Beginnings Meme!
May. 30th, 2007 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eponymous_roseOkay, so I've started creating memes to suit my own nefarious purposes. Not entirely sure what to make of that, but it should be fun.
My current frustration - beginnings. Specifically, that little bit you get at the start of a story that, y'know, hooks the reader. Endings I can generally ace, and middles are the sort of stuff I can sink my teeth into, but beginnings? Take something special. There's gotta be a moment that sticks, that you can reference again and again in more and more subtle ways so that the readers can remember how it all started. Memory makes the story more real.
I've written so many disjointed and nonlinear fics lately that I haven't had much time for that. So! Meme!
1. I like randomness in a meme. The unpredictability makes it all the more challenging - so here it is. Visit the random word generator and take the first five words that come up (no cheating, mind!).
1. disagrees
2. orients
3. blessing
4. delivered
5. warp
2. Write an opening sentence containing each of those words. That's it! Short one! Quick meme, all done with in a matter of minutes, and you're thinking in terms of beginnings, which is always an exciting thing. Oh, but wait! I'm forgetting the most important step.
3. Bravo! Have a cookie.
Right, then.
1. disagrees
When it's cold and forbidding, when the air freezes to the touch and the rain mists away into frost, it's the one who disagrees that most feels the heat.
Urgh. No, wait, scratch that. That's too much of a poetry-type ending. Or maybe a zany proverb.And it sort of doesn't make sense. Hm. This could be very, very tricky. Guess that's why I need to work on it!
Something a little more mundane, then:
"This is not a ferris wheel," she disagrees.
Well, getting closer. That's undoubtedly the middle of something. (What, though, I'm not entirely sure.) It also sounds sort of like something you'd find in a children's see-Jack-run sort of thing. I really dislike the word "disagrees" now.
She's always said that he'd side with anyone to avoid siding with her - he disagrees.
Right! Quick meme! Onward, onward!
2. orients
She turns her eyes toward the sun as the compass orients itself slowly, needle whispering delicately over the four corners of the world.
You know, I think part of my problem is this whole present-tense thing. That bugs me - I write nonlinear dream-style stuff in present tense. My sequential-thought stuff is invariably in past tense. That's inflexible, yes, but it's how I roll. Or something. So it makes sense that I'd have trouble here.
Little cheat, then.
1.5 disagreed
When he was seventeen, he'd first disagreed with the law his Dad wrote.
The sea was cold and hard and flat - but beneath the surface, something disagreed with the prevailing stillness.
2.5 oriented
The wings unfurled slowly, oriented against the backdrop of stars, and for the first time <insert character name> was afraid.
3. blessing
For the first few months, he'd thought that their last kiss had been a blessing.
That was the morning I rose with the Sun, arms outstretched to receive its blessing.
4. delivered
I promised her the Earth, and I delivered.
By a strange coincidence, on the day her father died, she delivered a pizza to his undertaker.
5. warp
"The wood will warp," her granddad warned her of the old piano in the corner, and she loved it all the more.
Near as I can tell, there seem to be three types of opening lines that I use: the non-sequitur opener that makes sense later in the story (a personal favourite, particularly when it involves dialogue); the in-the-moment opener that could fit anywhere else, really, and probably makes the least impact; and the epic opener that describes an action but sets the stage for something much bigger. The last one is tough to work with, since it typically means opening with a big dramatic bang and then settling in for some cheery banter over pie. It's not a particularly feasible transition. The second one is, as mentioned before, not particularly memorable, which is bad all around. The first, though, makes me happy. You draw the reader in with something startling, something new, something amusing and weird all at once, and you can keep it up, because then you've got the first few paragraphs planned out from the get-go - explain where the heck that opener came from in the first place, and things start rolling from there.
My current frustration - beginnings. Specifically, that little bit you get at the start of a story that, y'know, hooks the reader. Endings I can generally ace, and middles are the sort of stuff I can sink my teeth into, but beginnings? Take something special. There's gotta be a moment that sticks, that you can reference again and again in more and more subtle ways so that the readers can remember how it all started. Memory makes the story more real.
I've written so many disjointed and nonlinear fics lately that I haven't had much time for that. So! Meme!
1. I like randomness in a meme. The unpredictability makes it all the more challenging - so here it is. Visit the random word generator and take the first five words that come up (no cheating, mind!).
1. disagrees
2. orients
3. blessing
4. delivered
5. warp
2. Write an opening sentence containing each of those words. That's it! Short one! Quick meme, all done with in a matter of minutes, and you're thinking in terms of beginnings, which is always an exciting thing. Oh, but wait! I'm forgetting the most important step.
3. Bravo! Have a cookie.
Right, then.
1. disagrees
When it's cold and forbidding, when the air freezes to the touch and the rain mists away into frost, it's the one who disagrees that most feels the heat.
Urgh. No, wait, scratch that. That's too much of a poetry-type ending. Or maybe a zany proverb.
Something a little more mundane, then:
"This is not a ferris wheel," she disagrees.
Well, getting closer. That's undoubtedly the middle of something. (What, though, I'm not entirely sure.) It also sounds sort of like something you'd find in a children's see-Jack-run sort of thing. I really dislike the word "disagrees" now.
She's always said that he'd side with anyone to avoid siding with her - he disagrees.
Right! Quick meme! Onward, onward!
2. orients
She turns her eyes toward the sun as the compass orients itself slowly, needle whispering delicately over the four corners of the world.
You know, I think part of my problem is this whole present-tense thing. That bugs me - I write nonlinear dream-style stuff in present tense. My sequential-thought stuff is invariably in past tense. That's inflexible, yes, but it's how I roll. Or something. So it makes sense that I'd have trouble here.
Little cheat, then.
1.5 disagreed
When he was seventeen, he'd first disagreed with the law his Dad wrote.
The sea was cold and hard and flat - but beneath the surface, something disagreed with the prevailing stillness.
2.5 oriented
The wings unfurled slowly, oriented against the backdrop of stars, and for the first time <insert character name> was afraid.
3. blessing
For the first few months, he'd thought that their last kiss had been a blessing.
That was the morning I rose with the Sun, arms outstretched to receive its blessing.
4. delivered
I promised her the Earth, and I delivered.
By a strange coincidence, on the day her father died, she delivered a pizza to his undertaker.
5. warp
"The wood will warp," her granddad warned her of the old piano in the corner, and she loved it all the more.
Near as I can tell, there seem to be three types of opening lines that I use: the non-sequitur opener that makes sense later in the story (a personal favourite, particularly when it involves dialogue); the in-the-moment opener that could fit anywhere else, really, and probably makes the least impact; and the epic opener that describes an action but sets the stage for something much bigger. The last one is tough to work with, since it typically means opening with a big dramatic bang and then settling in for some cheery banter over pie. It's not a particularly feasible transition. The second one is, as mentioned before, not particularly memorable, which is bad all around. The first, though, makes me happy. You draw the reader in with something startling, something new, something amusing and weird all at once, and you can keep it up, because then you've got the first few paragraphs planned out from the get-go - explain where the heck that opener came from in the first place, and things start rolling from there.
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Date: 2010-08-14 03:03 pm (UTC)