InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Yo mama so cool, she froze!"

auctasinistra (auctasinistra) wrote,
@ 2008-08-28 17:42:00

Current mood:

Unimpressed

I like the idea ...

... but typically am too lazy to go back so far. I write so slowly that 25 stories is like a million years ago. So, under the cut, the first lines of the last 20 (finished) fics I've written, plus five stories I've yet to finish or post, and any pattern I think I can discern from them.

1. In the end, Hermione went alone.

2. He looks to the sky.

3. When Harry got to work Monday morning, his boss' first words to him were, "Nicholas Hobbes is dead."

4. You don't get invited to funerals.

5. As countless heroes before him had done, Harry Potter found that when the great battles are won, the lesser loom all the larger.

6. Snape stood on the tilted plate of greasy shale that served as their stoop, staring into the gloaming, squint-eyed against the frigid wind.

7. Draco Malfoy stood beside his mother in the sort of frigid, dank dungeon that made him uneasily conscious of his sins.

8. Potions Master: Expert, prompt, discreet, seeks private commissions to create potions for elite clientele only.

9. Harry Potter stood on tiptoe, reaching, his entire body stretched to its limits and balance a thing more of wishful thinking than reality.

10. Barlow, the butler, met Martin at the service entrance on his first day of work.

11. "Harry fucking Potter."

12. "Hey."

13. Marty opened the door four inches.

14. David Starsky left the meeting, pushing the door open with one hand, letting it swing shut behind him as he walked down the corridor.

15. The stagecoach slowly ate the miles, chewing each methodically, making the two passengers taste every foot of dirt and rock between Red Rock and Agua Caliente.

16. Lom Trevors slid wearily off his horse and squinted up at the sign on the little jailhouse.

17. They'd come through his open bedroom window, four of them, black-clad, black-masked, slick as cat burglars, at 4 in the morning.

18. Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin scrambled to the top of the wooded ridge and stopped, gasping for breath, leaning on each other as they scanned the slope below for signs of their pursuers.

19. Harry sat hunched at his desk, trying to make sense of the greying
words he'd read a dozen times in the past hour.

20. Hutch closed the door behind him with a sigh, glad to be alone although he wasn’t sure why.

And the next five WIPs I have on my theoretical plate:

1. Captain James T. Kirk awoke and immediately looked across sickbay.

2. The moment Captain James T. Kirk pressed the button to end communication, ship’s surgeon Leonard McCoy vented a heartfelt oath.

3. “This is …” Starsky stopped the car and bent, peering through Hutch’s window.

4. “Now, Potter,” Severus Snape said, “you may kill me.”

5. The watchman didn't see the agents parachute in; that was his last mistake.

A pattern? I see a strong tendency toward very prosaic, straightforward opening lines that, I'd be willing to guess, would themselves suck absolutely no one in to keep reading unless they already knew and liked my stuff. :-)

(Post a new comment)

	angela_snape 2008-08-28 08:01 pm UTC (link)
	This one sucked me in: The black shape moved — the motion, despite the darkness and the passage of time, familiar enough to instantly uncloak him. I do recognize a bunch of them - Nicholas Hobbes is dead, I know is "Bitten". I am excited to see #4 on your WIP list... (Reply to this) (Thread)

	(Anonymous) 2008-08-28 08:09 pm UTC (link)
	Seconded! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	auctasinistra 2008-08-28 08:56 pm UTC (link)
	I am excited to see #4 on your WIP list... It's about half done, a bit more ... I hope I can finish it. Yeah, the intro to QPQ is one of the better ones. Actually, my feeling is my first sentences do NOT rock, but sometimes my first paragraphs do. Somehow, it takes me longer than one sentence to get my mojo working. :-) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	angela_snape 2008-08-28 09:09 pm UTC (link)
	Actually, now that you mention it, I was going to post the next bit too as part of what sucked me in to QPQ. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	auctasinistra 2008-08-29 07:41 am UTC (link)
	It's funny - there was a first-line meme type thing a while back and that's when I first noticed that my very first lines are all but invisible, as a rule - but my first paragraphs aren't bad. :-) I admire people who can get a lot of oomph out of a first line! (Reply to this) (Parent)

	amorettea 2008-08-28 10:24 pm UTC (link)
	Hey, I didn't know you wrote Man from UNCLE! That was first fandom, in the day. Ah, print zines. . . (Reply to this) (Thread)

auctasinistra
2008-08-29 07:44 am UTC (link)

:-) Yeah, all my fandoms are under different aliases. (All ... 4 of them). I have a few stories in zines but I'm kind of philosophically ... not against them, that's too strong. But I WAY prefer free, and now. Zines are too expensive, too slow to get here, and when I found out that some zine publishers actually make a profit or very nearly a living off the amateur efforts of me and other writers, I was pretty ticked off.

So I prefer the Net. :-)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	amorettea 2008-08-31 08:25 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, yes, there were some real slimeballs in the 'zine days. It never even occurred to me make a profit off the zines I edited or was involved with. I guess we weren't smart enough. I do like the speed of the internet, compared to the print days, and less fighting with photocopiers! (Reply to this) (Parent)

Yes, but...

reallynowriter
2008-08-29 12:56 pm UTC (link)

...I do know and like your stuff and those first lines always have and always will suck me in immediately! Prosaic? Um, well, okay, by definition. Straightforward? Yeah, sure. But also suggestive of very large things that I know are going to get me every time.

And you write slowly? Well, it's not like this is a race, right? And I don't know how long you've been at this, but it seems to me you've accumulated a rather impressive body of work. (As one still plugging one paragraph at a time into my first slash story, I may have a warped perspective on this.)

Anyway, I don't know what sort of responses to this post you were looking for, but this was my instant reaction to it and I hope it entertains you. And now that's enough entertainment--get back to writing (sound of whip cracking).

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Yes, but...

auctasinistra
2008-08-29 07:03 pm UTC (link)

:-) I wasn't looking for any particular response. Like any of the very few memes I do, I found the idea interesting and it provoked some thought in me about my own and others' "style." In a sense, this lets you look back over your oeuvre (hm ... that doesn't look right) and see if you in fact do have a style - and, if you do, if you can detect it. I'm a lousy recognizer of style, unless it's really obvious (like Dave Barry), but I don't see a particular "style" in my first lines here, and I didn't detect a particular style with the others who did this meme. We all seem to choose different tones for our first lines. It's possible one line isn't enough info to detect a style ... I'm not really sure on it. But it's an interesting question. :-)

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	This is really neat (Anonymous) 2008-08-29 07:13 pm UTC (link)
	What an interesting notion... I've already read much of your stuff, so it was fun to try and figure out which lines came from which stories. Thanks! (Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: This is really neat auctasinistra 2008-08-29 08:18 pm UTC (link)
	Sure - it's a self-indulgent thing, after all, but if it was interesting for you as a reader, that's a bonus! :-) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2008-09-03 02:31 am UTC (link)
	You write in the Star Trek fandom? I drifted in there a couple of months ago rather by accident and am always on the lookout for interesting K/S stories. Would you tell me what name you are using in that fandom? Excited, Krabat (Reply to this) (Thread)

	auctasinistra 2008-09-03 08:10 am UTC (link)
	Well, "write" in in the sense that I have half a dozen half finished stories on my hard drive. :-) My LJ is idicsavant. I've posted half of one story. I am working on others, though - they're all basically little episode tags. I hope I'll be posting a couple of them there (and probably at the automated archive) pretty soon. (Reply to this) (Parent)