First Line Meme
Mar. 27th, 2021 06:39 pmOne of my favourite memes, this time snagged from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
adriennefae!
Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 authors!
I'm leaving out poems, a three-sentence fic, and 100-word drabbles, but including 200-word drabbles and drunk fic, too.
1. Last... or lost? (He's Come Back)
2. "Why don't you just fly away with me?" Luna says lightly over her shoulder when pushing off the ground. (A Promising Find)
( 18 more opening lines under the cut )
I'm a bit alarmed to see how often recently I've started with a sentence that's perhaps too complex. I tend to use a participial phrase for what the pov character is doing or has done, and the main clause for how the character is feeling at the moment – or the other way round. When I open with a line of dialogue, it's brief, and it often has no formal tag. (I've cheated a bit in the cases where the line is only a word or two, and included the following sentence, which reveals the speaker, or what the character is thinking.) When I open with a simple statement, I avoid including the pov character's name. I feel that in this way it sounds more convincingly like a thought in the character's mind. I never italicise thoughts. The single italicised opening line is a sentence the character's writing in a letter.
My favourite is perhaps #8. I think that while it takes us directly to share the pov character's mind (and his name is at the beginning of the second sentence), it shows us efficiently where and when the story is set, perhaps a bit of the mood and a conflict, too, which my openings don't usually do well, I'm afraid.
I'm just tagging anyone who reads my journal and wants to do this.
adriennefae!Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Then tag 10 authors!
I'm leaving out poems, a three-sentence fic, and 100-word drabbles, but including 200-word drabbles and drunk fic, too.
1. Last... or lost? (He's Come Back)
2. "Why don't you just fly away with me?" Luna says lightly over her shoulder when pushing off the ground. (A Promising Find)
( 18 more opening lines under the cut )
I'm a bit alarmed to see how often recently I've started with a sentence that's perhaps too complex. I tend to use a participial phrase for what the pov character is doing or has done, and the main clause for how the character is feeling at the moment – or the other way round. When I open with a line of dialogue, it's brief, and it often has no formal tag. (I've cheated a bit in the cases where the line is only a word or two, and included the following sentence, which reveals the speaker, or what the character is thinking.) When I open with a simple statement, I avoid including the pov character's name. I feel that in this way it sounds more convincingly like a thought in the character's mind. I never italicise thoughts. The single italicised opening line is a sentence the character's writing in a letter.
My favourite is perhaps #8. I think that while it takes us directly to share the pov character's mind (and his name is at the beginning of the second sentence), it shows us efficiently where and when the story is set, perhaps a bit of the mood and a conflict, too, which my openings don't usually do well, I'm afraid.
I'm just tagging anyone who reads my journal and wants to do this.
