#first paragraph

'The trees were full of crows and the woods were full of madmen. The pit was full of bones and her hands were full of wires.'

Rules: share the first line of 10 of your most recent fanfics and ghen tag 10 people. If you have written less than 10 fics, don't be shy and share anyways

So, I was tagged by @sunwarmed-ash (hiiii!) and here I am! With my 8 published fics and their opening lines paragraphs! Whoohoo! From older to newer...

1. What happens in Vegas... (Tutor/Fighter AU where they never reconciled but get drunken married in Las Vegas)

Tor wakes up with the mother of all headaches. There's an EDM party going on between his temples, and he's pretty sure if it doesn't subside quickly, he'll seriously contemplate beheading as a solution to it.

2. All these pieces (a fic for Crush. *vague gesture* Canon? I don't know her)

There's a hidden place, Mark sometimes muses, where all the other stories live. The possibilities that didn’t become true.

3. Like a curse (Tutor/Fighter & Crush heist!AU)

2 paragraphs because I love love love how the second one came out and have to inflict it upon people.

Tutor's father had a long list of rules on how to be a successful con artist and thief. He said he had learned them from his mentor, who had in turn learned them from his father. The rules, he claimed, had survived generations, if with a little tweak here and there to keep up with the modernization of their world, and Tutor's father felt it was his duty to pass them on to his son. He used to recite them again and again to young Tutor, saying that repetition makes perfect, and his son had to be at least as good as he was.

The list started with "Always have a plan B and an escape route", went through basic stuff like "If you work a job for a fool, you're the real fool" and "A lean team is a good team", meandered into more esotheric territory with maxims like "The only good Matryoshka is the one you don't try" and "If you smell a rat, it's already too late for the poison", and then came back into the realm of basic common sense with the last rule: "Don't get caught".

4. Statistical anomalies (OT4 ❤️💙💛🖤 KafkaSyndrome!AU. The au of an au. With extra fluffy animals.)

One in four people. That's one of the small certainties science has about all this, even after more than a century since it started happening. In the course of their life, one in four people will live the wild experience of one day waking up not as a human, but as an animal.

5. What doesn't kill you makes you a monster (did anyone say "Stranger Things angst and body horror"?)

Steve Harrington knows pain. In the past years, it's become a vicious best friend with many faces that keeps him company almost every day. It's migraines that make his skull thud viciously and that turn every bright light into an ice pick to the eyes. It's back aches and joint aches from one too many fall, whether on the basketball court or while fighting monsters. It's his ankle, throbbing with red hot intensity every time the weather is changing. It's his scars from the demobats bites, feeling taut and bristling with thousands of tiny needles. It’s his left eye and the tissue around it pulsing and thudding in tune with his heart. It's that feeling like something is forever fucked up in his ribs, he'll never breathe easy again, not even in a hundred years.

6. Amok (Harringrove! Angst!)

The mall is so noisiy that he almost doesn't register it. A woman's voice. It calls "Billy?" like she's surprised. Like this is the best kind of serendipity.

7. Come close (Harringrove cyberpunk!AU)

The only reason why Billy accepted to meet this mystery person is because he's worked with Pr1nc3$$ eight, no, nine times before, which is a pretty high number of times, and by now he knows he can trust her as much as you can trust anyone in this line of work. Pr1nc3$$ is a good hacker. She's professional. She's fun to shoot the shit with in the moments of lull that inevitably can happen during a job. She doesn't ask stupid questions. She doesn't like to take stupid risks, which has never been an issue, Billy's more than ready to take them for everyone. She doesn't get angry when he calls her baby (because he's a jackass), and in exchange he doesn't get angry when she calls him a variety of names (because he's earned them all).

8. Of soulmates and colors (metalsandwich soulmates!AU)

It’s the first clear memory Steve has of his father looking at him in disappointment. Steve’s somewhere between four and six years old and he tries to tell mom and dad that the world is not just in black and white anymore, now there's something else along the usual multitude of shades of grays and white. A weird new shade that is hidden in the darkest of blacks, a shade that was not there this morning. His father looks at him like Steve just let him down in the worst way possible and tells him that to lie for attention is a disgraceful behavior in anyone, but even more so in his only son. Steve tries to insist that he’s not lying, that something actually changed. By the end of the day, he decides to take it all back, because he thinks that sticking to the truth and not being believed hurts too much.

I should tag people at this point, uh? 10, even! Uh... let's see...

@dragonflylady77 @suzy-queued @suometar @bigdumbbambieyes @harringroveera @robthegoodfellow @destroya2005 @ariesbilly @shieldofiron @callieb

This is the first paragraph of my rewrite. It's going to be fairly similar to the books to start out, then diverge into a (hopefully) better plot. I have the whole chapter done but will not be posting it yet. I want to be a couple chapters ahead at all times, just to be prepared.

It might be a while before I post the whole thing, because I want to reread the first series (or at least skim through it) to get a good grasp on where I want this to go. I want to do this series justice, and I can't do that without a plan.

שמע ישראל, אדוני אלוהינו, אדוני אחד

Sh’ma Yisra-eil, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad

ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד

(say quietly) Baruch sheim k’vod malchuto l’olam va-ed

ואהבת את אדוני אלוהיך

V’ahavta eit Adonai Elohecha

בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאודיך

b’chol l’vav’cha uvchol naf-sh’cha uvchol m’odecha. 

והיו הדברים האלה אשר

V’hayu had’varim ha-eileh asher

אנוכי מצווך היום על לבבך

anochi m’tzav’cha hayom al l’vavecha.

ושיננתם לבניך ודיברת בם

V’shinantam l’vanecha v’dibarta bam

בשבתך ובביתך ובלכתך

b’shivt’cha b’veitecha uvlecht’cha

בדרך ובשכבך ובקומך

vaderech uvshochb’cha, uvkumecha.

וקשרתם לאות על ידך

Ukshartam l’ot al yadecha

והיו לטוטפות בין עינך

v’hayu l’totafot bein einecha. 

וכתבתם על מזוזות ביתך ובשערך

Uchtavtam al m’zuzot beitecha uvisharecha

Hi, anon! In my experience, there are a few main things to focus on in the first paragraph to help make it as strong as it can be. I’m going to focus more on the paragraph than the first sentence because I think that’s the most important part. I’ll try to be as concise as possible, but I just drove 13 hours from Chicago so my mind is a bit fuzzy! 

My first piece of advice would be that if you’re a beginner, don’t start with a prologue. Unless they're really well done, a lot of prologues can just seem like a waste of time and an author’s indulgence (I’ve been told this directly by a published author who was reviewing my work. It’s harsh but true). Especially if you want to get published, a lot of agents (not all of them though!) are put off by prologues. 

Get into the scene quickly. You need to set the scene, but do this as quickly as possible. Unless you have arrestingly beautiful descriptive writing like Tolkein, readers will lose interest if you blather on about the setting for too long. With that said, it is important to set the scene a little bit. If a reader can’t imagine where the scene is taking place it’s difficult to get invested in the story. Try to stick to just a few sentences up front and then you can pepper in additional details later on.

Keep it simple. Don’t inundate the reader with too much detail in the first paragraph. Choose what you think is the most important detail or problem and only introduce that at first. You have a whole novel to go into more detail and reveal additional problems/plots, don’t overload the beginning.

Your first page should all take place in the same scene. Don’t jump around too much at the beginning, it will confuse your readers and a confused reader won’t stick around for too long. The first paragraph/page should give the reader a good sense of the genre, the target audience, and the tone of your book. 

If you can think of a good hook sentence, great! if not, do not beat yourself up over it, and don’t let that stop you from starting your story. Some of my favorite books have perfectly ordinary first sentences. If you can’t think of a hook, just start the scene. As long as the scene is interesting and the writing is good, readers will forgive ordinary opening lines. If you really want to start with a hook, a hook sentence should be something unusual or interesting that ties into your story. But don’t start by immediately putting your main character in danger. The reader doesn’t know who this person is yet, and frankly doesn’t really care about them. Think about what you love about your book, why you decided to write it, what grabbed your attention when the idea first surfaced, and try to get that feeling into the first sentence/paragraph. I remember the opening line from an anonymous one-page critique session I went to that started with “Jim’s mom had died twenty-seven times today,” (full disclosure I don’t actually remember the character’s name). That was a great hook sentence, it’s unusual and unexpected and makes you want to read more. It turns out that the person’s mom hadn’t actually died that many times, but that the character was being plagued by a Djin who was giving him horrible visions. This one sentence grabbed the reader’s attention and was a great setup to explain the current situation and main problem. 

A few additional words of advice. It is rare that you will find the perfect first sentence in your first draft, or your second, or your third. Those really witty and fascinating and perfect first lines that we read are often the product of months of re-writing. If you have a sentence you like but doesn’t feel quite right, try reworking it. Try changing the point of view, or the feel of it. Play around with it. And re-read novels and short stories whose opening lines you love. Study them not as a normal reader, but as a fellow craftsperson. How are they constructed? Are they a question? A quote? An action sentence? A description? Etc. There are some first lines that are universally attractive to everyone, and then there are some first lines that some people love and others don’t. Figure out what you like in a first line/paragraph and then try to imitate it. You will write significantly better if you’re writing something you like rather than something you think others will/should like. 

ALL THE COLOURS:

No one warns me that my best friend already has a different best friend at camp. She certainly doesn’t.

AS YOU ARE:

There is no beginning. Maybe because Charlie doesn’t remember anything before Levi, or perhaps because he doesn’t see a point in imagining what life looked like in those fleeting years before the daunting trials of preschool made them a bonded pair. Mostly because the beginning isn’t the important part. It’s the end of the story Charlie holds his breath for when he’s telling it, and Charlie is always the one telling the story. Always. Sometimes, before it’s even finished.

DEAD GIRLS DON’T SAY SORRY:

When Julia was still alive, I think I would have let her get away with anything.

DESERT YOUR HALLOWED BONDS:

Abel only figured out Dad was going to prison thirty seconds before the arrest.

GATE C23:

Zach doesn’t think anything nice has ever happened in an airport. 

HE CALLED ME FINCH: 

I was Finley Ivanov to Andrew Fletcher for one day and four hours. 

After that I was just Finch. Always Finch. I think he only did it because he knew it annoyed me.

I WISH YOU WOULDN’T:

I thought I hated Aman Khalil as much as it was possible to hate a person, but that was before he broke my best friend’s heart. (And then mine, but I don’t want to get into that just yet.)

MAYBE TOMORROW I’LL KNOW:

When the nightmare ends and I open my eyes, I know three things only: first, freckles spatter the backs of my hands where they rest on the steering wheel; second, the radio is blowing static; and third, I’m going a hundred and twenty clicks on a highway I’ve never seen before in my life.

RESENT YOUR SECOND CHANCES:

Before they buried me, I wish someone had thought to warn me how cold it is to be dead.

SOUND CARRIES:

Three things happened the day Hannah disappeared: we had the first snow of the school year, the cast list for the winter production was posted, and I received a very strange phone call.  

THE BAD DIE YOUNG TOO:

The trouble starts long before Liv finds her own dead body in the bathtub. Liv is never looking for trouble, and she’s certainly not looking for corpses, so naturally, tonight brings both. 

THE DROWNED WOMAN WALKS:

I only saw the old lighthouse keeper once before she died. After, I saw her plenty. 

THE GLOAMING GIRLS:

The first thing I observe when I meet Emory Ghosh in person is that she has beautiful hair. It’s not what I was expecting to notice.

THE LAST CADENZA: