Thought I'd start a thread for first paragraphs. Here's mine:
Under water, the whole world seemed to disappear. Ethie glided effortlessly, her long dark hair streaming through the chlorinated water behind her, her feet only giving the gentlest of kicks to aid her momentum, until her pace slowed and she drew her arms out and propelled herself along the length of the pool, her hands barely touching the wall at the deep end before pushing off again. She could do forty lengths before work easily, but though she relished a challenge as much as most people, this was never about speed or endurance; this was about feeling at home.
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2,510 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 20 47
Because my first paragraph is short, I've contributed two:
Everything in the house seemed ajar, messed with, but somehow empty. It was an odd sensation for Teresa and Morgan Lithgow, who had lost their son Justin that Monday to a drunk driver. The harshness of the event had plagued their minds constantly, made much more severe by the funeral they held for him that morning, and the wake that had just ended.
----------Despite the sensitivity of the situation, there was still an unmeasurable amount of rubbish strewn through the house by relatives and friends, and Teresa was pained by the idea of cleaning it all now. She dragged a weary frame into the kitchen, her ears awakening to the sound of pots and pans cluttering in the sink. Her husband was distracting himself by doing dishes, a tall glass of red wine next to the water, occasionally swept around the base by detergent bubble waves.
37,482 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 21 01
Parents; they tell you stories about when they were young, ‘back in my day’ they say, or ‘I remember when…’. You just roll your eyes and nod and smile and hope that they will stop talking soon, just so you can go and do the things that you will one day remember with that same wistful look, because today, its your day. One day you are going to be just like them, maybe in big ways, maybe in smaller ways. You might be able to see it yourself or it might take someone else pointing a trait out in you. Maybe you’ll be glad and think about your parents fondly, maybe you’ll resent that you have become what they shaped you to be. But it is inevitable and you might as well just make the most of it.
Ooooh and the Scoreboard finally updated
46,108 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 21 13
Oh hooray! We're coming first!! True, we had a head-start, but still!
My first paragraph:
The pathology lab at the Rye Medical Center was in desperate need of remodeling. The blue lights flickered, and there was a perpetual hum which - although it sounded natural enough in the context of the cold, steel laboratory - couldn’t have logically been generated by any of the ancient equipment the budget committee let us buy not too long after medicine was first invented.
----------Nanowrimo 2008: This Tepid Madness (lost, 26,000 words - Q10 lost my novel :'( )
Script Frenzy 2009: A Collection of Comedy Sketches (won, 100 pages)
NanoWrimo 2009: A Harvest of Bad Company
52,110 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 21 27
Phil was tired, sweaty and in no mood to be nice to anyone who crossed her path. She looked around the terminal blinking crossly and muttered to herself, ‘hasn’t this place even heard of air conditioning?’ Judging by the airport, this was the back end of beyond and that was not what she had signed on for. Where was the glamour? Where was the opportunity for exotic international travel? And, most importantly, where was the bloody liaison?
50,109 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 22 09
My first couple of paragraphs (because the first is really, really short):
“There will be silence!”
The hubbub around the periphery of the courtroom faded to a dull murmur as the echoes of the court crier’s call faded into the wood-panelled walls. As the silence grew to fill the room, the prisoner in the dock could still hear a few whispered fragments: “who would have thought it”; “you’d never know just by looking at him”; and the inevitable “one thousand crowns?”
----------2006 - Title: "Awakenings"; Genre: Horror; Words: 50,000+.
2007 - Didn't take part.
2008 - Title: "From The City Of Demons". Genre: Fantasy. Words: 50,000+.
2009 - Title "Thief". Genre: Steampunk. Words: Not nearly enough.
35,863 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 22 17
Addison Baines stood outside the house, gripping her bag tightly. She ran through the items in her bag once more.
-----------One water bottle, filled with a liquid that may-or-may-not be water.
-One torch.
-Spare batteries, for the aforementioned torch.
-One bag of jelly babies.
-One book.
-One notebook.
-Two pens.
-Three hair clips.
It was everything she needed. Everything she needed to face the biggest challenge she’d seen so far. The Witch House.
Death count so far? two.
-Falling on a tree root, staking himself
-Running into a girl holding a piece of a chair, staking himself
85,171 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 22 20
*twitches with the overwhelming urge to edit*
I post two because the first is so damn short.
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Jerna brushed at his jet black hair with one hand. It was getting scruffy and he'd have to find a local barber soon or he'd start looking rather unkempt. As he walked away from his university dormitory he adjusted the straps of his heavy backpack to stop them from cutting into his neck.
The university campus was very pretty, rivalling even the campus in his home city of Marakan. Many campus buildings were collected together in little huddled gatherings with small manicured gardens and parks separating each group of buildings. Paths meandered through much of the huge garden-like campus with picnic tables scattered throughout where students could study on fine days. The science and mathematics blocks formed a half circle with a beautiful garden and gazebo in the middle. Down near the arts and social sciences department was a huge lake surrounded in trees where many concerts had been held over the years. The newest section of the university; the management block, was separated from a majority of the campus by a small artificially planted forest filled with nice walks and little hidden areas for picnics.
----------40,412 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 22 29
Most might ask where the story begins and where it ends, the truth is I don’t know where the beginning is and where it ends. Well the end I guess is when I die but the beginning I could always start at y birth and carry on to my childhood but that is never really exciting, especially in my world. I am an only child with two loving, normal parents whose parents died while my mother was pregnant with me. Though they are dead and buried there are no graves to mark where they lay, I don’t know why and whenever I ask my parents they seem only to shrug and mumble ‘buried at sea’ and slink off like the conversation never happened. When I was younger I guess it would have annoyed me to no end but now I’ve accepted that something horrible must have happened to the four of them, but what are the chances that they all died a horrible death? I just pray everyday to whoever is listening that the same thing doesn’t happen to my parents, I wouldn’t want to get to a point in my life where talking about them is considered a crime or deeply frowned upon.
39,348 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 22 30
The world ended on a Tuesday.Well maybe not the world, Toshina’s world officially did that she knew without a doubt, okay so she didn’t know about it when she woke up that morning. Had she even gone to sleep? Wait the story.
Okay so the world ended for Toshina on a Tuesday. She’d just gotten dropped off at the airport by Hadrian after an argument which resulted in why do you get to use the teleporty thingy whatsit and I don’t? and him answering just trust me on this one. Yeah if she ever got out of this she was going to kick his arse for trusting him.
Okay so my first two paragraphs simply because the first one I'm kinda not happy about and will most likely cut it in editing but yeah not bothering yet.
----------43,952 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 22 36
-Hey Danny, what you up to today?
-You’re not gonna believe this, Andres, but I just flew into Fairview.
-No shit! Are we gonna meet up then?
-Maybe man! I’d like to. I’m in for a party; maybe I can meet you there. That’d be so exciting!
-Yeah, definitely! What party, Danny?
-Well, you know the Babel Broadcasting Television Awards are on tonight at the Civic Theatre? I’m off to that- I got invited! And then there’s an after-party. We could meet there?
Andres sat up straight, and looked up from his cellphone. ‘No shit,’ he said. Zara, sitting next to him, turned her attention away from the file she was attacking her nails with.
8,944 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 22 48
Lucia didn’t mind parties overly much, in fact she usually looked quite forward to them. They offered her the chance to mingle, and chat, and meet new people that for most of the year she never got to do. But she never did like the getting ready part. The fluffing and the inane gossip and the feeling of hairpins being stabbed into her scalp. Or the corseting.
Yeah, I want to edit now too! I just realised that I love the word 'and'...
60,048 / 50,000
Oct 31, 2009 - 22 55
“Life sucks.”
Charlotte slumped down on the sofa; willowy frame slouched over so she was all legs and arms in a summer dress that was drenched with rain. Platinum blonde hair plastered to her face, which was currently a mixture of wrath and hatred. It was hard to tell. With Charlotte, she was usually always pissed off about something.
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Oh the desire to edit... 'it was hard to tell' makes no sense to me at all, what the hang was I thinking!! Anyways, this thread is a great idea. I've enjoyed reading through all the first paragraphs :)
----------Long live me and long live anarchy!
- Drunkard, for whom the bell tolls...
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Oct 31, 2009 - 23 08
Prologue: Light of a Dying Sun
The last thought that went through the head of Peter Williams before the anesthetic mixture nocked him out was not the frisson of regret over Elle he had expected, but a moment wonder when the last time he had seen the sun was. Here in the outer ring of the solar system he and his fellow planetary science specialists had had little practical work to do once the last of the terraforming equipment had been loaded, and so in order to keep the teams out of the way while the work continued on the ship they were simply frozen early. The ship wasn’t scheduled to leave for another three months, but there was little time for sentimentality. He had been given half a day to contact his remaining family back on Earth to say goodbyes. And then there had ben Elle.
----------He and Elle had found out late in the day that they would be on separate teams. He was going to be on the primary team, the main workhorse team when they eventually found whatever barren rock was to be turned into the new Earth was to be the home for the colonists and scientists. He had assumed, they had assumed, that Elle was going to be on the same team. But she was moved to the later team, the backup team (actually, one of two backup teams. Multiple redundancy was the order of the day for the colonization efforts, the efforts that were to keep humanity a going concern in the Universe. It would mean years, decades even apart. For him, anyway. For her it would be as if no time had passed.
She had told him she wanted to stay together anyway. No matter that he would be so much older than she was when they were finally reunited. She didn’t even expect him to forgoe other relationships during the long years they’d be apart. But for reasons selfish and selfless he had ended it days ago.
2003: St Augustine's Chickens (w)
2004: Arcanagencia (w)
2005: The Exile War (w)
2006: The Exile's Return (w)
2007: The March Beyond Progress (w)
2008: The Monarchs of Paradise (w)
2009: Displacement
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Oct 31, 2009 - 23 50
You are running down the street carrying a life-size Barney doll and swearing. To your left is an expansive park with calm ducks and a middle-aged man waiting at a hot air balloon stall. To the right is your future. You round the corner with difficulty as you shift the inflatable dinosaur to hug the other side of your body while trying to keep a reasonable pace. You are late for your future.
----------When you can fall for chains of silver, you can fall for chains of gold
7,908 / 50,000
Nov 2, 2009 - 22 36
Shar-Kattori was a maximum-security prison located off the coast and in the vicinity of the Wellington Super City. It was considered the Alcatraz of the 21st century, the largest man made prison facility ever built in the Southern Hemisphere and home to some of the countries most dangerous mages. It was also the second maximum-security prison in the world to be granted full sanitation laws by the Collective and the only prison that did not use humans. If you managed to land yourself in Shar-Kattori then you were considered something very special. It was the pride of the country and rivaled many other prisons, both in size and the teams that were stationed there.
----------'The purpose of writing is to make your mother and father drop dead with shame' - J P Donleavy
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Nov 2, 2009 - 22 54
Paul sipped his drink and listlessly examined the wall beside him. The pub was a 17th-century building and the plaster over the stones was cracked with age. He wondered whether the people who built the pub would have expected it to last hundreds of years. Was their attitude to their work the same as the creators of Stonehenge, the builders of Machu Picchu? Had the men who constructed this building done so with care and patience and one eye to the ages?
22,309 / 50,000
Nov 2, 2009 - 23 00
"He was standing on the dimly lit landing, back pressed against the door and hands fists clenched by his side. He had vbeen running but he was no longer breathing in short deep gastps that were like painful coughsand his heart should have been racing too but he couldn’t feel any pounding in his chest. He had a breathe glimpse of memory like a blank and white photo of a battlefield with barded wire and gas. There had been rats too, he remembered with a shudder enormous ones with no fear of men. Someone said they ate the babies."
Can you tell I changed my mind in the middle of writing and ploughed ahead anyway, thumbing my nose at my Inner Editor?
75,285 / 50,000
Nov 2, 2009 - 23 17
I don't think many people give much thought to how they are going to die. Children even less so. Even though I had contemplated it fleetingly I never thought it would be like this. Not now. When I died, I didn't see a white light. There was no hand reaching out to guide me. No flashing of my short life before my eyes. When I died, there was only a sea of red, threatening to swallow me whole.
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I think the first paragraph is the hardest to write. Its so hard not to edit and try make it something 'spectacular'. I'm sure it will have changed several times over by the time I'm done!
----------"When life snatches your dreams, screws them up into unrecognizable balls of mush and spits them back in your face I just give life the finger and keep going. I'll be damned if I'm going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me give up."
- Azrael
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Nov 2, 2009 - 23 55
The retiring sun cast a shimmering hue over the centre of the lake as mosquito’s hovered slightly above the water, attracting the attention of the trout. Closer to shore there were dark patches of water from great masses of reeds and surrounding these areas the water was murky from numerous eel’s quick and decisive movements. On the shoreline, past the pebbles and muddy embankment there were two tents set up; one was green and slightly battered while the other was silver and black and pristine in condition. To the left lay two discarded fishing poles with the weights knotted and tied together, seemingly tossed aside in anguish. Further past the fishing rods was a rubbish bag, overflowing with empty beer cans and packets of food.
41,007 / 50,000
Nov 3, 2009 - 00 10
Prologue
The pelleted rain hammering the tin roof of Morana’s quarters was unusually merciless that Spring morning. What was usual, however, was the frigid air that echoed her icy presence and the petrified face stamped on her timid maid.
“Talia, damn it, I told you thrice and I shan’t have to instruct you again! My porridge must be crusted in sugar, you pathetic girl. Are you trying to draw me down to your repugnant plebeian standards?”, Morana clenched her square set jaw and thrust the bowl away. She strutted to the window as Talia hastened the bowl out of sight, and peered through the rain towards the citadel of Suvarost, which towered as gloomily as ever behind its fortified battlements.
Urgh! I dislike my prologue in so many ways but I'm determined not to edit it until December.
46,916 / 50,000
Nov 3, 2009 - 00 22
What makes a story? Is it the words on the page, scrawled ink strokes like so many liquid spiders? Is it the words in the mouth, passed on from person to person; merely a few vibrations in the larynx?
No. No, a story is much more than that.
~
I know, mental, huh? XD
----------"I do my preparation retroactively."
-Me
Enthusiasm: 85%
Energy: 80%
Stamina: 75%
WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
35,000 / 50,000
Nov 3, 2009 - 01 12
Yeah, man. I was there. I was one of seven in the lab. No one really understood it when they saw what happened, but then the results started speaking for themselves, and everyone just sort of stood there dumbfounded. Things changed, in that moment. They changed massively, in a myriad of little ways we could never have expected. But right in that moment? We had absolutely no idea what we were seeing, and it freaked us the hell out.
Hang on. I’m telling this wrong.
Yeah? Yeah, another drink would be just grand, mate. Cheers. Okay, let me start this again.
-------------------------------------
2009: Any sufficently advanced Technology
2001-2008: A butler who fights crime; a doorstop; a bbq; a travelogue; a book of things drawn out of a hat; a WWI vampire; Will Shakespeare - Unemployed Actor: he fights Crime; and a
44,175 / 50,000
Nov 4, 2009 - 01 35
This is part of mine, it's more prologue than actual story though, but I started finally tonight! So I thought I'd share :-)
I told him not to leave. It was the one rule that couldn’t be broken, but he did. It wasn’t his fault. I’d tried to keep him safe by not telling him anything at all, and when she found him, he was malleable and innocent. I hadn’t prepared him for the reality of my kind upon his, hadn’t told him that we used people for our own pleasure. He had no idea that any of us, would ever do him harm. And that, really, is what makes us so very dangerous. Claire was a formidable creature, with blonde hair that seemed to move of its own accord, swimming down the length of her spine as if across a smooth beach. The banshees were more dangerous than anyone thought. A banshee scorned, was a devil no one should ever have to face alone.