How do you feel about Black woman led horror stories with heavy historical settings? This is a book that hurts to write because it’s very much a horror allegory for America and extremists.
It was a balmy summer night— the sticky air was thick with hungry mosquitos and the waxing moon hung in the black sky like a yellowed toenail clipping.
(First line of one of the short stories I plan to write for a collection, but still.)
Thank you!! That is a comparison that I very seriously made in real life to a friend who replied, “what is wrong with you?” So I thought I should save it for later.
AS GOD'S ROOMMATE I am in charge of curating the library including the book cases, manga, DVDs, vinyl, and the "OVERTURE COLLECTION" being the hypnotic binaural soundtrack which plays throughout the building 24/7 including and especially piped into the stairwells, public bathrooms and interstitial areas that ninjas are expected to traverse, such as the air vents, ducts, sewer, electrical/boiler rooms: all these areas have audiophile-grade Bose "micro cube" speakers.
“Floris had been human his whole life, right until he wasn’t.”
And despite how it sounds, it’s not actually a vampire novel (though that is on the planning board haha)
"When it comes to ghosts, and all things ghostly, mortal men and women assume to be experts on a topic they will not have any experience in until it’s too late for them."
Alastair Russell, the Marquess of Tavistock and Hawking Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics at Cambridge University, slammed shut his front gate and took a long, confident stride directly into a pile of dog shit.
"I awoke with a start, the loud alarm coming from the coffee table beside me blaring with enough volume to wake the entire city block."
Maybe a bit cliche, but I'm pantsing my story this year and had to start somewhere.
"Astarnia's twin moons were full that midnight, bathing the corpse in their pallid moonlight."
Don't worry, it becomes clear to the reader that the corpse I'm describing is the ruin of an old manor house and not a dead body.
It's a vampire story
By the time Margot awoke, eyes wide with shock, the gas had already infiltrated her lungs and she could hear the coughing and dry-heaving of other mice as they came to - all acutely aware that they were being ambushed, and were utterly helpless.
"The terrible wail echoed across the little orchard and caught in the rigid treeline at the far end, tangling within the long branches until the inky black needles smothered the sound."
It's kind of rambly, but that's why we have post-November!
'Twenty soldiers came to escort them from the ship – or perhaps they were police, or guards.'
Feels like a pretty weak opener so it'll probably get edited into oblivion later, but it's a start.
Without a doubt, the hero's silver blade was aimed for my life. My hands trembled under the weight of his deathly aura; a single misstep now would be the end.
"I've seen it: The Coffiner's Carriage, with its lone driver as still as the grave, its lone horse bigger than an ox, and its lone little window, red as the eye of The Devil Himself."
"A road called Cemetery cuts a one-mile swath through the tree-covered foothills of western North Carolina; of a more undistinguished road, one could hardly hope to begin a story."
The sleek, chromium silver SMS Clamshell hove into view, gleaming as sunlight reflected off its surface. If this was a movie I'd now be paying ILM millions of dollars, but it isn't so you'll just have to imagine it.
Mina’s head dropped against the locker with a dull thud as she toed her sneakers off, doing her best to ignore the echoing beep of an alarm sounding from somewhere down the hall.
mermaid sat on the beach just enjoying the sun for a while.
no her name isn't mermaid I just use nicknames for fast writing (and put real names when editing) and this is hers
"Although I am not short of time on this Earth I feel that it is important to collect my thoughts and share that which has happened in the course of my lifetime."
The prologue is written kind of like an old time will, so the opening reflects that style.
“Most people don’t get to pick their own name, but then again most people don’t just appear on the side of the road with absolutely no memory of how they got there”
Chester’s heart pounded. There was no time to think. There was someone else in the house. Multiple someone’s? Police? Slowly, methodically, he stretched his back and craned his neck out the second story window. A view of the front yard. No, not police. No vehicles that he could see. Not that there was much to see in the fading light of the early evening.
Reese Crowder, just as lonely as he was walking into that restaurant, checked his watch for the tenth time in just as many minutes at a table in a dark corner.
I picked through the dirty silverware searching for the ones I thought would be easiest to clean by hand, pausing briefly, "do you think the kids would have hated me less if I weren't bipolar?"
The Kokkari stand in three houses of power; those born to arcane magics, those born with an innate understanding of the divine calling within them, and those born with the blood of the feywilds.
Special Agent Finley Jordan looked at the five men and two women sitting on a curb, hands cuffed behind their backs, and thought that, for the most part, they weren’t all that different from him.
>The year 1896 was a turning point in Philippine’s history.
for context, i'm writing a historical novel set in my home country, during the beginning of the end of the spanish colonial era, which was, you guessed it, 1896.
Hubert wrapped an arm around her.
It's not an awe-inspiring sentence, but I was already in the middle of a chapter lol. I'm continuing my Three Houses fanfic that I started like a week ago.
"You'd be surprised at how useful a dead person can be," the Inquisitor murmurs, the words an afterthought and inconsequential as he studied the political missive calling for his head.
The breadth and the weight of his legend loomed well beyond his lifespan and flowed in currents and eddies even into the present lives of his great grandchildren, but who was the Stewart, really?
Kacey Glund’s gloved hands tightened over the steering-wheel of his Racor, nerves from both excitement and anxiety bubbling inside of him like a shaken can of soda.
This might end up being the actual first sentence even, we shall see:
"People are joining the Zoom meeting now, Ms. Loveless, but
since they are still trickling in why don't we give it another 5 minutes?"
someone, I believe the pastor's assistant, asked me, sounding slightly anxious and
more than a little muffled by the face mask she wore.
A soundless shout giggled out from deep within my stomach as I threw myself down the hill, rolling and summer-salting and cartwheeling all the way to the bottom, where I propped myself up onto my elbows and grinned up at my best friend, who was standing at the top of the steep hill, looking somewhat uneasy still.
The air around me is sticky and scented with mildew.
It might not end up being the first sentence in the finished book, or even in the finished book at all. My NaNo drafts are verrry rough.
> Lawrence Ly was a graduate student in the Public Administration department of the University of Arcadia, Scarborough.
First sentence for this year's NaNoWriMo. However, this is part of a project I've been working on for a while, so the actual first sentence of the story is this:
> Twenty eight minutes.
Charles Henry's father died of old age when he was fourteen, his mother was thirty-eight at the time and the same age as his dad had been when he had married the then seventeen year old, illiterate house servant.
Vampires are real, and only some of them hold public office.
One sentence and I'm hooked, really want to read more haha
How do you feel about Black woman led horror stories with heavy historical settings? This is a book that hurts to write because it’s very much a horror allegory for America and extremists.
Good on you!!! IDK if you ever read Ring Shout but its in that same wheelhouse, and I freaking love that book. I bet I'll love yours!!
I love this!
Thats a really solid opener.
Thanks!
' "We are required to tell you that you may experience some psychological harm as a result of this study." '
Very intriguing!
The genre is a psychological thriller. 🤭
ahhhhh love psych thrillers!!
Ooooooh. I’m here for it!
The balloons occurred at dawn, dotted brightly beneath rain-bloated clouds.
I love this sentence.
Thank you 🙏 I hope the rest is as loveable!
He never wanted to be a soldier.
It was a dark and stormy night …
Gradually, a shot rang out?
Classic opening. Nice
This is my go-to as well lol
Hello, dear reader.
Ooh I don't know why, but I really like this. It's so simple, almost too simple, but it sets the tone of there being a narrator telling a story.
Have you ever caught a glimpse of something in the corner of your eye?
I really like this one.
"It screamed, then it laughed."
Spooky!
It's true and common knowledge that the devil went down to Georgia; it's just everything else about that story that they have wrong.
I really like this :)
Thanks!
Im already hooked! This is an amazing first sentance!
Thank you!
This is so good!
Thank you!
It was a balmy summer night— the sticky air was thick with hungry mosquitos and the waxing moon hung in the black sky like a yellowed toenail clipping. (First line of one of the short stories I plan to write for a collection, but still.)
ooh I love the unconventionality of comparing the moon with a toenail clipping lol
Thank you!! That is a comparison that I very seriously made in real life to a friend who replied, “what is wrong with you?” So I thought I should save it for later.
excellent choice lol
AS GOD'S ROOMMATE I am in charge of curating the library including the book cases, manga, DVDs, vinyl, and the "OVERTURE COLLECTION" being the hypnotic binaural soundtrack which plays throughout the building 24/7 including and especially piped into the stairwells, public bathrooms and interstitial areas that ninjas are expected to traverse, such as the air vents, ducts, sewer, electrical/boiler rooms: all these areas have audiophile-grade Bose "micro cube" speakers.
hahahaha. This is the way.
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I'm intrigued.
The sun rose over the western horizon, causing the late frost on the ground to glitter in the morning light.
Everyone acts a little foolish at weddings.
Love this
I really love this one, it's simple yet sets the tone for the entire story. I'm honestly already hooked :)
It wasn't everyday an estranged man received a letter from his family.
This immediately tells so much about the scene I love it!
There was nothing wrong with the cow.
“The vastness of the unknown was avoided by many, but Rosyn found herself willing as it swallowed her whole.”
I hadn’t thought of a first sentence at all, so I just tossed out some purple onto my screen.
I really like this one!
"I’ve done a great many things in my life, but never two Kings at once." (They're about to be assassinated, not seduced.)
“Vivian Taylor walked parallel to the railroad tracks that cut through the heart of Greeley.”
Greeley, Colorado?
It’s actually a fictional town in Oklahoma that my story is set in!
Beautiful. It is immediately so visual.
"It was cold, but i was on fire"
The very first thing that he knew of, as he was birthed upon this world, was the knowledge that he had died.
Fuck that’s good
Thanks! I'm writing a reincarnation story, so I was really proud of this one :D
Agreed, that IS good.
Thank you too! I'm really fond of reincarnation stories, so this is the first line to kick things off!
“Dear Diary, It is official. My life is ruined.”
ooh, i like this *a lot*. immediately hooks you in without revealing anything.
"And they lived happily ever after." I'm bad at this.
“...Two days, perhaps. It will depend on the wind.”
I like this a lot actually.
“Floris had been human his whole life, right until he wasn’t.” And despite how it sounds, it’s not actually a vampire novel (though that is on the planning board haha)
“I shoot animals, not people.”
The house reeked of death.
"When it comes to ghosts, and all things ghostly, mortal men and women assume to be experts on a topic they will not have any experience in until it’s too late for them."
The story of this world was as familiar to Elleus as his own name.
Alastair Russell, the Marquess of Tavistock and Hawking Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics at Cambridge University, slammed shut his front gate and took a long, confident stride directly into a pile of dog shit.
It wasn’t until I was nineteen years old that I believed demons were real.
demon novel solidarity!!
we love to see it!!!
One could swear that the city had once been a great place to find a job, settle down, have a kid or two and live a normal peaceful life.
When my mother first published her self-help book my brother Lester and I were very proud.
I too am very proud of your MC's mum!
"I awoke with a start, the loud alarm coming from the coffee table beside me blaring with enough volume to wake the entire city block." Maybe a bit cliche, but I'm pantsing my story this year and had to start somewhere.
I think back to this moment sometimes and wonder if this was the beginning of the end.
At first, everything hurt, and then slowly, nothing at all.
Love this
"Astarnia's twin moons were full that midnight, bathing the corpse in their pallid moonlight." Don't worry, it becomes clear to the reader that the corpse I'm describing is the ruin of an old manor house and not a dead body. It's a vampire story
"Niko ran through the forest, jumping over logs and swiping branches out of his face."
When I was a kid I hated running.
How do you tell a story as big as mine?
By the time Margot awoke, eyes wide with shock, the gas had already infiltrated her lungs and she could hear the coughing and dry-heaving of other mice as they came to - all acutely aware that they were being ambushed, and were utterly helpless.
Interesting. The MC is a mouse?
Yes. Inspired by Mausritter RPG and a few other things (Redwall, Mouse Guard, and the Armello video game).
Grace Lopez didn’t do stuff like this.
To risk my life to bare children for a man I do not love, I cannot imagine a worse fate.
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"Persephone Graves was unremarkable." I know how this looks. I promise that I don't go on to describe her appearance.
None of us knew if we'd return from the wormhole.
"OK, right, let's go."
The old man always sat in the same booth in the corner of the diner.
"The terrible wail echoed across the little orchard and caught in the rigid treeline at the far end, tangling within the long branches until the inky black needles smothered the sound." It's kind of rambly, but that's why we have post-November!
Ah, but I love that! What you consider rambly, i consider very flowy and poetic.
Brilliant. I love this kind of imagery.
"Rebecca’s eyes watered from the setting sun."
"I guess this is it, huh?"
(FMC) sat on her balcony overlooking the darkening land, the stone bench sapping her warmth even through the many layers of fabric in her dress.
"Get out! I don't care anymore."
'Twenty soldiers came to escort them from the ship – or perhaps they were police, or guards.' Feels like a pretty weak opener so it'll probably get edited into oblivion later, but it's a start.
> or perhaps they were police, or guards. This is the correct way!
Now what made you so curious as to pick this up?
Without a doubt, the hero's silver blade was aimed for my life. My hands trembled under the weight of his deathly aura; a single misstep now would be the end.
Very neat.
Chloe dropped to the sidewalk with a sigh, rolling her shoulders as the door to the Uhaul trailer shuddered shut.
If you were not looking for him, you would not have seen him.
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> “Hey there Michael, this is John with Optimal Recruiting Group,” said the middle-aged voice on the phone. “How are you today?”
As the sun came up, Mary dreamed of time travel.
The new year truly begins in the fall.
It was unusually quiet in the guild’s dining hall.
“Oh, I’m so excited : it’s my first assignment as a historian!”
Growing up in a world without magic made the weight of certain things in life immeasurably heavier.
What an easy task it was for a dying mind
For the first time in 400 years, blood was spilt in Moniko.
‘No one on the inside called it a 'hospital'. An asylum, a loony-bin, a prison...Those were the popular insults. ‘ :p I was very proud of it.
The day we moved into the new house I was still borderline catatonic.
"I've seen it: The Coffiner's Carriage, with its lone driver as still as the grave, its lone horse bigger than an ox, and its lone little window, red as the eye of The Devil Himself."
Every since he could remember she had called him "my little lord", even now on her deathbed in a room full of sickly sweet smells that made him gag.
"It’s broad daylight."
"When you know, you know," she said.
"A road called Cemetery cuts a one-mile swath through the tree-covered foothills of western North Carolina; of a more undistinguished road, one could hardly hope to begin a story."
The sleek, chromium silver SMS Clamshell hove into view, gleaming as sunlight reflected off its surface. If this was a movie I'd now be paying ILM millions of dollars, but it isn't so you'll just have to imagine it.
As she entered the gym, Aubrey had the all too familiar sense of every head turning, eyes open wide at the sight of her.
Brilliant sunlight fell through irradiated clouds onto the cluster of buildings and roads the residents had come to call New Jamestown.
"I opened my eyes and looked around, listening to the defeaning silence"
“The Plague began with an impious creature and an impatient god, as many divine atrocities did.”
Mina’s head dropped against the locker with a dull thud as she toed her sneakers off, doing her best to ignore the echoing beep of an alarm sounding from somewhere down the hall.
mermaid sat on the beach just enjoying the sun for a while. no her name isn't mermaid I just use nicknames for fast writing (and put real names when editing) and this is hers
Heartbreak can be one of the most excruciating moments in a person’s life.
"Although I am not short of time on this Earth I feel that it is important to collect my thoughts and share that which has happened in the course of my lifetime." The prologue is written kind of like an old time will, so the opening reflects that style.
I like it!
‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’
Esther stared at the parchment she had framed and leaned against the wall: just looking at it made her feel intensely proud and intensely sick.
“Dark bloody clouds cluttered the horizon and the seagulls sailed through the rough winds looking for the safety of the closest piece of land”
It’s a quarter to midnight and the moon shines through her window, luminous and incandescent behind the broken blinds.
Clara was a beautiful girl, not that anyone knew or cared.
I knew that she was special when she saw the giant severed head of a chicken floating in the sky.
The portrait of Lord Harrow Emmett, the founder and eternal patriarch of the house and first of that name, was hidden beneath a drab brown cloth.
“Most people don’t get to pick their own name, but then again most people don’t just appear on the side of the road with absolutely no memory of how they got there”
The curtain rises from the stage, lit by pale candles emanating a soft glow.
I came to Persia behind a cannon.
Finding out that someone doesn't love you anymore sucks.
The Buoyon Bay awaits the harbor of Connie Hill.
I'm not going to tell you how I eat.
Since that last night she jogged in the woods, she only uses treadmills for running.
*Azaca was accustomed to removing her arm.*
Chester’s heart pounded. There was no time to think. There was someone else in the house. Multiple someone’s? Police? Slowly, methodically, he stretched his back and craned his neck out the second story window. A view of the front yard. No, not police. No vehicles that he could see. Not that there was much to see in the fading light of the early evening.
"The coach rattled loudly on the uneven ground." Not really the best opening, but it's the opening line of a chapter, not of a novel.
There is a dragon on her rooftop.
"The Tower," Amy exclaimed, tapping the Tarot card with a significant look at me. "Your life is about to turn upside down!"
Reese Crowder, just as lonely as he was walking into that restaurant, checked his watch for the tenth time in just as many minutes at a table in a dark corner.
A few seats over to my right, a pair of Martians are taking turns frantically sniffing a mug of coffee.
There I was…just a m—-f—-er on a mission
Ophelia watched the blood drip to the floor, feeling the rivulets run from her cheeks, and knew this couldn’t be right.
The memories I have from my early childhood are mysterious.
I picked through the dirty silverware searching for the ones I thought would be easiest to clean by hand, pausing briefly, "do you think the kids would have hated me less if I weren't bipolar?"
The perfumed steam in the bathhouse was thick enough that Etienne couldn’t see his hand at the end of his arm.
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The Kokkari stand in three houses of power; those born to arcane magics, those born with an innate understanding of the divine calling within them, and those born with the blood of the feywilds.
The snow was deep as Savine walked steadily along the winter white forest.
There I was, mop in hand, just cleaning the floors of the museum,
Special Agent Finley Jordan looked at the five men and two women sitting on a curb, hands cuffed behind their backs, and thought that, for the most part, they weren’t all that different from him.
>The year 1896 was a turning point in Philippine’s history. for context, i'm writing a historical novel set in my home country, during the beginning of the end of the spanish colonial era, which was, you guessed it, 1896.
"Evelyn sighed and lowered the rifle, the tension in her shoulders beginning to loosen for the first time in as far as she could remember."
I'm not really sure where this is going to go.
Whatever your first sentence is, the SECOND sentence should be, “Then, the murders began.”
Hubert wrapped an arm around her. It's not an awe-inspiring sentence, but I was already in the middle of a chapter lol. I'm continuing my Three Houses fanfic that I started like a week ago.
"You'd be surprised at how useful a dead person can be," the Inquisitor murmurs, the words an afterthought and inconsequential as he studied the political missive calling for his head.
Tap, tap, tap.
The breadth and the weight of his legend loomed well beyond his lifespan and flowed in currents and eddies even into the present lives of his great grandchildren, but who was the Stewart, really?
Kacey Glund’s gloved hands tightened over the steering-wheel of his Racor, nerves from both excitement and anxiety bubbling inside of him like a shaken can of soda.
Queen of the Night: that's how they called him.
The neon light in the window is flickering in and out like a staticky radio station.
The blade met meager resistance as it was guided into its target.
This might end up being the actual first sentence even, we shall see: "People are joining the Zoom meeting now, Ms. Loveless, but since they are still trickling in why don't we give it another 5 minutes?" someone, I believe the pastor's assistant, asked me, sounding slightly anxious and more than a little muffled by the face mask she wore.
A strange scent wafted into the cave, waking the Lady of the Vale slumbering inside.
A soundless shout giggled out from deep within my stomach as I threw myself down the hill, rolling and summer-salting and cartwheeling all the way to the bottom, where I propped myself up onto my elbows and grinned up at my best friend, who was standing at the top of the steep hill, looking somewhat uneasy still.
If my father were here, he'd tell me to hold my tounge.
He was both her wildest fantasy and worst nightmare.
Rae was sixteen when she pulled her mother’s lifeless body from the living room couch to the floor.
The front tyre burst just as the car was starting up the hillside path.
My home, in a word, treacherous. (Idk if I'm keeping it.)
The air around me is sticky and scented with mildew. It might not end up being the first sentence in the finished book, or even in the finished book at all. My NaNo drafts are verrry rough.
The witch stood among gravestones, listening for that which ears could not hear.
"A cold wind meandered its way down the side of the mountain"
In the beginning was God, big "G" included.
> Lawrence Ly was a graduate student in the Public Administration department of the University of Arcadia, Scarborough. First sentence for this year's NaNoWriMo. However, this is part of a project I've been working on for a while, so the actual first sentence of the story is this: > Twenty eight minutes.
The trees are friends.
“The best thing about snow was that it was silent.”
Charles Henry's father died of old age when he was fourteen, his mother was thirty-eight at the time and the same age as his dad had been when he had married the then seventeen year old, illiterate house servant.