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

[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