The 20 First Lines Meme
Jun. 9th, 2010 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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topaz_eyes.
Post the first lines from your last 20 stories. Do you see a pattern?
Except I get to do twenty-one because I didn't write one of these opening lines! HA! *g*
1) House's hands are cold and he doesn't know why.
2) "You like that?" the floor guy says -- what's his name?
3) The only reason why Colt had the gun with him when he headed out to the Quik Stop was he'd been cleaning it and didn't have time to put it away so the kids wouldn't find it.
4) It's the same with every patient -- the monitors, the tubes and lines tangled like transparent snakes, the way the light angles in from the hallway and the fluorescent bulbs hum that single monotonous note.
5) Her first instinct is to laugh, and maybe she does, just a bit, before she says "House, it's a nineteen-eighties party!"
6) It's because of the marzipan that House opens the door in the first place.
7) It was Halloween, but as far as House was concerned all it meant was a convenient excuse to buy more bags of candy bars and lollipops without the grocery store checkers smirking at him.
8) It takes more time than she thought possible to get from New York to Bangkok.
9) Demetri looks at himself in the mirror, raises a hand to his cheek where there's still a healing scar.
10) Wilson hates and loves his job as a Volunteer Corps doctor -- administering vaccinations and physical exams to prisoners, doling out cheap aspirin, lice-killer, and diarrhea remedies while running the camp's tiny library, all for room and board, certainly isn't what he expected to be doing after graduating med school, but since the Crash he's grateful to have anything when so many others have nothing.
11) Wilson braces himself against the bathroom wall, left arm straight, palm flat against the pale blue wallpaper.
12) The first night is quiet, as is the second.
13) The sun goes out at precisely three fifteen on a Wednesday.
14) "I see dead people," House says.
15) It was late afternoon when the Canadian Captain and his driver arrived in the village of San P.
16) If House tilts his head at just the right angle, the handprint on his cheek looks like a big smear of lipstick.
17) The sun was sinking low in the west by the time House levered himself slowly from the seat of the buckboard.
18) The smell of roasting lamb's strong in the house and that's what my mother's done, smeared the blood of the Lamb on the lintels of the door -- it's just like Mr. Boyboy said that one time when we were together, we Jews really are Christ-killers.
19) "House!" Wilson hisses.
20) It was half past one when Wilson died, and House sat back in his chair, rubbing for a moment at the skin above his left eyebrow.
21) It's the easiest thing in the world, the oldest trick in the book when the guy excuses himself to go to the bathroom.
************
As for a pattern ... I don't know. Maybe a tendency to set a time or specify a season? If anyone sees anything else, let me know.
topaz_eyes. Post the first lines from your last 20 stories. Do you see a pattern?
Except I get to do twenty-one because I didn't write one of these opening lines! HA! *g*
1) House's hands are cold and he doesn't know why.
2) "You like that?" the floor guy says -- what's his name?
3) The only reason why Colt had the gun with him when he headed out to the Quik Stop was he'd been cleaning it and didn't have time to put it away so the kids wouldn't find it.
4) It's the same with every patient -- the monitors, the tubes and lines tangled like transparent snakes, the way the light angles in from the hallway and the fluorescent bulbs hum that single monotonous note.
5) Her first instinct is to laugh, and maybe she does, just a bit, before she says "House, it's a nineteen-eighties party!"
6) It's because of the marzipan that House opens the door in the first place.
7) It was Halloween, but as far as House was concerned all it meant was a convenient excuse to buy more bags of candy bars and lollipops without the grocery store checkers smirking at him.
8) It takes more time than she thought possible to get from New York to Bangkok.
9) Demetri looks at himself in the mirror, raises a hand to his cheek where there's still a healing scar.
10) Wilson hates and loves his job as a Volunteer Corps doctor -- administering vaccinations and physical exams to prisoners, doling out cheap aspirin, lice-killer, and diarrhea remedies while running the camp's tiny library, all for room and board, certainly isn't what he expected to be doing after graduating med school, but since the Crash he's grateful to have anything when so many others have nothing.
11) Wilson braces himself against the bathroom wall, left arm straight, palm flat against the pale blue wallpaper.
12) The first night is quiet, as is the second.
13) The sun goes out at precisely three fifteen on a Wednesday.
14) "I see dead people," House says.
15) It was late afternoon when the Canadian Captain and his driver arrived in the village of San P.
16) If House tilts his head at just the right angle, the handprint on his cheek looks like a big smear of lipstick.
17) The sun was sinking low in the west by the time House levered himself slowly from the seat of the buckboard.
18) The smell of roasting lamb's strong in the house and that's what my mother's done, smeared the blood of the Lamb on the lintels of the door -- it's just like Mr. Boyboy said that one time when we were together, we Jews really are Christ-killers.
19) "House!" Wilson hisses.
20) It was half past one when Wilson died, and House sat back in his chair, rubbing for a moment at the skin above his left eyebrow.
21) It's the easiest thing in the world, the oldest trick in the book when the guy excuses himself to go to the bathroom.
As for a pattern ... I don't know. Maybe a tendency to set a time or specify a season? If anyone sees anything else, let me know.