Hey, word-nerds.
Here’s what I want you to do, if you’re comfortable with it. Some of you are presently in the midst of writing or editing stories — in particular, a great heaping helping of you ARTFUL MOTHERFUCKERS are probably knee-deep in the word slurry of NaNoWriMo now — and so I think it’s time to share a little teeny tiny sliver of the work.
Just a taste.
An amuse-bouche.
*smacks lips*
Take a sentence from the work and post it in the comments below.
I’d say to choose a favorite sentence, but I don’t want to hem you in too much — also possible you’d choose a sentence you feel that you just can’t get quite right (and if you are seeking help with said sentence, feel free to ask for exactly that).
So, go, deposit a sentence below.
If, again, you’re comfortable.
*stares*
*smacks lips some more*
*drools*
David says:
“In front of Janek’s mortified eyes the field happily flung the ass end of the cow up and over the head, flipping the cow neatly over the edge of the sixty story MishimaCorp building.”
Pivotal sentence from the opening scene of my perpetual WIP.
November 10, 2014 — 12:52 PM
gaeliceyes says:
They started using salt circles three days out from the ruins of Hazel Wood.
November 10, 2014 — 12:53 PM
Alison DeLuca (@AlisonDeLuca) says:
Ooh – deceptively simple and chilling. Love.
November 10, 2014 — 1:52 PM
gaeliceyes says:
Thank you!
November 10, 2014 — 4:45 PM
sheilasstephens says:
That’s a chilling beginning.
November 11, 2014 — 2:56 PM
gregmulka says:
She is trapped, at bay, but now she knows she is a predator as well.
November 10, 2014 — 1:00 PM
David says:
The little amphibians were dangerous in numbers, but their primitive, territorial anger was ripe fodder for Vashta Kur.
From a fantasy short story I’m writing about a wizard who taps emotions for power.
November 10, 2014 — 1:01 PM
lisacle says:
Current opening sentence from my NaNoWriMo WIP – “In retrospect, the pedestrian tunnel over the highest drop on the log ride at the Mall of America was a weird place to meet up, but it was important to pick a place that everyone was familiar with, and the cheesy, fake sawmill tunnel surrounded by imitation pine forest decor seemed to fit the bill.”
November 10, 2014 — 1:04 PM
Brenda (sleepingseeker) says:
I like it!
November 14, 2014 — 1:36 PM
jrupp25 says:
“The first time will be quick and there’s naught to be done aboot it, but you’ll find you’ll last much longer the second time,” John said.
November 10, 2014 — 1:06 PM
mckkenzie says:
Hahahaha! Oh my god, I definitely want to read more of THIS!
November 10, 2014 — 2:24 PM
Damon Griffith says:
So hard to find one good sentence, take it out of context, and still feel like it’s a good sentence, so I picked a juicy one:
Sure, the giant one-eyed bee things are freaky, but it’s not like they’re giant one-eyed bee things brandishing knives and being ridden by hideous grinning dwarves wearing Oyster Parade tee-shirts who are also brandishing knives, so why the trembling horror show?
From WIP Invisible Leaders, a romping science fiction lark about emergent intelligence.
November 10, 2014 — 1:08 PM
Tracy Rowan says:
As he walked me back through the store I noticed his footwear. “New boots? They’re very snazzy.”
He looked down at his feet as if he wasn’t sure what he was wearing. “Oh that’s right, yes, they are. I had them off the widow of a man who was hanged for killing the waiter who spit in his soup. I must say he had rather small feet for a murderer.”
“How did he know the waiter spit in his soup?” I asked.
“You know, I have no idea. I didn’t ask her.” He chuckled. “Possibly he had a very refined palate.”
November 10, 2014 — 1:11 PM
David says:
I like this exchange quite a lot. Excellent dialogue.
November 10, 2014 — 1:34 PM
Doug Daniel says:
“So you’ve emerged from your lair, you porcine Neanderthal.”
November 10, 2014 — 1:16 PM
Rick Claypool says:
“A cyborg wearing ceremonial robes appeared and draped Jasper with a piece of tardigrade hide.”
November 10, 2014 — 1:24 PM
Melissa Yuan-Innes says:
Birth smells.
I’m not saying it stinks—well, to some people, it does. I remember the classmate who finished our med school OB/gyn rotation without ever delivering an infant. He delivered half of the head, and then the look on his face was so horrid that the obstetrician delivered the rest of baby.
[Sorry to include more than a sentence, but two words seemed a bit barren. From Stockholm Syndrome, the fourth Hope Sze medical mystery.]
November 10, 2014 — 1:26 PM
kkellie says:
One more for me, my first (maybe last) attempt at erotica. . .eek:
If I’m lucky, you’ll squeeze my neck hard, just once, just enough to make my knees go weak before threading your fingers through my hair, fisting it tight enough to draw a gasp, yanking back hard because of it, forcing me to look in your eyes, whispering what you’re going to do to me. To punish me.
Because I’ve been a bad, bad boy.
November 10, 2014 — 1:30 PM
Lynn Johnston says:
I would SO read this. 🙂
November 10, 2014 — 2:08 PM
kkellie says:
Thx for that.
November 10, 2014 — 10:39 PM
Lisa Oliver says:
Wow, that looks good 🙂
November 10, 2014 — 5:09 PM
kkellie says:
Again. . .
🙂
November 10, 2014 — 10:40 PM
johncullinan says:
The sky over the city was an eerie black — not the pitch black of the late night hours, for sundown was still a ways off, but the dreary black of a sky before rain, made all the darker by the ghosts of burning coal and all the more moribund for the distant memory of a sun that tried to shine through them.
November 10, 2014 — 1:31 PM
butchmcgovern says:
I could smell and feel the clinging air. Really well done.
November 11, 2014 — 7:09 PM
Brenda (sleepingseeker) says:
Very vivid. I just loved it!
November 14, 2014 — 1:38 PM
Butch McGovern says:
Your concern over my behavior, my speech, my lack of emotions. It’s purposeful. I’ve restricted much of my Limbic system, my hippocampus in order to keep myself from feeling emotions. I’ll turn it back on when I’m ready, but I haven’t seen Holly in ten years. Nor you. I am attempting to keep my clarity, my sanity, as I reveal myself. I could not possibly face her and give a clear explanation of things without crumbling to the floor and sobbing. I’ve been gone ten years, Rob. Ten years of a billion deaths, that I witnessed. Countless that I was implicit in. Hundreds of lost friends. Ten years of every day missing her, never believing I’d see her again. This is not a joke. Not a character. This is a revelation and a confession.”
More than a sentence, but this bit has been troubling me.
My eternal work-in-progress about a man who leaves earth for a decade, returning on the same day he left with godlike powers and no idea how to explain it to his wife
November 10, 2014 — 1:31 PM
kinginascendent says:
It’s lovely but you are telling us. Show Rob what it’s been like. The things you notice that have changed.
‘She looks older, Rob. She used to get pissed off if I didn’t notice that she’d had a haircut and now I’m supposed to just pretend that I went to the store. I hadn’t even deleted my Myspace account.’
Just a suggestion but what you have is lovely. There’s a poetry there, akin to Doctor Manhattan’s dialogue in Watchmen. I wish you every success with your WIP.
November 10, 2014 — 3:16 PM
Alison DeLuca (@AlisonDeLuca) says:
I immediately thought of Doctor Manhattan as well! He’s one of my very favorite characters. Great minds…
November 10, 2014 — 4:06 PM
butchmcgovern says:
Thank you, it just felt …thin. Showing the passage of time is what it needs. Thank you for the compliments and advice.
November 11, 2014 — 10:42 AM
A. E. Lowan says:
Yeah, okay… so it wasn’t Jessie’s best plan ever.
November 10, 2014 — 1:35 PM
Kyra Dune says:
The only good thing I could say for it was at least it let me know I was still alive.
(From Dragon Within #3: Riding The Wave)
November 10, 2014 — 1:44 PM
butchmcgovern says:
“Ten years of a billion deaths, that I witnessed. Countless that I was implicit in. Hundreds of lost friends. Ten years of every day missing her, never believing I’d see her again. This is not a joke. Not a character. This is a revelation and a confession.”
More than a sentence, sorry.
From my Nanowrimo project, The Gift of an Earthbound Heart
November 10, 2014 — 1:54 PM
butchmcgovern says:
Oops, initially thought my first hadn’t posted and forgot that I made a second, different attempt. Don’t know how to delete this one
November 11, 2014 — 11:13 AM
Mark W Fogg says:
They weren’t even the same species as me, but they had called me Dad for the past ten years, and I was damned if I was going to let anybody take them from me without killing me first.
(From ‘A Father’s Love’, a science fiction novel WIP.)
November 10, 2014 — 1:56 PM
Lynn Johnston says:
I love this–is it your opening sentence?
November 10, 2014 — 2:09 PM
Mark W Fogg says:
Yes. It sets up the thesis for the story and the lengths an ex-military man goes to to protect two war orphans. They are little ‘girls’ from a species that kicked humankind’s ass in an interstellar war. Humankind started the war.
November 10, 2014 — 3:32 PM
Lynn Johnston says:
I’m looking forward to reading it when it comes out. 🙂
November 10, 2014 — 3:38 PM
Brenda (sleepingseeker) says:
This is a great concept!
November 14, 2014 — 1:39 PM
jacki214 says:
Love it!
November 11, 2014 — 2:22 AM
sheilasstephens says:
There’s a passionate character. I’d keep reading this.
November 11, 2014 — 2:58 PM
Kaylin (@theleastshrew) says:
Main character, on the reason he is not a successful writer by now: “”I think it’s just that no one really wants to print 200 page screeds on the inappropriateness of book jacket blurbs.”
November 10, 2014 — 2:02 PM
Walt Socha says:
Unfortunately, this ain’t mine:
“Girl Scout Troop 9 went feral sometime in mid-July, during a camping trip in the lower Adirondacks.”
The story is “Troop 9” by Dale Bailey, published in the Oct/Nov 2014 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.
November 10, 2014 — 2:10 PM
conniecockrell says:
Oh, that is good.
November 10, 2014 — 3:09 PM
butchmcgovern says:
Must read more! Hooked immediately.
November 11, 2014 — 7:11 PM
Zac Romick says:
Not participating in nanowrimo bc I am a highschool student with too much homework and college aps. However, I love writing lyrics for music and I think these lines are fitting.
Throwing happy
Oh too happy
Hours from my life;
Peeling smiles
Down the aisles
Wedding with device;
My material god
Valueless and flawed.
November 10, 2014 — 2:16 PM
Kem Royale says:
Way to go Zac.
November 10, 2014 — 10:10 PM
jacki214 says:
I love that you’re writing in your own way. Next year consider the Young Writer’s Program…you set your own word goal for the month. You don’t have to do 50K.
November 11, 2014 — 2:25 AM
Zac Romick says:
Thanks! I’ll check that out.
November 11, 2014 — 3:47 PM
percykerry923 says:
‘It is like the whole part, where I frolicked with the Countess, and touched and tasted her and discovered her, has been an elaborate, vivid and arousing dream sequence conjured up by my hypnotized mind.’
From my WIP ‘The Sanguinarian’, revolving around the 17th century Hungarian Countess, Elizabeth Bathory De Ecsed, also called The Blood Countess.
November 10, 2014 — 2:17 PM
Brenda (sleepingseeker) says:
Intriguing!
November 14, 2014 — 1:40 PM
Deana Holmes says:
Rebel swung his head around to regard Shane with the kind of epic disparagement only animals could accomplish.
(This is hardly a seminal line, but it made me smile in the midst of grueling edits.)
November 10, 2014 — 2:43 PM
Jenni Cornell says:
I love this.
November 10, 2014 — 8:18 PM
Kaal Alexander Rosser says:
Present opening line from the current NaNo-WIP, “About A Girl” (sci-fi, possibly MG):
“Colonel Fey Sikes dropped into the pilot’s chair of her ship and plugged herself into the interface.”
November 10, 2014 — 2:51 PM
Anne says:
Seeing something extraordinary, like a cheetahcorn, is the shittiest consolation, but maybe I can tell Brodfordt about it if the afterlife’s real.
Going for sheer fun with this one.
November 10, 2014 — 3:01 PM
conniecockrell says:
In front of her, the two doors of a metal cabinet against the right hand wall of the container creaked open and a desiccated human body fell in seeming slow motion on top of her bin.
The motive for the rest of the book.
November 10, 2014 — 3:05 PM
kinginascendent says:
‘I told her goodbye without her hearing it.’
From my WIP, a romance called Rear Naked Choke.
November 10, 2014 — 3:06 PM
butchmcgovern says:
I’ve done this twenty times with the same woman over the past year. Powerful.
November 11, 2014 — 7:14 PM
Allison Maruska says:
Hmmm. How about this one:
The sounds of the emergency room – a cable network on TV, a man talking on a phone, a crying child – blended into a distasteful auditory stew.
November 10, 2014 — 3:14 PM
shelton keys dunning says:
+10 in Sensory. 🙂
Love the “Auditory Stew”
November 12, 2014 — 3:36 PM
Allison Maruska says:
Thanks!
November 12, 2014 — 8:53 PM
Ellie Mack says:
He had precisely five months to perform the rituals; the moon phases were already marked in his journal, the specific incantations were written out for each step, every detail was covered —in this he could not leave anything to chance.
November 10, 2014 — 3:59 PM
Zac Romick says:
I can’t help wondering what those rituals will turn out to be!
November 11, 2014 — 3:48 PM
seanbidd says:
Have a whole slate of unfinished, half finished, but here’s visit to one currently being reworked, “A Parched Nether”. So here’s the cannibalisation of originally two sentences into one, just to see how it felt.
Then a sound, the sound of a door slamming upon its frame, back and forth where no wind blows, yes, no wind has blown for days, not even a whimper, or a wisp of a breeze to cool ones soul while standing half crippled here in this oven, staring at the peculiar looking Stonefish, while behind it, an old house half-fallen from its stumps, piers, more of a weather-assaulted shack if it must be described as anything without value other than shelter.
November 10, 2014 — 4:03 PM
Mark Matthews says:
My cat’s paws are silent on my bedroom floor but I can hear them while I sleep.
(YA horror story WIP as of 11:13 pm last night)
November 10, 2014 — 4:08 PM
gramajan says:
She was safe, and she would eat today. (From To Heal a Broken Planet, currently in a final–maybe–editing pass)
November 10, 2014 — 4:11 PM
mark matthews says:
Perked my interest into what other bizarro stuff was next.
November 10, 2014 — 4:20 PM
J.B. Rogers (@JB_Rogers) says:
– A printable sentence from the latest chapter of my “smart smut” WIP:
I tasted on her lips the same curiosity Master had voiced, and I looked forward to pleasuring her later.
– From an earlier chapter in the same WIP, here’s another tidbit involving the same character (Sheila):
“Well, there _was_ that redhead. I’d lick her freckles right off.”
Mandy chuckled. “Freckles don’t come off, Sheila.”
“I know. That’s the fun part.”
November 10, 2014 — 4:49 PM
Dan says:
“Hot diggity! Now that’s what I call a sentence!”
November 10, 2014 — 4:51 PM
Jana Denardo says:
This is from my vampires in Vegas nano. Arrigo took a blood snack off Luc but Luc’s family thought he was doing something else in the alley and responded badly.
“Swollen and blackened like rotting fruit, Luc’s face bore so many bruises Arrigo almost didn’t recognize the young man. “
November 10, 2014 — 5:00 PM
Rachael Stephen says:
So tired I might as well not even be flesh, just cured wood in the shape of a girl; hollows whittled deeper until one day there isn’t enough to connect me anymore and I fall into a pile of knotted driftwood, lighter than bone.
http://northoftheend.tumblr.com/
November 10, 2014 — 5:03 PM
Cari Hislop says:
Wow! Beautiful word flow!
November 11, 2014 — 3:45 AM
milkaholicclown says:
“I heard she became obsessed with hide-a-beds–had one in every room in the house and several in the garage… it’s like she had this idea that everyone needed a hide-a-bed and that, just maybe, the fate of the world depended on it.”
November 10, 2014 — 5:06 PM
Alison DeLuca (@AlisonDeLuca) says:
This one definitely caught my eye. Very interesting!
November 10, 2014 — 6:18 PM
milkaholicclown says:
Thank-you, I appreciate it!
November 10, 2014 — 6:53 PM
jacki214 says:
Quirky character!
November 11, 2014 — 2:29 AM
Heather says:
If you’re careful not to let sap touch the tip of your nose and sniff the cracks in the crusty bark it smells like vanilla—or cookies baking.
November 10, 2014 — 5:18 PM
L. N. Holmes says:
Still working on the punctuation/grammar for this:
“’The drawing will now begin, a lucky person may alter their destiny or maybe no one will win!’”
From my NaNoWriMo novel, Alexa of Wonderland: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/l-n-holmes/novels/alexa-of-wonderland
November 10, 2014 — 5:27 PM
Amanda Hackwith says:
“There’s a kind of magic in the capacity of teens to have their worlds shattered and still sleep easy in the ruins.”
November 10, 2014 — 5:29 PM
Alison DeLuca (@AlisonDeLuca) says:
Gorgeous and simple, both at once. LOVE this.
November 10, 2014 — 6:19 PM
Jenni Cornell says:
Nice!
November 10, 2014 — 8:32 PM
Jana Denardo says:
Ooo I love this one.
November 10, 2014 — 10:32 PM
TMK says:
Great sentence.
November 11, 2014 — 8:22 AM
butchmcgovern says:
Sometimes you find a sentence that you wish you had written first. This is one of those. Bravo.
November 11, 2014 — 7:17 PM
faithanncolburn says:
She doesn’t even hear a splash before the other swimmer grabs her from behind, driving her deep under the water.
November 10, 2014 — 5:31 PM
Lynn Johnston says:
Creepy–I love it! 🙂
November 10, 2014 — 5:49 PM
Heather says:
“The story of his missing fingers was his favorite to tell but he wouldn’t tell it unless you asked.”
November 10, 2014 — 5:32 PM
tambra nicole says:
This is from my steampunk romance. Second paragraph. (I fell in love with Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices.)
Where was her pain-in-the-arse partner?
November 10, 2014 — 5:37 PM
April Campbell-McMillan says:
She is running scared and heartbroken, right now, but calling it righteousness and anger.
November 10, 2014 — 5:39 PM
Scarlet Darkwood says:
From my current WIP: Claire thought back to the first day she’d been “electrocuted.”
November 10, 2014 — 5:40 PM
Toni J says:
No sane alien would leave their most prized technological advancement out in the open for anyone to use.
I love writing the bad guy for this story.
November 10, 2014 — 5:50 PM
Bob Bois says:
Naturally, he felt an immediate kinship with that first proto-human who, under a magnificent blaze of stars and against all odds , lifted himself upright to declare, “I am MAN!” – and then shit all over his furry, little ass.
November 10, 2014 — 6:05 PM
Toni J says:
Hahaha, that’s fantastic.
November 10, 2014 — 6:08 PM
Bob Bois says:
Thanks for commenting, Toni J.
November 11, 2014 — 8:31 AM
Kat says:
But there she stood, eyes locked with Nadine Planchet’s, while colours she didn’t know the names for exploded into her vision.
November 10, 2014 — 6:40 PM
Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz says:
Hard to choose a single sentence, but here’s mine:
By ninth grade, I was a definite outcast, but still not entirely comfortable with being that way, and not sure what kind of outcast I wanted to be — if I was going to be an outcast, I eventually realized, I might as well be my own kind of an outcast.
November 10, 2014 — 7:23 PM
Jana Denardo says:
I like the sentiment here.
November 10, 2014 — 10:33 PM
Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz says:
Appreciate it!
November 11, 2014 — 6:33 PM
jacki214 says:
I like this character. Want to know more!
November 11, 2014 — 2:31 AM
Eleanore D. Trupkiewicz says:
Thanks so much!
November 11, 2014 — 6:33 PM