Meme: 30 First Lines
I'm trying to be better about posting here, despite how busy I currently am. :) I'm aiming for at least once a week, plus commenting on other people's posts. So, this week I've got two things...
1. Meme, via musesfool: Post first lines from thirty of your stories. This is a cool one. Patterns tend to appear in the devices we as authors use to initiate a story, that maybe we and even our readers don’t see until we put them all next to each other.
It's a cool exercise to do, and a very timely one for me. We were discussing first lines of novels and short stories vs. one-line pitches for television shows in my writing class last night. A story's first line can be ambiguous, but should also evoke a sense of place, time, character or mood in the reader. A story pitch has to do all those things, while getting as much relevant information to the listener as possible -- all in one sentence. Both are the 'hook' that gets people to buy your product.
Here are a couple of my first lines that I like best, and then the rest are below the cut:
When they were sixteen, Julia dyed her hair purple. [Amour]
The leaves are dying when Daniel brings Vala home. [ Mysteries]
There are men, Mara knows, who love words. [ Entropy]
The three of them went everywhere together that summer: Meg, Veronica and Lilly's ghost. [ All Over But the Crying]
The words he spoke didn't matter, the comforting sound soft around her shoulders like a blanket. [Lovelorn]
He follows her for days, longer than any of the others, before he makes up his mind. [Lure]
It's a Tuesday when he takes her to meet God. [Surrender]
There was a time when I went a little crazy. [ People Undone]
After they put Angelus in the water, the summer brought lightning to the air and ghosts to Connor's head. [ Them Bones]
Sometime between his sixteenth birthday and the end of the world, Ginny began to set her hair in old-fashioned pins. [ Hand Me Downs]
The Chamber was colder than he remembered. [ A tiger by the tail]
Percy Weasley's world effectively ended on a nondescript Monday morning in June. [ Percy Weasley: Rogue Demon Hunter]
It all starts when Connor meets a girl. [ Soothe the Burn]
There was blood in the morning on that last day. [ The Robber Bride]
They didn't talk about it, this thing between them. [ Tipping Point]
The worst thing about being a princess and one of the most wanted women in the galaxy was the annoying lack of privacy. [Mixology]
It was a Wednesday when the sun turned to ash and the stars fell into the sea, not that anyone in Los Angeles noticed. [ Complexity]
They’ve always been brothers, but this is the first time that people can’t tell them apart. [Nalowale]
There are black pearls under the water off the hula'ana where the black rock sits. [ Loa'a]
Logan called her, drunk and bleeding, right in the middle of the Homecoming dance. [ Bad Boyfriend]
She was waiting in the bar when he arrived. [ The Geek Rock Series]
Everything Michael touches turns to pictures. [ Pillars of a Civilization]
The thing was, Bridget Galvin had never really considered herself the sorority girl type. [ The Veiled Lady]
“This is your idea of a holiday?” [ Stars]
Somebody must have spiked the punch. [ I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me]
The familiar, unknown landscape of a dream stretched before him. [ Dreamwalk Blue]
Albus came back from Albania without Jack. [ Dreamwalk Blue: The Solitude Sessions]
When he sees her again, she's not beautiful. [ Edge of the Earth]
He's looking at her like she's a revelation. [ Momentous]
“Is that a milkshake?” [Chocolate]
2. iamtheenemy gave me some great feedback as part of the 2007 Feedback Exchange. The challenge is an extremely cool idea and led me to discover some fic that I might not have stumbled across otherwise. I highly recommend checking it out, if you haven't already done so.
1. Meme, via musesfool: Post first lines from thirty of your stories. This is a cool one. Patterns tend to appear in the devices we as authors use to initiate a story, that maybe we and even our readers don’t see until we put them all next to each other.
It's a cool exercise to do, and a very timely one for me. We were discussing first lines of novels and short stories vs. one-line pitches for television shows in my writing class last night. A story's first line can be ambiguous, but should also evoke a sense of place, time, character or mood in the reader. A story pitch has to do all those things, while getting as much relevant information to the listener as possible -- all in one sentence. Both are the 'hook' that gets people to buy your product.
Here are a couple of my first lines that I like best, and then the rest are below the cut:
When they were sixteen, Julia dyed her hair purple. [Amour]
The leaves are dying when Daniel brings Vala home. [ Mysteries]
There are men, Mara knows, who love words. [ Entropy]
The three of them went everywhere together that summer: Meg, Veronica and Lilly's ghost. [ All Over But the Crying]
The words he spoke didn't matter, the comforting sound soft around her shoulders like a blanket. [Lovelorn]
He follows her for days, longer than any of the others, before he makes up his mind. [Lure]
It's a Tuesday when he takes her to meet God. [Surrender]
There was a time when I went a little crazy. [ People Undone]
After they put Angelus in the water, the summer brought lightning to the air and ghosts to Connor's head. [ Them Bones]
Sometime between his sixteenth birthday and the end of the world, Ginny began to set her hair in old-fashioned pins. [ Hand Me Downs]
The Chamber was colder than he remembered. [ A tiger by the tail]
Percy Weasley's world effectively ended on a nondescript Monday morning in June. [ Percy Weasley: Rogue Demon Hunter]
It all starts when Connor meets a girl. [ Soothe the Burn]
There was blood in the morning on that last day. [ The Robber Bride]
They didn't talk about it, this thing between them. [ Tipping Point]
The worst thing about being a princess and one of the most wanted women in the galaxy was the annoying lack of privacy. [Mixology]
It was a Wednesday when the sun turned to ash and the stars fell into the sea, not that anyone in Los Angeles noticed. [ Complexity]
They’ve always been brothers, but this is the first time that people can’t tell them apart. [Nalowale]
There are black pearls under the water off the hula'ana where the black rock sits. [ Loa'a]
Logan called her, drunk and bleeding, right in the middle of the Homecoming dance. [ Bad Boyfriend]
She was waiting in the bar when he arrived. [ The Geek Rock Series]
Everything Michael touches turns to pictures. [ Pillars of a Civilization]
The thing was, Bridget Galvin had never really considered herself the sorority girl type. [ The Veiled Lady]
“This is your idea of a holiday?” [ Stars]
Somebody must have spiked the punch. [ I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me]
The familiar, unknown landscape of a dream stretched before him. [ Dreamwalk Blue]
Albus came back from Albania without Jack. [ Dreamwalk Blue: The Solitude Sessions]
When he sees her again, she's not beautiful. [ Edge of the Earth]
He's looking at her like she's a revelation. [ Momentous]
“Is that a milkshake?” [Chocolate]
2. iamtheenemy gave me some great feedback as part of the 2007 Feedback Exchange. The challenge is an extremely cool idea and led me to discover some fic that I might not have stumbled across otherwise. I highly recommend checking it out, if you haven't already done so.