21 First Sentences, Collab Edition
Apr. 13th, 2013 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sidhebeingbrandSince I tend to write a lot of my stories with binz, I haven't always written the first line of them. Unfortunately if I don't count those ones, I don't have 21 first lines, I'm pretty sure.
So here you go: (S) is me, (B) is her, and (S,B) means one of us wrote it and one of us tweaked it later.
1(S,B). It’d taken a horrifying taxi ride to the hotel and, once I’d decided I’d wait a bit before I tried a cab again, a bus and a train to get me to the address programmed into my phone.
2(S). Steve doesn't find out that there's a problem with the cards until weeks after the funeral, until after Tony's convinced him to move in to his palatial digs (Steve has his own floor, he could house an entire army unit in the space that Tony has just given him) and until everyone else has drifted in, piece by piece and bag by bag and one left-behind item at a time.
3(S). It’s not that Phil blames Angie for taking the new job.
4(B). "No no, honey,” the drag queen said, patting at one of her victory rolls.
5(B). The man stepped out of the car, closing the door firmly behind him, the sound bouncing around the mostly empty parking garage.
6(B). Annie’s cheeks are almost as red as her hair, and her eyes sparkle like the snow.
7(S). This is how Murphy meets her the first time: stopping in a cafe, glaring at the menu, and a woman's voice says: "I'm sorry to be so forward, but you're gorgeous. Can I buy you a coffee?"
8(B). The drink started to turn on him an hour ago, but he’s a man who fights to the end of his battles, the end of his bottles.
9(S). Barb is in the middle of analysing the latest results of the long-term gamma radiation exposure test she’s been running on the salvaged Chitauri tech when the elevator whirrs open and startles her attention away from the computer.
10(B).She was an aspiring archaeologist.
11(B). “You’re clear on the west side, over,” Bergstein said, followed by a little burst of static.
12(S). When I volunteered for the tour in South America, my captain had told me: "Son, this will change your life."
13(S). It was June in Chicago, and the station was so air conditioned that it could make you long for beat patrol in full polyester.
14(B). Waking up is a fight, and John struggles through layers of grogginess and headache that are profoundly unfair, seeing as he’d managed to get to bed only a little after midnight the night before.
15(B). It’s nighttime and raining.
16(B). John wakes before the sun, and the penthouse smells of waffles and bacon.
17(S). It looked, from the outside, kind of like a prohibition nightclub.
18(S). The crowd at the Kitty Kat Club was just the regular for a Saturday night, which meant that about a solid half of them were men in women's clothing and another dozen or so were women in men's clothing and the rest were all drunk socialites there to take in the sights.
19(B). I woke up to the cheerful jingle of my Mickey Mouse alarm clock, groaned, and reached over to smack it.
20(S,B). There’s a second when John puzzles at the rope around his leg-- a loop of badly-coiled line that someone left on the dock, that he’d strayed into and tangled himself with by way of one careless step, dodging a spilt bait bucket, not looking where he was putting his foot.
21(S). I saw a figure wandering into the halo of halogen light, drawn by the noise.
Conclusions
-Obviously we don’t write in the same tense consistently. I can live with that. It’s a narrative choice. I’ve been kind of on a present tense kick, but I’ll dip back out of it soon.
-Lots of first person, especially for The Dresden Files because they’re written in first person-- but Hendricks, John and Murphy all get their first person time to shine, too. (Of all of these, Hendricks is the only one who doesn’t have canon written from his POV).
-The third person fics are all limited-perspective with occasionally extremely unreliable narrators. Because bias is fun.
-Two of these start by mentioning a drag queen or queens and kings. Because drag is awesome.
-12 of the above are AUs or Fusions. We don’t do ‘fix it’ AUs often, more like ‘what if’. One is a genderswap, but that’s more the exception than the rule.
-We both love comma splices, BFF.
-In Avengers fic and only Avengers fic, I tend to write an opening paragraph for my first sentence. Possibly because I’m trying to set the scene the way an opening title page can? (WHEN LAST WE LEFT OUR BRAVE ADVENTURERS.)
-We both like to start with someone waking up. (We also both like to end with someone going to sleep.) We’re circadian authors here, okay?
-If there’s a clear opening image, especially a sense image, it probably isn’t me. If there’s lighting or a season, it probably isn’t me. If there’s a season and it sound hackneyed, it might be me.
-I like short sentences that don’t give you much; you have to keep going if you’re going to get anything out of me.
-If it sounds like the opening to a pulp novel, it’s probably me.
binz, I haven't always written the first line of them. Unfortunately if I don't count those ones, I don't have 21 first lines, I'm pretty sure. So here you go: (S) is me, (B) is her, and (S,B) means one of us wrote it and one of us tweaked it later.
1(S,B). It’d taken a horrifying taxi ride to the hotel and, once I’d decided I’d wait a bit before I tried a cab again, a bus and a train to get me to the address programmed into my phone.
2(S). Steve doesn't find out that there's a problem with the cards until weeks after the funeral, until after Tony's convinced him to move in to his palatial digs (Steve has his own floor, he could house an entire army unit in the space that Tony has just given him) and until everyone else has drifted in, piece by piece and bag by bag and one left-behind item at a time.
3(S). It’s not that Phil blames Angie for taking the new job.
4(B). "No no, honey,” the drag queen said, patting at one of her victory rolls.
5(B). The man stepped out of the car, closing the door firmly behind him, the sound bouncing around the mostly empty parking garage.
6(B). Annie’s cheeks are almost as red as her hair, and her eyes sparkle like the snow.
7(S). This is how Murphy meets her the first time: stopping in a cafe, glaring at the menu, and a woman's voice says: "I'm sorry to be so forward, but you're gorgeous. Can I buy you a coffee?"
8(B). The drink started to turn on him an hour ago, but he’s a man who fights to the end of his battles, the end of his bottles.
9(S). Barb is in the middle of analysing the latest results of the long-term gamma radiation exposure test she’s been running on the salvaged Chitauri tech when the elevator whirrs open and startles her attention away from the computer.
10(B).She was an aspiring archaeologist.
11(B). “You’re clear on the west side, over,” Bergstein said, followed by a little burst of static.
12(S). When I volunteered for the tour in South America, my captain had told me: "Son, this will change your life."
13(S). It was June in Chicago, and the station was so air conditioned that it could make you long for beat patrol in full polyester.
14(B). Waking up is a fight, and John struggles through layers of grogginess and headache that are profoundly unfair, seeing as he’d managed to get to bed only a little after midnight the night before.
15(B). It’s nighttime and raining.
16(B). John wakes before the sun, and the penthouse smells of waffles and bacon.
17(S). It looked, from the outside, kind of like a prohibition nightclub.
18(S). The crowd at the Kitty Kat Club was just the regular for a Saturday night, which meant that about a solid half of them were men in women's clothing and another dozen or so were women in men's clothing and the rest were all drunk socialites there to take in the sights.
19(B). I woke up to the cheerful jingle of my Mickey Mouse alarm clock, groaned, and reached over to smack it.
20(S,B). There’s a second when John puzzles at the rope around his leg-- a loop of badly-coiled line that someone left on the dock, that he’d strayed into and tangled himself with by way of one careless step, dodging a spilt bait bucket, not looking where he was putting his foot.
21(S). I saw a figure wandering into the halo of halogen light, drawn by the noise.
Conclusions
-Obviously we don’t write in the same tense consistently. I can live with that. It’s a narrative choice. I’ve been kind of on a present tense kick, but I’ll dip back out of it soon.
-Lots of first person, especially for The Dresden Files because they’re written in first person-- but Hendricks, John and Murphy all get their first person time to shine, too. (Of all of these, Hendricks is the only one who doesn’t have canon written from his POV).
-The third person fics are all limited-perspective with occasionally extremely unreliable narrators. Because bias is fun.
-Two of these start by mentioning a drag queen or queens and kings. Because drag is awesome.
-12 of the above are AUs or Fusions. We don’t do ‘fix it’ AUs often, more like ‘what if’. One is a genderswap, but that’s more the exception than the rule.
-We both love comma splices, BFF.
-In Avengers fic and only Avengers fic, I tend to write an opening paragraph for my first sentence. Possibly because I’m trying to set the scene the way an opening title page can? (WHEN LAST WE LEFT OUR BRAVE ADVENTURERS.)
-We both like to start with someone waking up. (We also both like to end with someone going to sleep.) We’re circadian authors here, okay?
-If there’s a clear opening image, especially a sense image, it probably isn’t me. If there’s lighting or a season, it probably isn’t me. If there’s a season and it sound hackneyed, it might be me.
-I like short sentences that don’t give you much; you have to keep going if you’re going to get anything out of me.
-If it sounds like the opening to a pulp novel, it’s probably me.
