First Lines
Tagged by @laiqualaurelote and for once I have the energy. Thanks for the tag!
Rules: list the first line(s) of your last 10 (or however many you have) posted fics and see if there’s a pattern
1. Laus Veneris
The scents coming in off the East River are a particular kind of awful this morning, all rotting fish, old sewage, and frying algae. Even if the sun hasn't quite risen yet — it's still peeking over the horizon, casting long shadows over the city — the early summer heat means that Bigby smells everything.
2. The Distance Caught Me By Surprise Again
If Trevor were ever going to be completely honest about the fuckshow shit-circus that this most recent assault on Dracula's castle has been, he would probably admit that he'd always expected it to go poorly.
3. Unto All Men A Chosen Land
So, apparently, Trevor has somehow missed the end of the goddamn world. Weird. He'd thought for sure there were supposed to be trumpets, and something about armies of angels, or maybe the faithful?
4. This Rising Tide
Himura's blow may be what sent him crashing to the floor, but though Aoshi will never forget the searing pain of that impact — the burn of metal into his skin, a thousand times worse than any gunshot — it's not the pain that keeps him there. That takes the realization of what he's done.
5. Just Play Your Part
It's a surprisingly quaint little farm, the kind of thing some traveller from the far-away west might paint into his little journal and tell all the Belgians and Austrians and French about.
6. When There Is No Star In Sight
Those first few days of pale, pink-cheeked spring are gloriously, luxuriously perfect.
7. This Doesn't Hurt
They trudge into Camp Dragonhead under the cover of night. Pale snowflakes blur with paler stars in the blue satin sky; Alphinaud tastes the cold with his first breath, sharp on his tongue and crisp between his teeth.
8. there where the good man is not good
The thing about being a Belmont is, the job means you die.
9. When The Chaos Calls Me Out
So, the thing is, it wasn't supposed to go like this. He gets about four seconds of, "oh shit" when he puts his foot down inside what was apparently a circle of something.
10. If You Won't Go Under
Yuffie learned to climb and fall and roll so early that she had stopped having those weird dreams where you feel yourself fall, and then have to jerk to to wake up, by the time she was twelve.
(First line is actually narrator death, so here's the non-awful first.)
Most of the first lines are pretty punchy, but some of that may just be narrative voice. Speaking of, most of these openings have very distinctive character voices, with the (deliberate) exception of "When There Is No Star in Sight." This doesn't really surprise me and tbh probably isn't all that noteworthy for me, considering that I write extremely close third, with narration as a window into the narrator's thoughts. It's not just conversational prose, it's a conversation the narrator could conceivably be having in their head.
My openings also tend to get to who the narrator is pretty quickly. This is a writing habit I formed waaaaaay back when FF.Net published writing advice columns/articles on the front page. One of them tore into an author for playing coy about who the narrator was and delaying using names, and apparently I internalized that, along with basically all of Limyaael's rants.
I don't typically tag people, so if you see this and want to join in, please do!! Also: feel free to include your original projects or unposted wips. I'm not the police.