meme first seen at radiantbaby

[scarfman]

Take the first line of your last 20 stories and see what this says about your writing.

1. "Stupid ape," came an imprecation from somewhere else on the ground.

2. Martha and Tom finally arrived at the ruins if the Hub at night.

3. "Mum, I'm going to be late," Luke complained.

4. "I don't want to go anywhere with you," Peri interrupted.

5. On entering the Hub, Jack told Suzie to stand down.

6. The TARDIS faded away with the Doctor, Martha, Jack and Saxon's body on it.

7. "That was awful."

8. "Owen," said Tosh, blushing.

9. It was done.

10. "Starbase 8? Not a Class-J?"

11. Of course he still eyes the stars wistfully sometimes.

11. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ...

12. "Why did you come back?"

13. He hovered in front of her as she opened her eyes, so that he'd be the first thing she'd see, even in the poor streetlighting in this place.

13. Donna bustled in from her night out just as Wilf was reaching for the back door. "I've had a brilliant idea!"

14. "You wanted to be an actress," said Wilf.

15. "I love you," whispered the man in blue.

16. She falls silent as his fingers move over her face, over her teartracks.

17. He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing: The fury of the Time Lord.

18. Martha woke up in her old room in the TARDIS for the first time in a year, to find the Doctor sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, watching her.

19. "Hang on. When you say 'change', do you mean me or the situation?"

20. At the end of the last day Martha Jones lived twice, she sat alone in the dark on a bench on the walk by the Thames. She'd visited with Jack a little earlier, and had a session with the therapist she'd been seeing. No Torchwood psychologist had survived Canary Wharf of course, but Jack had gotten Martha a reference to a woman on UNIT's list of civilian friendlies.

(Initially I misread the directions as "first sentence" rather than "first line". I still pretty much stuck to first sentence until the last one.)

What do these say about my writing? Well, on the whole I think they reflect the article I read once where the advantage to fanfiction is that sharing a fictional background with your target audience - when it's your target audience because of the referents you share - it means you can write in a sort of shorthand and pack more in a story by wordcount than if working with characters that must be introduced.