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Since I suspect that my fic-writing streak is over for the moment, unless another tale seizes me with the urgency of "Thirty" (or, God forbid, the head-over-heels lunatic passion of "L'oiseau qui vole"), it's a good time to do this now. First try at a personal meme I should have been doing all along.
Probably a lot of us have favorite lines in stories. Sometimes you know it when you write the thing and sometimes it's only in retrospect. To some extent, these are the sort of "darlings" that conventional writing wisdom orders us to excise. Not a bit of advice I believe in, by the way, not least because it's so incredibly vague, but in any case I think the intent of that excision is to get rid of what we've written consciously to please other people, and the lines I'm talking about need please only ourselves. (And yeah, you can write a self-pleasing line that's bad or pointless or incomprehensible to anyone not you. I'm not saying don't edit.)
Some of these lines make me laugh when I read them over, and some make my heart do a little jump, and some do both, and some are just fun or intellectually pleasing. I don't have favorite lines for all stories; I'm quite fond of "Further Up and Further In," for example, but no one line leaps out at me as special.
But here's what I've got (for the recent "Lewis," "Sherlock," and Vorkosiverse fics all at my AO3 page for the finding). Nothing here is spoilery.
"Lewis" first. Nothing from "No Time for Sergeants," and nothing from "Dear Stephen" (I am quite taken with "You have debauched my Piglet" but it's 80% Patrick O'Brian so doesn't count).
"Da Segno al Coda" has a lot of nice stuff in it, I think, but my personal favorite line is: "Though I recited Morse one hundred percent less poetry." I'm not sure it makes mathematical sense, but it is incredibly Robbie.
"Rich and Strange" I am modestly quite proud of, and I could pick out lots of lines. For some reason the one that tickled me most while I was writing it and continues to do so is: He thumbed out a quick, likely misspelled text to Lewis, which felt more like We who are about to die salute you than anything he would have really wanted to say, and ran. This is entirely due to the notion of Hathaway being concerned, in the middle of what does turn out to be a life-threatening emergency, that he might not be using correct spelling.
In "And Love Itself Have Rest" I do really like multiple snippets from Hathaway's internal monologue, but they make no sense out of context, and anyway I have to go with this: The trouble with warding off grief and remorse by means of industry was that he solved the case all too soon, through perseverance and logic and damnable luck: a thinking machine burrowing into the soft heart of malfeasance like a monstrous drill. Sometimes I just have to show off, and I heart Hathaway for allowing me to do so. *hugs*
On to the pair of "Sherlock" stories. "Improbability" is a style exercise as well as an exploration of psychology; it's full of nice bits, but my favorite sentence hands down is: When he looks up again he's outside Barts, watching a dark bird swoop down out of the sky into ruin. I think it may be the best sentence I've written all year.
"The Cat Did Nothing in the Night-Time" is quite different in tone, but my favorite sentence in it is a harkening back to the imagery of the other story: In another lifetime, in no time at all, he realizes that it's not an echo; it's the shout across the valley that starts it all, the end and the beginning and all the heartbreaks in between. Although the list of ways Sherlock is like a cat is rather a triumph too.
Of the Vorkosiverse stories only two produced a favorite line for me. "L'oiseau qui vole" is probably my favorite story of this... long productive whatever that's been happening to me. And, although I am very fond of the line about the bird holding still, my absolute favorite two sentences are: Then he wanted to scream, but of course he didn't, merely let out one heartfelt "Shit" and started throwing office supplies into Duval's box. Half of them were ImpSec property and had to be patiently removed by Duval's gentle hands. It's the visual, of course, with the emotional backing; it is how Simon Illyan deals with having his heart torn out and stamped on. And oh, I did use the word "gentle" quite a few times in this fic, didn't I? Interesting. A contrast to just about everything else that's going on, I suppose.
And from "Thirty": "If there are horse bars in there, I'm throwing you in the lake," Mark said. Just because I love Mark, and I had missed writing him more than I knew.
And that's it. I would be thrilled if anyone else wants to do this.
Probably a lot of us have favorite lines in stories. Sometimes you know it when you write the thing and sometimes it's only in retrospect. To some extent, these are the sort of "darlings" that conventional writing wisdom orders us to excise. Not a bit of advice I believe in, by the way, not least because it's so incredibly vague, but in any case I think the intent of that excision is to get rid of what we've written consciously to please other people, and the lines I'm talking about need please only ourselves. (And yeah, you can write a self-pleasing line that's bad or pointless or incomprehensible to anyone not you. I'm not saying don't edit.)
Some of these lines make me laugh when I read them over, and some make my heart do a little jump, and some do both, and some are just fun or intellectually pleasing. I don't have favorite lines for all stories; I'm quite fond of "Further Up and Further In," for example, but no one line leaps out at me as special.
But here's what I've got (for the recent "Lewis," "Sherlock," and Vorkosiverse fics all at my AO3 page for the finding). Nothing here is spoilery.
"Lewis" first. Nothing from "No Time for Sergeants," and nothing from "Dear Stephen" (I am quite taken with "You have debauched my Piglet" but it's 80% Patrick O'Brian so doesn't count).
"Da Segno al Coda" has a lot of nice stuff in it, I think, but my personal favorite line is: "Though I recited Morse one hundred percent less poetry." I'm not sure it makes mathematical sense, but it is incredibly Robbie.
"Rich and Strange" I am modestly quite proud of, and I could pick out lots of lines. For some reason the one that tickled me most while I was writing it and continues to do so is: He thumbed out a quick, likely misspelled text to Lewis, which felt more like We who are about to die salute you than anything he would have really wanted to say, and ran. This is entirely due to the notion of Hathaway being concerned, in the middle of what does turn out to be a life-threatening emergency, that he might not be using correct spelling.
In "And Love Itself Have Rest" I do really like multiple snippets from Hathaway's internal monologue, but they make no sense out of context, and anyway I have to go with this: The trouble with warding off grief and remorse by means of industry was that he solved the case all too soon, through perseverance and logic and damnable luck: a thinking machine burrowing into the soft heart of malfeasance like a monstrous drill. Sometimes I just have to show off, and I heart Hathaway for allowing me to do so. *hugs*
On to the pair of "Sherlock" stories. "Improbability" is a style exercise as well as an exploration of psychology; it's full of nice bits, but my favorite sentence hands down is: When he looks up again he's outside Barts, watching a dark bird swoop down out of the sky into ruin. I think it may be the best sentence I've written all year.
"The Cat Did Nothing in the Night-Time" is quite different in tone, but my favorite sentence in it is a harkening back to the imagery of the other story: In another lifetime, in no time at all, he realizes that it's not an echo; it's the shout across the valley that starts it all, the end and the beginning and all the heartbreaks in between. Although the list of ways Sherlock is like a cat is rather a triumph too.
Of the Vorkosiverse stories only two produced a favorite line for me. "L'oiseau qui vole" is probably my favorite story of this... long productive whatever that's been happening to me. And, although I am very fond of the line about the bird holding still, my absolute favorite two sentences are: Then he wanted to scream, but of course he didn't, merely let out one heartfelt "Shit" and started throwing office supplies into Duval's box. Half of them were ImpSec property and had to be patiently removed by Duval's gentle hands. It's the visual, of course, with the emotional backing; it is how Simon Illyan deals with having his heart torn out and stamped on. And oh, I did use the word "gentle" quite a few times in this fic, didn't I? Interesting. A contrast to just about everything else that's going on, I suppose.
And from "Thirty": "If there are horse bars in there, I'm throwing you in the lake," Mark said. Just because I love Mark, and I had missed writing him more than I knew.
And that's it. I would be thrilled if anyone else wants to do this.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 01:37 pm (UTC)From:And yes, that is a good visual of Simon coping with having his heart broken. Which makes me think that Alys almost certainly would cope in exactly the same sort of way. Huh. Makes sense, I guess.
Mark is a character I've never quite found a way into yet, and I don't know why. I can do Miles, but Mark eludes me. Perhaps it's just want of trying.
And I entirely agree about not killing these darlings. At least, except for the odd one that needs it - like all silly rules, there are times when it's right. But in general, if I write something and it pleases me, that's one good reason to keep it around.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 01:47 pm (UTC)From:And yes, I'm entirely in sympathy with Hathaway here. "This is the last thing I may ever say to you, and it might be spelled wrong." I mean, really.
Yes, Alys would do something very similar. Rearrange a seating plan while her entire soul is screaming, that sort of thing. Characters like that are fun to write.
As is Mark, for me, but I think "Thirty" is actually the first time I've used his POV, and I hadn't written him into a fic since the Snape stories. (Not that I had written that much fic in the meanwhile.) Writing him in the Mirror Dance period would be very hard; later on I find him entertaining and he provides a good perspective on Barrayaran foolishness. Especially Miles's.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 02:04 pm (UTC)From:The main darling I can think of right now is all the dog imagery in AVD. I did actually have to pull some of that out because oh dear it was a bit much. But enough of it stayed, Aral's 'once you have a dog, he's your responsibility' and the various dog insults from Serg and Ges, and Simon sleeping curled up like a dog at the foot of Aral's bed and feeling like a dog given a pat at some other point, and I can't remember whether I cut the line about wagging tails or not, that might have been where I drew the line. A little of it goes a long way, but it was so tempting.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-04 04:43 pm (UTC)From:Writing Mark and Miles actually in the same space is certainly fun. I love both of them, but when they are together I tend to be on Mark's side. :)