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May. 10th, 2002 01:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaI can't believe y'all are doing first-line self-criticism. What are you, masochists? ^^; First lines always suck in isolation, that's the nature of the beast. They also fly past too fast to matter, normally: one decides whether to stick with a story from the first paragraph. I'd rather do the other one regarding common threads in one's characters/stories. That one just makes me laugh: I'm past mistress of this kind of wankery, so much so that I'd thought it through a long time ago.
...Actually, I'm such a big wanker I may as well do both. You've been warned.
There was a place like this in my childhood.
Trowa likes Proust, obviously. Not that you'd know it was Trowa. But the first few sentences of this fic scream pretentious French lit to me: it's a pity it's not long enough to sustain the comparison. But then, we're dealing with angsty image-heavy Gundam Wing BL, so the shorter the better.
"Good grief, Heero!"
*busts up laughing* Indeed. Indeed, Heero. But it's GW babyfic. You were expecting the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet, maybe?
Nuriko twirled the peony between thumb and forefinger and brought it to his lips, inhaling the spicy scent as he considered.
Considered *what*, Nuri-chan?... Wait, that's the point. I distinctly remember having a lot of trouble with this sentence at the time of writing, but it's pretty harmless as is.
In the end it happens there, on the roof.
There's obviously something very wrong with this one. But to fix it?
On the night before the Ceremony of the Summoning that would call the Phoenix God down from the heavens to Konan's aid, they closed the imperial baths to all but the Suzaku Shichisei.
Heh heh. Take a deep breath and read, eh? Hard to parse as hell, and the comma acts as a sort of semantic banana peel - imperial baths? *what*? - but I'm not certain I didn't intend the stumble. It *is* humourfic, as well as smut.
The moon is white gold.
My instinct is to like it. I mean, I didn't say it was *silver*.
Crawford liked Swiss pastille mints, the kind that tasted like aniseed and herbs not readily identified.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the Sabina First Line. You know, like "It was the best of times etc." is the Dickens First Line, and "It is a truth universally acknowledged etc." is the Austen First Line? But of course I can't have a first line like Nabokov's "fire of my loins" one: I have to have one about breath mints. T_T
But yeah. I'm actually setting up an extended metaphor, but no reader will ever notice, because I used the word 'aniseed'. And that just throws everyone.
I'm not sure what I expected. Not this fucking professionalism, anyway.
A cheat. Two sentences, but they're on a line by themselves, and I honestly can't believe that anyone wouldn't read them as a chunk. The first one could've been anybody; the second is Schuldich, or at any rate my Schuldich. I don't swear, at least not in my narration, and I don't use the word 'cock' either. My characters do. That's how you tell the difference between third-person omniscient and third-person limited in my fiction: is the word 'cock' used? ...I'm starting to get off-topic, aren't I.
Conclusion: if I'm the one talking, I like to tell you right off the bat who, or where, or both. If it's a character talking, ask how much of an introspective wanker the character is.
Now for the other one: appearence-wise, it's a shallow nobrainer. I like redheads. Judging from fic I have written and plan on writing, I appear to find the idea of sex inconceivable without involving one or more redheads, or at least what on Shioul one calls honorary redheads. (Like fanonOC!Draco. fanonOC!Draco is definitely an honorary redhead.) If the story doesn't have red hair in it anywhere, that's because it isn't there in the series. ^^;
Personality-wise, the characters who *interest* me are those who draw a very clear line between who they are, and who they present to the outside world: characters who wear masks, conceal their emotions, assume double identities. The corollary is usually that they're intelligent, self-aware (or fancy themselves self-aware), cool as a cucumber under pressure and neurotic as hell. So there's your link between Trowa, Crawford, Kurama, Nuriko, Rufus, Lupin-sensei, Ryousuke, and even Demi!Heero of a sorts. I generate internal tension for my fics by winding these characters tighter and tighter, waiting with pen and paper at hand for the sound of metal giving way under stress. XD
Personality-wise mark 2, the winder thereof: someone representing the pole of chaos, either innocent (has no idea what's up / doesn't care) or destructive (likes to watch others twitch). Now if you ask me where my personal droolworthy characters tend to fall, it would actually be here: Hiei, Schuldich, Reno, Keisuke, a dozen others. Meaning, of course, that I place myself at Pole 1 (windee). Other people read romance novels for catharsis of their internal personality conflicts; I just write my own.
And now I was going to say that on a pairing level (because the relationships that interest me are not necessarily romantic/sexual), I have a sadistic fondness for those that are doomed from the beginning by the very nature of the participants - but since we've established that my fundamental dynamic is Order vs. Chaos, that's something of a foregone conclusion.
...You could play with this, actually. Three basic criteria, predict the pairings that Sabina likes! I see Touga x Utena here, and Gojou x Hakkai, and Folken x Dilandau, and Touma - Ryuuichi (Touma doesn't have sex, and if he did it wouldn't be with his bandmate, but I'm writing a fic in which Ryuuichi winds him up quite happily), and...
...Actually, I'm such a big wanker I may as well do both. You've been warned.
There was a place like this in my childhood.
Trowa likes Proust, obviously. Not that you'd know it was Trowa. But the first few sentences of this fic scream pretentious French lit to me: it's a pity it's not long enough to sustain the comparison. But then, we're dealing with angsty image-heavy Gundam Wing BL, so the shorter the better.
"Good grief, Heero!"
*busts up laughing* Indeed. Indeed, Heero. But it's GW babyfic. You were expecting the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet, maybe?
Nuriko twirled the peony between thumb and forefinger and brought it to his lips, inhaling the spicy scent as he considered.
Considered *what*, Nuri-chan?... Wait, that's the point. I distinctly remember having a lot of trouble with this sentence at the time of writing, but it's pretty harmless as is.
In the end it happens there, on the roof.
There's obviously something very wrong with this one. But to fix it?
On the night before the Ceremony of the Summoning that would call the Phoenix God down from the heavens to Konan's aid, they closed the imperial baths to all but the Suzaku Shichisei.
Heh heh. Take a deep breath and read, eh? Hard to parse as hell, and the comma acts as a sort of semantic banana peel - imperial baths? *what*? - but I'm not certain I didn't intend the stumble. It *is* humourfic, as well as smut.
The moon is white gold.
My instinct is to like it. I mean, I didn't say it was *silver*.
Crawford liked Swiss pastille mints, the kind that tasted like aniseed and herbs not readily identified.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this is the Sabina First Line. You know, like "It was the best of times etc." is the Dickens First Line, and "It is a truth universally acknowledged etc." is the Austen First Line? But of course I can't have a first line like Nabokov's "fire of my loins" one: I have to have one about breath mints. T_T
But yeah. I'm actually setting up an extended metaphor, but no reader will ever notice, because I used the word 'aniseed'. And that just throws everyone.
I'm not sure what I expected. Not this fucking professionalism, anyway.
A cheat. Two sentences, but they're on a line by themselves, and I honestly can't believe that anyone wouldn't read them as a chunk. The first one could've been anybody; the second is Schuldich, or at any rate my Schuldich. I don't swear, at least not in my narration, and I don't use the word 'cock' either. My characters do. That's how you tell the difference between third-person omniscient and third-person limited in my fiction: is the word 'cock' used? ...I'm starting to get off-topic, aren't I.
Conclusion: if I'm the one talking, I like to tell you right off the bat who, or where, or both. If it's a character talking, ask how much of an introspective wanker the character is.
Now for the other one: appearence-wise, it's a shallow nobrainer. I like redheads. Judging from fic I have written and plan on writing, I appear to find the idea of sex inconceivable without involving one or more redheads, or at least what on Shioul one calls honorary redheads. (Like fanonOC!Draco. fanonOC!Draco is definitely an honorary redhead.) If the story doesn't have red hair in it anywhere, that's because it isn't there in the series. ^^;
Personality-wise, the characters who *interest* me are those who draw a very clear line between who they are, and who they present to the outside world: characters who wear masks, conceal their emotions, assume double identities. The corollary is usually that they're intelligent, self-aware (or fancy themselves self-aware), cool as a cucumber under pressure and neurotic as hell. So there's your link between Trowa, Crawford, Kurama, Nuriko, Rufus, Lupin-sensei, Ryousuke, and even Demi!Heero of a sorts. I generate internal tension for my fics by winding these characters tighter and tighter, waiting with pen and paper at hand for the sound of metal giving way under stress. XD
Personality-wise mark 2, the winder thereof: someone representing the pole of chaos, either innocent (has no idea what's up / doesn't care) or destructive (likes to watch others twitch). Now if you ask me where my personal droolworthy characters tend to fall, it would actually be here: Hiei, Schuldich, Reno, Keisuke, a dozen others. Meaning, of course, that I place myself at Pole 1 (windee). Other people read romance novels for catharsis of their internal personality conflicts; I just write my own.
And now I was going to say that on a pairing level (because the relationships that interest me are not necessarily romantic/sexual), I have a sadistic fondness for those that are doomed from the beginning by the very nature of the participants - but since we've established that my fundamental dynamic is Order vs. Chaos, that's something of a foregone conclusion.
...You could play with this, actually. Three basic criteria, predict the pairings that Sabina likes! I see Touga x Utena here, and Gojou x Hakkai, and Folken x Dilandau, and Touma - Ryuuichi (Touma doesn't have sex, and if he did it wouldn't be with his bandmate, but I'm writing a fic in which Ryuuichi winds him up quite happily), and...
