The annual "Show Us Your First Line" post

My first lines are notoriously uninteresting. One day I might have to get over that.

Anyway:

When I was four years old, I was found wandering alone down the main street of the village, barefoot, fingers in my mouth, as the townspeople woke to go about their business.

NaNo 2009:

Mine is...

"The first thing I remember of my life is sitting out in front of Momo’s house when Daddy’s silver Camaro came driving up the road."

Ah the first line. Mine is: There was just no getting around it, things were going to have to change, and they were going to have to change fast.

and it just goes downhill from there... :)

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Lushguins Rock! \m/ (>.<) \m/
Nano2008: Here Under Stars
Nano2009: An Agent of Change (a biography in chaos)

I went for riveting, gut-wrenching drama with my first line.

Be careful before you read this thing... make sure you're sitting down!

You ready?

You sure you're ready?

Okay, here it comes....

The sun had not yet risen.

Whew! I'm still trembling.

Well, depending on whether or not I use the preface....

Preface:
My name is Peter Wynn.

Non Preface:
It must have been another bad dream

First lines are overrated. =D

Mine: "The tops of the gray castle walls were obscured in a chill mist."

My first line is short, so here's the first two:

Her ears were ringing. A high-pitched hum droned on as her mind slowly tried to catch up with the situation.

.......and there it is.

:)
TAM (aka Brandi)

Tabitha A. Miller
(otherwise known as Brandi)

Mine is pretty terrible. Actually, everything I wrote last night is crap. But I like it so far anyway~

Mrs. Morgenson peeked her head up from the women’s magazine she clasped in her hands.

I thought I would stress out over the first line a lot more, since it could make or break a reader's will to read your story. But, in the end, I just winged it.

Mine is pretty terrible. Actually, everything I wrote last night is crap. But I like it so far anyway~

Mrs. Morgenson peeked her head up from the women’s magazine she clasped in her hands.

I thought I would stress out over the first line a lot more, since it could make or break a reader's will to read your story. But, in the end, I just winged it.

Mine was pretty plain.

It was just an average afternoon for me.

The trees bent ever so slightly as the line of cars rushed down the long and winding driveway.

No one told me there would be *work* involved.

They tell stories about Jack Stingy.

Sydney Mazwai cusses herself as the roundabout sucks her in like a sliver of soap circling the drain.

Nicole

II went for the exciting:

The battle was raging all around, bits of the palace crumbling into the ocean below.

"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart."
-Lois McMaster Bujold

Rereading mine makes me realize I will be doing plenty of rewriting in December.

"Trevor woke in the late afternoon, which was not unusual."

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.-Douglas Adams

here is one of a story im not sure im sticking with the rest of the month. Remus was now certain that while they attended this literary academy, whenever he and his brother, Romulus, introduced themselves together the next question would always be along the lines of "Wow, your mother must be a bitch."
next line is: Its already happened five times in twenty minutes.
yays for having crappy tech skills D:

The hum of the grocery store consisted of two children arguing over a Red Delicious apple that had fallen between them with a wet thud on the dirty tiled floor; of the sharp metal crash and clatter of shopping carts dully trolling up and down the aisles, swerving at the last moment to miss other carts suddenly swinging in front of them; and the voice of a school-aged girl standing at the checkout counter arguing with the checker about the price of cigarettes.

First couple I guess works a little better?

Here:

I recently had a life changing experience that not many people have. I was changed into a vampire. I am now going to be eighteen years old for the rest of my life.

Grandpa remembers the time before. A time of moonlight and windows, of nightfall without fear.

My name is Jen. As in Jennifer. The most popular baby girl name in America during the 70s.

Lame I know, engaging the rookie clause!

Can you tell I went in blind again, only this time it bit me on the butt?

GO LUSHGUINS!

50,000 words is easy.
50,000 words that make sense? Much harder.

The sense of urgency had the force of a living cry for help.

SilverTeam Lushguin
2009 - The Night of the Descendants
“You’re pure, gallant and cheeky; but I’m unbearable, insufferable and intolerable.”

Numbers are such simple, inelegant things.

It's more about the first paragraph than the actual first line for me, but I'm thinking the red-pen monster will visit it a few times next month.

They say that friends help you move. They also say that real friends help you move bodies. I say that real friends help you move bodies that they help you make.

And it veers off into about twenty different directions from there, very little of those directions having to do with bodies, friends, moving or any combination of the above.

Leah A.

Wind swept across the courtyard, tugging her hair. The sky was slowly lightening, hinting at the bright sun coming to burn the late night clouds away.

~alan m rogers

Trucy Bainbridge looked down at the hastily drawn, and she was increasingly convinced, completely useless map in front of her and and checked it for the fourth time that night.

Red pens. It's all about the red pens...come Dec. 1!

"Writing is an acceptable form of Schizophrenia." ~E. L. Doctorow

Geez, a lot of yours are really good :/ I went for the 'need to start somewhere' approach, and had a point of view meltdown afterwards...

HERE WE GO: "It is said that man once roamed across the surface of the Earth, without thought or hesitation to the consequences."

...yeah, so that editing thing I'll be doing after this is done...

"An education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on."
- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

I shouldn't really post mine as I challenged a blogger whom I've known for years in the blogosphere, to join NaNoWriMo (she signed up and lives in GA) AND to just give me a line and I'd go with it. She gave me three choices and I picked one of them. I knew what I was going to write, but technically, they're hers. Now having said that, this is the one I picked;

"Surely, Elvis Costello had written a song to describe this moment but she couldn't think of its title right this minute"

Now after I'm done writing, I better delve into EC songs. I only know 'Oliver's Army' and that's not really fitting my story! [g]

Ingrid aka TexasDutchie

When we can name the systems and institutions that we must resist -- and change, and eventually destroy -- then we can begin the hard work of creating the path toward that change.
Robert Jensen

Here's mine:

The chains clinked and rattled their metallic dirge in the dusk as Rhysa shuffled behind the slave wagon.

"The ships hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't." --HHGttG
"Does this game have a safe word?" --Rob Balder

First year writing! Here is my first line!

A shiver shot down my spine; I knew I never should have taken this job.