thing in common. They were all out looking for a bargain.
(DW, State of Mind, eternal WIP, I’m afraid. I had the idea of the Doctor encountering himself and losing his memory via the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, then encountering himself again and thus regaining his memory the same way. Then I lost interest.)
18. You thought it would last forever, but all the time you were being stalked by the wolf. Closer, ever closer.
(DW, Trust. Complete, but was going to have a twin fic called Betrayal. That’s not gonna happen now. Again, I lost interest.)
19. Throughout his nine incarnations, the Doctor had lost companions. He’d left some behind, some had asked to leave, and some had died. All, at some point or another on their travels, had come close to dying; it was in the brochure, after all. Travel with the Doctor, risk your life.
(DW, Nine/Rose, Greater Good. Probably got asked for sequel to this a hundred times. Strangely enough, I never felt it needed one.)