First lines meme

Via lirazel, a fun fanfic meme:

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. Then tag 10 authors! consider yourselves tagged if you want to do this!

( Twenty first lines, all from book fandoms )

Some patterns:

Throwing readers immediately into things, with action already underway

Alternatively, meandering, ponderous, fairytale style sentences — usually for fandoms whose canonical material has a fairytale tone

Using the sky, the season, or celestial bodies to evoke a mood

I use first person in canons whose source material is written in the first person (Sunshine, Pagan Chronicles), although not for Galax Arena (which is written in the first person, but I never write fic from that character's perspective). Capturing Pagan Kidrouk's internal voice is really, really hard

I loathe present tense (I make a sole exception for it in the Pagan Chronicles) — I hate it as a reader, and I'm never going to perpetuate it as a writer. This ... puts me at odds with the vast majority of other fanfic writers

I think my favourite opening is number 12, Voice from Between the Stars, although to be honest my favourite lines of my own writing tend to appear further on in my fic, rather than in the opening lines. In fact, I'd be interested in repeating this exercise with the closing lines, since I tend to prefer these in my own work, and put the most effort into them.