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]

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