Meme: Twenty-Five First Lines

[nebroadwe]

Here's a meme I sniggled from cornerofmadness several days ago and am just now getting 'round to working on:

Pick the first line from your last twenty-five fanfics and see if you can find a pattern.

Well, let's see -- twenty-five 'fics takes me back about a year or so ...

1. From her wild hair he teases one dark tress / And loops it up beside her seal-brown cheek, / And, smiling, "You were my first love," he says, / And kisses her, and waits for her to speak -- but she never knows how to answer him when he trots that one out.

2. Ping!

3D. There are times, when the tables are full and the sweets run short and his nephew pleads with him in grating accents to hurry a pot of tea which cannot be hurried, when Iroh chuckles, though he knows the sound risks snapping Zuko's racked nerves.

4D. Riesenbuhl breeds no elephants, and riding slow, steady plow-horses bareback is no challenge, and Den growls when Winry tries to tie old curtains around her middle for a tutu, so the Elric brothers toss the backyard swing over its branch until the seat hangs higher than their heads.

5. "Miss? There you are, miss!"

6D. One tree in the Elrics' backyard is unique.

7D/DS. Wrapped in groundsheet and blanket under the fallen spruce, she watches a small pyramid of deadwood burn itself to embers at the mouth of her den.

8D. Winry trails Ed and Al into the pharmacy and buys a bag of peppermints while they debate whether to spend their pooled allowances on boric acid or saltpeter.

9D. Winry's mother read her a story every night before bed.

10D. Ed hates being sick even when it excuses him from school.

11D. "It must be inconvenient, being human," mused the homunculus.

12D. At Riesenbuhl's school exercises, the scrubbed and shining junior grades always recite patriotic verses to the proud parents assembled in the classroom.

13D. Pinako Rockbell believes you're old enough to hear the answers once you're old enough to ask the questions.

14. N.B. Make fair copy.

15. The knock on Rush Valley among outsiders is that it has only two seasons: summer and Yole.

16DS. It's been a long time since the East saw a drought as bad as this.

17. Ed walked out under the wide eaves of the disused tobacco barn, trying not to limp visibly.

18D. Roy Mustang doesn't gamble.

19DS. On the first night, she dances ...

20D. He stands upon the doorstep, in the shadow of the weathered signboard, listening.

21. Once upon a time there was a man who had no children.

22D. The boy remembers the day his innocence first began to dissipate, sublimating like dry ice.

23D. Ed knows what he wants for his birthday: a red wagon.

24D. When Al's heels slip, he obliges gravity and crashes down against the hillside, grinning even as he rubs his head.

25. Summer had just begun its advance into Central, unfurling leaves on the cherry trees like ensigns over a Remembrance Day parade.

The first thing I notice is that I write a lot of drabbles and drabble sequences (marked D and DS, respectively). I'm not the world's most disciplined writer, so it's less difficult for me to conceive and produce a short piece before I run out of steam than it is to commit to a lengthy one. Drabble sequences occupy a useful middle ground -- each "bit" is short enough to be unintimidating, but the whole can add up to a short story pretty quickly. Heh. It's also clear that in my oeuvre, especially of late, the shorter the 'fic, the longer its opening sentence is likely to be and vice versa (cf. "The Conqueror" and "Golden in the Mercy of His Means"). The one serious stylistic quirk that strikes me, however, is that I'm far more likely to begin with character than setting -- which makes sense, since I still sweat blood over descriptive passages while my characters are inclined to witter on and on (and on and on and on and on ...). Possibly I need to challenge myself by writing a more atmosphere-and-setting-heavy piece one of these days. (Ugh. The very thought appalls.)

Anyone else?

Comments

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

hmmmi didn't know you wrote Avatar fic. First time I tried to get into that I just couldn't. Then evil_little_dog insisted I go see Zuko since he's the archetype that always appears in my original fiction. Ah yes, will go look for that.

Pinako Rockbell believes you're old enough to hear the answers once you're old enough to ask the questions, Roy Mustang doesn't gamble., Ed knows what he wants for his birthday: a red wagon.

I read too much to remember if i read the accompanying story but i like these. What is it about red wagons? Even in this day and age the apt kids STILL want my red wagon

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

hmmmi didn't know you wrote Avatar fic.

Just started on it. Blame artemisrae and my godchildren -- they talked the series up sufficiently that I started watching, and the 'fic began popping up soon after.

First time I tried to get into that I just couldn't. Then evil_little_dog insisted I go see Zuko since he's the archetype that always appears in my original fiction. Ah yes, will go look for that.

It's a bit hard to get into because it's pitched primarily at middle-graders and starts very slowly. If Zuko's your boy, I recommend reading summaries (http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Episodes) of the first eleven episodes of season 1 and starting with episode 12, "The Storm," which is all angsty backstory for Aang and Zuko; it takes till about there for the story to gather its powers, find its feet and start moving. You'll miss a few cool moments from Jason Isaacs (and some nice musical cues from The Track Team), but you can always go back and catch them later.

What is it about red wagons? Even in this day and age the apt kids STILL want my red wagon

Red wagons are archetypically cool. (I helped destroy a water heater with one. My parents still haven't quite forgiven me. :-)

Speaking of childhood archetypes, last night all the neighborhood kids were playing hide-and-seek within earshot of my bedroom. It's good to know that "Ollie ollie oxen free!" has survived into the twenty-first century.

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

*grin*

My motives were not at ALL selfish there...

(How's your search for decent 'fic going? Speaking of nonselfish motives?)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

It got a bit derailed lately (I'm still working my way down your list of recs, eek!) by contest-entry drafting (look, characters, everybody SHUT UP and get to your places!) and by kanja177's quest for Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle 'fic. She's had a few too many brain-bleach-worthy encounters with fandom to trust it, and wielding her thirty-foot, platinum-tipped, fandom-poking stick was beginning to make her arms cramp. So I helped her out some.

I did recently begin reading sugeatarc's Tian Mi Shi Lu (starts here (http://sugeatarc.livejournal.com/2471.html), but you just have to scroll h/ir journal for the rest -- there's no links post), which is quite lively. Mind you, it throws in a fanon trope that I'm rapidly coming to despise, but since it doesn't seem to affect the subsequent story, I'm just pretending I never read it. :-)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yeah see that was my reaction. my NINE year old cousin and 'nephew' both liked it and I'm thinking uh, they're kids. so.... I have it on netflix. I might take your suggestion then.

i fear knowing how you destroyed a water heater

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

my NINE year old cousin and 'nephew' both liked it and I'm thinking uh, they're kids.

My godchildren are nine and seven, so it took me a while, too. And then we had The Talk:

Me: [mock outrage] You didn't tell me this story had kissing!
Elder Godchild: [having reached the stage where kissing is Not A Big Deal, and perhaps even Interesting] Not muuuuch ...
Younger Godchild: [nowhere near that stage; firmly] Not on the lips.

She was quite chagrined to be proved wrong by the season 1 finale. :-)

i fear knowing how you destroyed a water heater

Let's just say that responsive steering was never one of the little red wagon's selling points. :-)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

poor kids.

yeah true. I had that same issue with a tobbogan and a barbed wire fence

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Yee-owch! Fortunately our tobogganing hill was short and clear of obstacles. (I still managed to skin my chin once, though. That was another of my adventures in physics -- I rediscovered Newton's First Law of Motion at least twice during my misspent youth.)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

my usual one was but then we got the bright idea of cow shalom on the farmer's hill. Honestly I didn't think my tobaggan would get that far

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

The toboggan always goes farther than you think it will. (Unless it's mine, in which case it never goes as far as you want.)

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

yes if you want it to go that far then forget it

[artemisrae.livejournal.com]

It's very funny you pointed that out about the drabbles - when I was scrolling through these, I noticed the same thing re: the length of the opening sentence. Maybe it's the thought that you only have a limited amount of words time to get the message across, so you unconsciously set a longer opening? I'm... not even sure that makes sense.

It was interesting to read these and see what I recognized (which is the majority of it.)

(Oh man, your zombie fic! I need to reread that. I'm starting to gear up for my Halloween fic this year...)

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

It's very funny you pointed that out about the drabbles - when I was scrolling through these, I noticed the same thing re: the length of the opening sentence. Maybe it's the thought that you only have a limited amount of words time to get the message across, so you unconsciously set a longer opening? I'm... not even sure that makes sense.

It's possible. Some of those sentences also fall into a trick I know I've used elsewhere, of laundry listing a set of experiences or characteristics in order to get across a sense of lots of things happening at once or a crowded sense-experience or an oh-heck-what-NOW?! history of unfortunate events. I don't always laundry-list in drabbles, but I do seem to have done it more often recently. (Oh, no, a stylistic rut! Quick, Mabel, the shovel!)