(no subject)
Post the first sentence (or several) from every WIP you're currently working on, even if it's very short. Then invite people to ask questions about your WIPs. With any luck, you'll get talking about writing, and the motivation to take that WIP one step closer to completion will appear as if by magic!
Tuesday at 11 a.m. in Denver, Colorado.
Man, that's ... amazing. So, like. This story is probably going to feel kind of sparse. Or maybe it will get heavier as it goes on. On its own I feel bad about this sentence, like, it just hangs there. But in context I think it works all right, because the conversation that begins the story is meant to be disjointed and the reader isn't meant to internalize the full impact of everything that's said until later in the story. I think. I hope. Also, time is very much of the essence in this conversation, because one of the characters is very impatient and trying to get the other character to do something immediately, and when the narrative picks up a week or so later, things are very different.
Bebe and Kyle have always had a lot in common.
This is for porn and I want to keep porn short and sweet. Who's gonna bang and how and why? No need to describe anything not related to the banging. This sentence actually answers all of those questions, in the most basic way.
It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday when Kyle is interrupted for the first time.
This is for a long-delayed story that is based on this picture, which is based on many other things, but as far as first sentences go, this one is just a description of what happens the moment after the moment in this picture: Stan interrupts Kyle, who is drawing on a blackboard at 10 p.m.
On Saturday the hippie and the Jew are kissing at the movie theater at the 1:50 p.m. showing in the back row, parkas crinkling and sneakers making sticky noises as they skid against the floor.
This is from Cartman's perspective so he'd think of Stan and Kyle that way. This story is not actually about Stan/Kyle, but how Cartman reacts to them is the telling key to his character in this story, so I put that up front.
Gradually and yet surely, Stanley Marsh began to style himself as someone - something - projecting an artifice, like a 1970s sitcom set in the 1950s.
This isn't a very good opening sentence, actually. The working title of this story, which I've been trying to finish for well over a year, is St. Rosa and The Swallows, or, Notes on Camp. The first epigraph is about artifice in camp, and that's going to me kind of the theme of the story. I think I do a bit more telling up here than I should, so maybe I'll rework it.
They were best friends when they were younger, but they aren’t anymore - not because anything happened, not because one of them hurt the other.
This is a story about Stan being a physiotherapist and Kyle being divorced that I described in some post about stories I'm not writing, but clearly I'm writing it. Slowly. I'll probably shuffle this around, but I want to get it across that life sort of took Stan and Kyle in different directions, not that there was some drama. I think I was getting into this back in the fall, when it was in vogue to write about Kyle and Stan drifting apart and getting back together. So this is mostly a response to that.
Noah’s nose was in a book when his sister called.
Sequel to this. Noah's Stan and Kyle's younger son, and he's the main character, so. Everything in the story filters through him. And he's pointedly trying to keep away from his family and pretend they don't exist. So you can see what a gifted writer I am, this is really just clever as fuck. I mean, this is more interesting than Noah is Stan and Kyle's son or Noah is a dickbag who isn't paying attention to his family, but not by much. Show and don't tell, and all that.
There lived in the mountains an old warrior named Randy, who was the son of Marvin.
No, really. Icelandic saga AU. These start with some genealogy, sometimes, so ... when I started writing this I was trying to be as formulaic as possible, because for some reason I assumed the reader wouldn't buy it unless I stuck to the conventions of saga writing as closely as possible, then little by little broke out into ... whatever I'm doing.
[RIAT intentionally left out due to massive first-line spoiler, if anyone cares.]
“I just realized something.”
This won't be the first line of this, it's just the first line of the document. This is a chapter of a longer story, though. Technically the first line of this WIP is, "It was going to be the warmest Christmas break in his memory, but Stan was still pissed." And I wrote that sentence in like April 2008, and I really couldn't tell you why. I am not the best writer these days, but I was certainly much worse back then.
Well, I ... think I learned something today? Other people should do this. I like memes.
Tuesday at 11 a.m. in Denver, Colorado.
Man, that's ... amazing. So, like. This story is probably going to feel kind of sparse. Or maybe it will get heavier as it goes on. On its own I feel bad about this sentence, like, it just hangs there. But in context I think it works all right, because the conversation that begins the story is meant to be disjointed and the reader isn't meant to internalize the full impact of everything that's said until later in the story. I think. I hope. Also, time is very much of the essence in this conversation, because one of the characters is very impatient and trying to get the other character to do something immediately, and when the narrative picks up a week or so later, things are very different.
Bebe and Kyle have always had a lot in common.
This is for porn and I want to keep porn short and sweet. Who's gonna bang and how and why? No need to describe anything not related to the banging. This sentence actually answers all of those questions, in the most basic way.
It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday when Kyle is interrupted for the first time.
This is for a long-delayed story that is based on this picture, which is based on many other things, but as far as first sentences go, this one is just a description of what happens the moment after the moment in this picture: Stan interrupts Kyle, who is drawing on a blackboard at 10 p.m.
On Saturday the hippie and the Jew are kissing at the movie theater at the 1:50 p.m. showing in the back row, parkas crinkling and sneakers making sticky noises as they skid against the floor.
This is from Cartman's perspective so he'd think of Stan and Kyle that way. This story is not actually about Stan/Kyle, but how Cartman reacts to them is the telling key to his character in this story, so I put that up front.
Gradually and yet surely, Stanley Marsh began to style himself as someone - something - projecting an artifice, like a 1970s sitcom set in the 1950s.
This isn't a very good opening sentence, actually. The working title of this story, which I've been trying to finish for well over a year, is St. Rosa and The Swallows, or, Notes on Camp. The first epigraph is about artifice in camp, and that's going to me kind of the theme of the story. I think I do a bit more telling up here than I should, so maybe I'll rework it.
They were best friends when they were younger, but they aren’t anymore - not because anything happened, not because one of them hurt the other.
This is a story about Stan being a physiotherapist and Kyle being divorced that I described in some post about stories I'm not writing, but clearly I'm writing it. Slowly. I'll probably shuffle this around, but I want to get it across that life sort of took Stan and Kyle in different directions, not that there was some drama. I think I was getting into this back in the fall, when it was in vogue to write about Kyle and Stan drifting apart and getting back together. So this is mostly a response to that.
Noah’s nose was in a book when his sister called.
Sequel to this. Noah's Stan and Kyle's younger son, and he's the main character, so. Everything in the story filters through him. And he's pointedly trying to keep away from his family and pretend they don't exist. So you can see what a gifted writer I am, this is really just clever as fuck. I mean, this is more interesting than Noah is Stan and Kyle's son or Noah is a dickbag who isn't paying attention to his family, but not by much. Show and don't tell, and all that.
There lived in the mountains an old warrior named Randy, who was the son of Marvin.
No, really. Icelandic saga AU. These start with some genealogy, sometimes, so ... when I started writing this I was trying to be as formulaic as possible, because for some reason I assumed the reader wouldn't buy it unless I stuck to the conventions of saga writing as closely as possible, then little by little broke out into ... whatever I'm doing.
[RIAT intentionally left out due to massive first-line spoiler, if anyone cares.]
“I just realized something.”
This won't be the first line of this, it's just the first line of the document. This is a chapter of a longer story, though. Technically the first line of this WIP is, "It was going to be the warmest Christmas break in his memory, but Stan was still pissed." And I wrote that sentence in like April 2008, and I really couldn't tell you why. I am not the best writer these days, but I was certainly much worse back then.
Well, I ... think I learned something today? Other people should do this. I like memes.