#i'm realising how much fic i've written relative to old rates of writing?

[cozcat]

opening lines meme

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories. (If you have less than 20, just list them all!) See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Tag some people to play the next round!

Tagged by @lordeasriel, thank you my dear!

The world is already beginning to look less strange [redacted]. 

It’s a two week voyage to Cittàgazze.

Kirsten’s forgotten her toothbrush. 

Kirsten has never seen Amy look so exhausted. 

“He’s landed.” Ten minutes late. 

The thing is, she never thought about kissing Kirsten, not until that moment. 

Amy doesn’t quite realise what it is at first. 

It is as the heat of summer begins to fade that Sabran Berethnet steps off a ship at the harbour of Zeedeur, her journey bound for Brygstad.

Mary does not remember her first time in a church – the church she was christened in, baptised in, began to become who she is in. 

She wakes long before he does, the golden light of dawn bleeding through the curtains far more than she’d like. 

Mary Malone, at twenty-eight, her first time in a country that neither raised her nor educated her. 

The scholar would much prefer to be in the north, rather than rubbing shoulders in a London building dedicated to the place, with its ever-burning furnaces the antithesis of a north it exists to exalt. 

Asriel loathes these parties - too many people that he doesn’t know and that he doesn’t need to, and too few people for him to make a hasty retreat. 

She sends the child away, and is left in silence. 

There were stories told of old Masters of Jordan, of men of knowledge and learning, of fame and fortune and infamy, of those whose deeds were praised, and of those whose only saving grace unto their bones was the sanctuary of the walls of Jordan’s crypts. 

Lyra is an odd child, Marisa is finding – stubborn and argumentative, but wide-eyed and inquisitive, and far more obedient than she’d have expected a child raised by or near Asriel to be. 

The looming threat of the apocalypse had been enough to distract her momentarily, to preoccupy her with impending disaster – the memories only truly come to haunt her in the silence after the gates of Hell have closed, the smoke from the flames within still dissipating into nothing. 

It’s only been a few hours, she thinks, maybe a night. 

They sit opposite each other at a slightly sticky table in a greasy little café, with cups of tea so strong and sweet that their spoons almost stand upright. 

“I’ll drop you off, come back in a week, let you do some of your normal human things, laundry and working and visiting your grandparents, and I’ll be back before you know it.” The Doctor smiles, that beautiful, uninhibited smile, a smile that Yaz would do anything to see. 

I think the only pattern here is that I am very fond of short opening lines, and I hate opening with dialogue (but I don’t write much dialogue anyway).

My favourite is probably the sixteenth, because I’m fond of the full first paragraph: Lyra is an odd child, Marisa is finding – stubborn and argumentative, but wide-eyed and inquisitive, and far more obedient than she’d have expected a child raised by or near Asriel to be. That is to say, she follows directions occasionally, and on those occasions, sometimes without complaint.

And my AO3 can be found here because I am nothing if not an aggressive self promoer.

Tagging: @little-tayy, @madamoiselledewinter, @gabolange, @sapphoshands, @birgittesilverbae, @need-not if you so desire!