antennapedia

I just speed-read a huge pile of fic in a new fandom, searching for those worthwhile few that have the goods. A number of trends pop out when you do something like this, and I wanted to record one trend here: overloaded opening sentences. Yeah, the opening sentence has to awaken interest. But it doesn't have to do all the work of establishing setting as well. The presence of the word "as" is often an indicator of overloading, particularly when it's used to connect one-time short-duration actions with longer on-going ones. (People who endure my beta-reading are familiar with that complaint.)

I'm now reading over all my own opening sentences in a paranoid fit.

(Sudden weird metaphor: In your next story opener, instead of "Rocky Racoon", go for "A Hard Day's Night".)

In other news:

I'm waiting for my coworkers' verdict on Dollhouse. Last week they were all of the "it's Joss Whedon; of course we're watching the pilot" opinion. Let's see what they think this week. They're all ahoo over BSG and bored stiff by Heroes.

My list of obligations both fannish and real-life is piling up horribly. I have a story to beta-read (yes, I got it, secondalto), week-old feedback email to answer, a ficathon to write a cheerleading post for today, and the story for the ficathon to work on. Haven't written a word in a week. The subject line of the post is the clue about what I've been doing instead.

So. What should I do today? If you say "laundry", then I'll cry. If you say "open the week's mail and pay bills", I'll know you're Mr Pedia and respond by throwing a small dog at you.