girl_starfish made me do it!

[kaigou]

If you happen to be working on some creative writing project, fanfiction or NaNoWriMo or what have you, post exactly one sentence from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else. This is merely to wet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

Echoes and Postscripts:
Into the apartment building, up the elevator, down the hallway, and Relena counted her steps rather than rehearse her words one more time.

Kingfisher:
He wants to stay in this moment, where he can continue to hope that Heero will wake up, might wake up, in that precious moment, when it's still possible the spell can be broken.

Restraint of Desire:
He was tempted to count the distance between the rails, as though it would tell him how far he had to go to reach the center of the lightening strike.

Tetractys:
Trowa pursed his lips, running through the things Duo had said, the little gestures, noting the lines around Duo's eyes from years of squinting at threads and tracing patterns in the air that only Duo could see.

Comments

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

You really do have a lot going on at once. At least, unlike a lot of other authors, you actually finish what you start.

[girl-starfish.livejournal.com]

<_< ... I know not of what you speak.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Hmph. And to think I'm archiving both of you.

*glares*

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

I'll have you know I wasn't referring to you at all. *coughmadamhydracough*

...although now that I think about it...

[girl-starfish.livejournal.com]

I am a bad influence! (or a good one -- I'm not sure. Well, I enjoyed these)

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

You're an influence, all right. If only I could write humor like you 'n Mikke, though. Wah.

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

I'd like to be able to offer you useful advice here, but it seems when I think about it to be one of those things that doesn't take well to explaining. @_@; When you analyze humor too much it breaks down. I'm not sure what to say.

[girl-starfish.livejournal.com]

Humour's kind of like suspense or sexual tension. The more you leave up to the reader's imagination, the better it is (because really, whatever the reader comes up with is always funnier/sexier/more thrilling because it's theirs). At least, that's my take on it. Mikke, you agree/disagree?

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

In a general sense I think you're right, but I'd posit in a slightly different way: for a certain kind of humor, you want to keep things moving as fast as possible. You can skip over all sorts of things that you'd never be allowed to skip in a serious fic; similarly, you can make any sort of illogical moves in what happens or how people react that you like.

Of course you want to keep people in-character if you can, and the events as plausible as you can, but if you're aiming for humor there's a much wider selection of what you can and can't do. 'Course, having more freedom doesn't necessarily make things easier to write -- in fact, it makes it harder, at least until you get used to it. @_@;

The corollary to "move as quickly as possible," at least how I do it, is that when you hit your punchline, you stop. In a serious fic, that would be very bad, but stopping at just the right moment leaves the audience laughing over the line/action without getting distracted by followup; especially as the reader can then imagine whatever kind of followup to the hilarious moment they like.

So... yeah. What Louise said. A lot of humor is what you don't say, rather than what you do.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Yah, but a big part of humor seems also to be the requirement that you not be afraid to have your characters almost become parodies of themselves - I learned that from the fiasco known as Meeting Beatrice. I got a few comments that Trowa (among others) seemed OOC for Monster Trucks, but I guess I drew the conclusion that for it to be funny, a bit of OOC is required.

And yeah, knowing when to stop is the most important thing in comedy, at least on the stage. But it seems to be true in writing, too. Nothing worse than excessive use of exclamation points. I think it was Scott Fitzgerald who said 'using exclamation points is sort of like laughing at your own joke'.

Hrm. I think I'll stick to drama and black comedy. Easier for me, at least. ;P

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

By all means, cleave to your strengths. :) Less competition for me, at least!

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Someday I'll make you cry in return, though.

*shakes fist*

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

It should probably be your favourite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion.

I wish I could do this meme, but I suck at picking favorite anythings, much less favorites from my own work. Sure I have stuff I like when I write it, but heck if I can remember what it was now without re-reading the whole damned thing, and then I'll just find ten other things I like just as well.

*ack*

But yeah, you for writing!

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

What sticks out for me are images, not sentences, and I often break those images into separate sentences, so finding one...that wouldn't leave people going "hunh?" at the lack of clear references or context - hard. But I'm getting better; it's part of writing good query letters, I'm finding.

Now I just have to kill off Tetsu's great-uncle in Sunrise, and I'll be set. Yeah.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I was glancing over a fanfic I'm writing (my first solo effort at fanfic *ever*) in response to your meme, and all the passages I really like make no sense without the context of the story, because its' not about the words as such, or not just the words chosen, but the characterization, the moment a character realizes something or does something about his/her situation or something similar.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Learning to distinguish between "pivotal moment" and "intriguing moment" is an important step in assessing one's work. It's like when someone says, "what's the theme?" and the response is, "a girl goes into the city and she meets these people and then this car almost runs her over..." That's not theme; that's plot. The point of an eyecatch (to use an anime phrase) in fiction isn't to demonstrate a strong moment for a character so much as to pick something that leaves out just enough information that the reader is left going, "hm, I wonder what happens next."

But then, perhaps I've also gotten used to picking out sentences like that because of archiving, too. Rather than using summaries for the stories, I select (or the authors select) teaser statements, short quotes from the story. Try looking at your work that way, the odd little sentences...the way I approach it is to look at a sentence or two and think, "would my ears perk up if I heard someone say that behind me in line at the grocery store?" If the answer's yes, it's a good teaser-line. I guess when I look at the line in that sense - as something to whet people's appetites - then it's easier to pick a favorite.

Uh. Or something. Time for dinner.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I guess my confusion there is simply that looking for "something intriguing to whet their appetites" (which I can do) isn't the same thing as "looking for my favorite line(s)" (which is much harder).

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

More like "pick your favorite line" from among the "lines which whet appetites" - how's that for narrowing it down? ;D

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

OK, that makes more sense.

And sounds like a lot of work in the lengthy fan fic I'm doing!

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Oh, now you make it sound like an exercise, or therapy. *grumbles* And I feel sort of obligated to try.

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

Well, you've been doing it in some sense when you send me your text files for Scimitar. But now you might see the difference between what most authors pick - the lines that somehow imply the plot or major action - and what I pick, as archivist. That is, I pick the lines that explain the most while raising the most questions - at least, that's what I aim for.

In other words, I think of what quote I would expect to see if it were a published work and I were looking for a few lines or dialogue that I'd put at the top of the back of the book - that leading quote that's followed by a teasing summary of the story. ;D

Cheating

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

I know I'm not a "real" writer, and that the challenge was to pick only one sentence, and that from an ongoing work of fiction, but hey, I'm thinking outside the bacchus...

Here again we see an example of someone who has an incredible inspiration, an experience of Gnosis, yet is not capable of understanding that the point is not for everyone to now be bent to fit his understanding, but to seek their own direct experience and understanding. Like animals or children, they focus on the pointing finger and ignore the sight to which it points.

(from an ongoing essay on Muhammad)

Re: Cheating

[solitude1056.livejournal.com]

I still think you should write that Enochian For Dummies book. ;D