opening lines meme

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/MRdhU9y

List the first lines of your last 20 stories. See if there are any patterns and choose your favorite opening line!

tagged by deputychairman https://tmblr.co/msq5mnia1m3ptc6rl8v2hjw

ok 20 is a lot? but also it doesn’t even get us to the beginning of the Witcher shit, so anyone who wanted cross-fandom analysis here…. sorry LOL.

Looks like I tend to try to start things in motion, either with a line of dialogue or a quick, close-POV establishing shot. A priority I obviously have is that you know whose POV this story is from– sensible, as I often switch POVs at scene breaks, and I’m quite sure if you looked at all my scene/chapter breaks you’d find the same pattern. There should never be a time where the reader is skimming and wondering whose POV this is, but I also cordially dislike having little tags to tell you– it should be obvious, straight away, who you’re following. (In Very Dark Magic, below, we don’t get a proper name because the POV character can’t remember it, and we find it out fairly directly.) If I can do that in very few words I will; more complicated action scenes and establishing premises get ridiculous run-ons, trusting the reader to follow the momentum through. (Under the Ribs, for example, is an action scene I started halfway through a specific action [yes that’s a cowritten story but I know I wrote the opening line], and Trust isn’t action but it’s Something-Changing Dialogue so I’m scrambling to get all of it crammed in and get you into the POV character’s very emotional headspace. Anyway– those are the techniques, I don’t think they’re particularly mysterious or Literary but they’re functional.

I don’t have any shame about any of this, I think it works pretty well and it’s a pretty deliberate thing I’ve honed. Last lines, now… well…

I do remember noticing, long ago, that I had a penchant for beginning scenes with people waking up, and I seem to have moved away from that, so I’m pleased to see that but I also sort of miss having a “tell” like that, LOL. (Can you tell I brainstormed all my early stories in bed? I still sort of do, but I seem to be better at divorcing it from that context now.) May not be an improvement, though– now I struggle with putting in a scene break and just have things drag on forever. Pacing is like…. not… my strong suit. But opening lines don’t reveal that too readily.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/36878308 Lion Sable Passant instant backstory via dialogue

“It was all going so well,” Thaler sighed. “And now Roche has fucking rabies.”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31289303 Fit For Pearls action and context, with a tiny bit of drama, but the simple title is doing a lot of heavy lifting here

The second time Luliana met her mistress, the Crown Princess Cirilla, she screamed and dropped an inkwell, shattering it on the floor and dousing herself, her mistress, and the room with its contents.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/35008744 Under The Table this one is just a hook, doesn’t give the reader any answers, but does establish a couple of things immediately.

They heard the Upper Aedirn delegation long before they saw them.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34514956 A Dedication I’m cheating and giving more than one line because this is the opposite of the action sequence cramming, where I’m taking multiple lines to get to the point and hoping to draw the reader in that way.

Iorveth was well over a century old, creeping on toward a century and a half. He’d lost track, and actually didn’t know exactly how many years he’d been alive, due to a change in calendar systems somewhere in there. He’d survived a great deal of torture in that time, but this was possibly the most unbearable by dint of being the most pleasant.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32023453 Peace-Tied and this one I’m not giving the rest– it’s a long paragraph, hedging, and doesn’t quite get to the point for a bit, but in the process gives all the extremely complicated backstory I’m trying to convey (including that this is slightly an a/u from where W3 strictly left things), but the ostensible point is to get into the character’s headspace and reluctance to be here, via infodumping all of the situation.

Of course Vernon Roche had to attend the inaugural ball in Vergen, to celebrate the establishment of the Upper Aedirn Free State.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/32764837 Under the Ribs action!

Roche made it to the top of the wall in a mad scramble off the boost Ves had given him, and was unsurprised to find jagged stones set into the top; he’d prepared for this, worn full gloves and hauled up a thick pad of canvas that he now threw down on the top of the wall so he could climb over.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/31087637 Headache Remedy context! dialogue within action! the very next sentence establishes who “she” is and that she’s the POV character.

“Fix her headache,” Aiden said to Lambert just after they clattered through the door and started shedding Witcher equipment everywhere.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30201588 Decent Forage context and POV, immediate

It was cold enough that Eskel was keeping an eye out for this rain to turn to snow.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28876890 An Involved Process who, and where, action

Grinning, Ciri grabbed Geralt by the wrist and yanked, and he stumbled after her through several hundred miles of instantaneous nothing.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/29217987 Under Torture I really like this line.

Yennefer wasn’t a cottage-in-the-woods kind of witch.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28276716 Dusty Corridors context, POV, and places you in timeline straightaway.

The revelation of what it felt like not to be in any pain from his eye came pretty close to flooring Aiden, but he managed to scrape himself back into an approximately human-shaped object in time to peer out the window as the mage left.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26121523 Learning Experiences Timeline placement was most important for this one, as it’s out of the normal timeline.

It wasn’t Geralt’s first year on the Path, but it was his first time coming back to Kaer Morhen.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28297152 Shorts This gives you who and a couple important bits of context, I think.

Geralt followed the sound of Ciri’s laughter through the house and out the back door.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27993699 Very Dark Magic This is the one where we don’t know who because he doesn’t either:

He spent a lot of his time in a kind of fog, unaware of the passage of time, unaware of his surroundings.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27919201 Trust a confused scrambled paragraph for a confused scrambled character

“Do you trust me?” Keira asked Lambert, and she had her hands behind her back for two reasons, maybe three– firstly, because then she wouldn’t twist them together and show her agitation, secondly, because that meant her chest was the frontmost part of her and the way she was dressed now meant her tits were on display for him to look at, so he would, because that was the shorthand they’d settled on about that, and thirdly because then maybe he’d think she was hiding something in her hands, something either dangerous or fun or maybe both, which was the thing she knew he liked most about her: she was both dangerous and fun.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27578783 A Delicate Hand not a great hook but it’s more functional than snappy so here we go

Keira had never lived domestically with someone like this before.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26847148 The Ideal Man Who and where, right away.

Lambert stood uneasily at the door of the tidy little farmhouse.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/27436687 Embroidery Who and where, again, with some emotional context.

The library at Kaer Morhen was… not what Jaskier had hoped.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26367553 Aretuza Craftsmanship who and where

Yennefer raised her eyes from her desk to look at the sorceress in her doorway.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25640818 What Mages Are Like who, and what’s going on, but I’m letting this being an immediate sequel do a bit of heavy lifting here.

Geralt laughed at himself, finding he had sore muscles in his legs that made it hard to walk.

I’m likely supposed to tag other people but I don’t know who actually wants to be tagged. Mutuals, if you have 20 published works, please do this. I know that’s a cop-out but I hate putting people on the spot. (Your picture was not posted)