First Lines
Feb. 17th, 2009 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jjporTwo posts in one day? He must be bored!
I got the idea for this from my good online acquaintance and fellow Whovian Clocketpatch and it dovetails nicely with my below crazed rantings on the subject of writing; what are the first lines of the fics you've written and what do they say about you? Well, I suspect mine say that I don't normally think too hard about how to open a fic; I tend to dive in with whatever seems appropriate.
If you're still interested in my Doctor Who fic after my combined efforts at self-deprecation and self-promotion, you can find it here:
www.whofic.com/viewuser.php
Any and all feedback welcome (unless that is you want to tell me that my theories appall you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters and you don't like my tie)!
Of course, the best opening line of a work of fiction ever belongs to George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen..."
First Lines:
A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes: “Where am I?” he asked as he lay on the warm white sand, salty waves soaking the velvet sleeve of his jacket.
A Winter's Tale: Winter sun, weak and red, sinking behind a black latticework of gnarled, naked branches; air so cold it hurt your throat and made your breath steam like an old locomotive pulling into a station.
A World, Burning: “And these, Ace, are the pleasure gardens of the Emperor Gustavus Cassiodorus XVII, first landscaped during the era of the Fourth Empire..."
Alien Abduction: Out of the High Desert they came; out of the shimmering silvery band of heat-addled air near the horizon.
At the Going Down of the Sun and in the Morning….: As Timothy walked back to school, the rising sun lit up the low-lying mist like gold; the fields stretched away on all sides, disappearing into a curtain of haze near the horizon; the nearly bare trees still had a few tatters of red russet foliage, holding out against the cold, cruel wind.
Battlelines: He had awakened with the dawn, mainly out of long habit, but also to catch her before she left the house; it was five a.m. in New York, but already ten in London, and Wednesday was her shopping day.
Birthday: Born screaming, but without a mouth; scooped from the glass womb’s cold embrace, into a metal prison.
Companionship: She walked unending rooms and corridors; narrow passageways and echoing chambers; past pillars, through arches, beneath vaults; exploring libraries and swimming pools and cloisters as she had a thousand times before, or so it seemed.
Consequences: The Ogron guards who had escorted him into the chamber backed away and left him alone in the centre of the vast space.
Doctor Who and the Temple of Chrysogonax, or; The Quatermain Xpedition.: On the 4th December, 1899, The Palace Theatre, Limehouse, is proud to present:
First Contact: “It’s an emergency, Dave,” said Holly from the nearest terminal.
Gaze into the Abyss: She remembers Paris, so vividly; Paris in the springtime.
Ground Rules: He could have been anybody; a tall, well-built figure in a suit and overcoat and a bowler hat.
Last Man Standing: Up here, you could almost forget for a moment that there was a war going on, down there.
Mastery: If it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium.
Sex Education: “Yes…oh…yes…oh…oh…oh…my…oh…Doctor…”
The Sting: It broke his hearts to lie to her.
The Ten Doctors: The star Marab was dying; ten billion years old, running on its last drops of fuel.
They Shall Grow Not Old…: He was alive again.
Torchwood 1907: On His Majesty’s Secret Service: Gerald came back to London as brown as a nut and as thin as a rail, bone tired and still carrying a Mauser bullet in his guts that ached whenever the weather changed.
Torchwood 1908: Scareship : “I was drinking with this clerk from battalion HQ the other night,” Private Harris said, trying to sound casual and not quite pulling it off; “he’s heard we’re shipping out soon.”
War Without End: A world of mud and ashes; cities of rubble; populations become living weapons.
We’ll Always Have Paris: Paris, je t’aime.
What Ho, You Dalek Chaps!: My man Jeeves has what some clever blighter once referred to as hidden depths; in fact, he’s so deep he crushes submarines and is inhabited only by those odd-looking fish with the big teeth and the googly eyes.
“Just the Water, a Punt, a Strong Pair of Hands and the Pole.”: “I’ve never been to Cambridge before,” said Ace, peering over the parapet as punts slid by below; the river was crowded with them.
I got the idea for this from my good online acquaintance and fellow Whovian Clocketpatch and it dovetails nicely with my below crazed rantings on the subject of writing; what are the first lines of the fics you've written and what do they say about you? Well, I suspect mine say that I don't normally think too hard about how to open a fic; I tend to dive in with whatever seems appropriate.
If you're still interested in my Doctor Who fic after my combined efforts at self-deprecation and self-promotion, you can find it here:
www.whofic.com/viewuser.php
Any and all feedback welcome (unless that is you want to tell me that my theories appall you, my heresies outrage you, I never answer letters and you don't like my tie)!
Of course, the best opening line of a work of fiction ever belongs to George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-Four: "It was a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen..."
First Lines:
A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes: “Where am I?” he asked as he lay on the warm white sand, salty waves soaking the velvet sleeve of his jacket.
A Winter's Tale: Winter sun, weak and red, sinking behind a black latticework of gnarled, naked branches; air so cold it hurt your throat and made your breath steam like an old locomotive pulling into a station.
A World, Burning: “And these, Ace, are the pleasure gardens of the Emperor Gustavus Cassiodorus XVII, first landscaped during the era of the Fourth Empire..."
Alien Abduction: Out of the High Desert they came; out of the shimmering silvery band of heat-addled air near the horizon.
At the Going Down of the Sun and in the Morning….: As Timothy walked back to school, the rising sun lit up the low-lying mist like gold; the fields stretched away on all sides, disappearing into a curtain of haze near the horizon; the nearly bare trees still had a few tatters of red russet foliage, holding out against the cold, cruel wind.
Battlelines: He had awakened with the dawn, mainly out of long habit, but also to catch her before she left the house; it was five a.m. in New York, but already ten in London, and Wednesday was her shopping day.
Birthday: Born screaming, but without a mouth; scooped from the glass womb’s cold embrace, into a metal prison.
Companionship: She walked unending rooms and corridors; narrow passageways and echoing chambers; past pillars, through arches, beneath vaults; exploring libraries and swimming pools and cloisters as she had a thousand times before, or so it seemed.
Consequences: The Ogron guards who had escorted him into the chamber backed away and left him alone in the centre of the vast space.
Doctor Who and the Temple of Chrysogonax, or; The Quatermain Xpedition.: On the 4th December, 1899, The Palace Theatre, Limehouse, is proud to present:
First Contact: “It’s an emergency, Dave,” said Holly from the nearest terminal.
Gaze into the Abyss: She remembers Paris, so vividly; Paris in the springtime.
Ground Rules: He could have been anybody; a tall, well-built figure in a suit and overcoat and a bowler hat.
Last Man Standing: Up here, you could almost forget for a moment that there was a war going on, down there.
Mastery: If it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium.
Sex Education: “Yes…oh…yes…oh…oh…oh…my…oh…Doctor…”
The Sting: It broke his hearts to lie to her.
The Ten Doctors: The star Marab was dying; ten billion years old, running on its last drops of fuel.
They Shall Grow Not Old…: He was alive again.
Torchwood 1907: On His Majesty’s Secret Service: Gerald came back to London as brown as a nut and as thin as a rail, bone tired and still carrying a Mauser bullet in his guts that ached whenever the weather changed.
Torchwood 1908: Scareship : “I was drinking with this clerk from battalion HQ the other night,” Private Harris said, trying to sound casual and not quite pulling it off; “he’s heard we’re shipping out soon.”
War Without End: A world of mud and ashes; cities of rubble; populations become living weapons.
We’ll Always Have Paris: Paris, je t’aime.
What Ho, You Dalek Chaps!: My man Jeeves has what some clever blighter once referred to as hidden depths; in fact, he’s so deep he crushes submarines and is inhabited only by those odd-looking fish with the big teeth and the googly eyes.
“Just the Water, a Punt, a Strong Pair of Hands and the Pole.”: “I’ve never been to Cambridge before,” said Ace, peering over the parapet as punts slid by below; the river was crowded with them.
