mixed habitat & densely vegetated hiding places

Stolen from pretty much everyone by this point, but most recently themightyflynn:

List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have fewer than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line.

( 20 first lines )

Patterns: I clearly like to start in media res, with a concrete action or a piece of dialogue. The major exception is #7, which leads into a few paragraphs of backstory, though I hope it's at least interesting backstory and not an infodump. I think this was a genre-related choice; it's a fairytale fandom, so it seemed appropriate to evoke that expository "once upon a time there was..." kind of feeling in the opening.

Some of my first lines drop the reader in with no context and try to evoke some curiosity about what's happening. What's Penny going to love? (#8) Who was Astoria talking to and why does she feel so bad about it? (#17) But some place the scene immediately in a particular moment in canon, though of course you have to know the canon to understand the significance of, say, Burnham being left with Owosekun (#4) or Gary being dressed as Altheaeus (#5) and to realize that those things could only happen in one specific episode of their respective shows. It's one of those things you can pull off in fanfic much more easily than in original fiction where you don't have that built-in context. I think a lot of my openings lean heavily on that effect, and would imply something very different (or nothing at all) to someone who was reading canon-blind.

Favorite: I don't feel that strongly about any of these, but I do like #2 for that image of them sitting just inside the forcefield, as close to "out under the stars" as you can get in that setting.

To be honest, I don't put a huge amount of effort into first lines. I don't think they're as important in fanfic, since I'm sure most people are deciding what to read based on tags and summaries, so by the time they see the first line, you already have their attention. I do fuss a lot over last lines, since you definitely want the final impression to be a strong one. (dolorosa_12 suggested starting a 'last lines' meme, which could be interesting, though I'm not sure it would be as easy to compare them without the context of the whole story.)

Also worth mentioning that I don't write in order, so the first line of a fic is very rarely the first line I wrote. I tend to start with some important realization or turn of events that would go in the middle and then write whatever else I need to get the characters to that point.

You can all consider yourselves tagged for this—if there's anyone left who hasn't already done it!