charleygirl: (Watson|Writer)
[personal profile] charleygirl
Post the first lines from your last twenty-five fics and see if there's a pattern (or something like that).

In descending order:

1. In the many years I shared rooms with Mr Sherlock Holmes, I do not recall him ever expressing an opinion on the subject of art. We had paintings in the house for decorative purposes, but these had mainly been supplied by Mrs Hudson before our occupation of the rooms - our additions were principally my own pictures of General Gordon and Henry Ward Beecher; Holmes's contribution the large canvas of the Swiss torrent which dominated the chimney breast. - Sherlock Holmes: The Disappearing Duchess (in progress)

2. The room was dark, close and stuffy.

I could see little as I opened the door beyond a lighter rectangle directly opposite which I took to be the window. The curtains had been pulled tightly across to shut out the spring sunshine, rendering the room uncomfortably warm. In the resulting gloom, I took a cautious step forwards to find the carpet crackling under my feet - squinting, I realised that the floor was ankle-deep in paper, a situation which would have put the sitting room back in Baker Street to shame.
- Sherlock Holmes: The Black Dog (unfinished)

3. My dearest Martha,

Henry and I will find ourselves in town this weekend and would be delighted to see you. Do let me know when it would be convenient to call - it has been so long since we last met, and I have so much to tell you.

Until Saturday,

your loving sister

Rosemary.
- Sherlock Holmes: Mrs Hudson Regrets (needs rewriting)

4. “A bill…another bill…a request from a ten year old boy for help finding his missing rabbit…a telegram from Mycroft…has nothing of any interest occurred over the last six weeks?” 

“Evidently the criminal classes ceased their activity while we were away,” I replied a little breathlessly, dropping the valises I had carried up our seventeen stairs onto the hearthrug. Sherlock Holmes had not waited for me - once the cabbie had been paid off he hurried up to the sitting room and was causing a storm of correspondence from the neat pile Mrs Hudson had made on his desk.
- Sherlock Holmes: Jack In The Green 

5. It was late when I returned to Baker Street that night.

I was cold and wet and looking forward to seeking my bed without delay. My fledgling practice was taking no little work to get off the ground, and my attention had been consumed with it for more than a week. Holmes was caught up in a complicated case, the details of which he had not shared with me and I had not found the time to ask. As I was away during the day and he invariably most of the night, we had not seen each other for some time, and I was therefore surprised upon entering the sitting room to find him not only present, but still up at such an hour. - Sherlock Holmes: First Blood

6. I stood there, trying to keep perfectly still and ignore the way that my nose had started to itch, as Holmes fluttered around me with clothing and make-up from his store of disguises. - Sherlock Holmes: I'm Not

7. “What do you know of Egyptology, Watson?”

The question had come out of the blue – I glanced up from the newspaper that my head had been nodding over for the past half an hour to see Sherlock Holmes standing before me on the hearthrug with a large and important-looking envelope in his hand. It took a moment for my sleep-fuddled brain to register the fact that the post must have arrived while I had been dozing. - Sherlock Holmes: The Hand of Seth

8. When she sees it for the first time, she can’t believe her eyes.

It is standing in Lime Street, right on the corner, battered and faded, its paint starting to peel. She looks around for the telltale signs of camera cables and lighting men, but there is nothing. No actors, not extras, no gaggle of interested onlookers. It looks real. The people on the pavement are ignoring it, moving around the obstruction automatically, as though they cannot even see it, but they know it is there. - Ashes To Ashes/Doctor Who: Take The Long Way Home

9. Charley watches the Doctor as he potters around the console, setting co-ordinates and muttering to himself, occasionally throwing out the name of an obscure planet and telling her that they’ll visit, that it’s such a wonderful place and he’ll show her those wonders, as though it’s just the two of them, and has always been just the two of them, racketing round the universe together, and there isn’t a ghost hanging over them, reminding her that though he looks like a man, sounds like a man, he isn’t a man at all. He is an alien, a deep, unfathomable alien with moods and behaviour she will never understand, not even if she stays with him for a hundred years. - Doctor Who: No More I Love Yous

10. "Good morning, Doctor, Miss Shaw. I take it you've received the report about the Yeti in Tooting Bec?"

The Doctor glanced up as the Brigadier entered the lab, grunted and returned his attention to the jumble of wires from the dismembered TARDIS console that snaked all over the workbench. A moment later he realised that Liz was looking at Lethbridge Stewart with a raised eyebrow and a sort of smirk playing around her lips.
- Doctor Who: The Emperor's New Clothes

11. The place was so busy that no one even noticed the arrival of a battered metropolitan police box by the bakery counter. Even the raucous wheezing and groaning that accompanied the box’s arrival caused no comment — everyone had no thought but their own particular goal, whether it be last minute vegetables, a cut-price cake or some chocolates for the child they’d forgotten to buy for. There was little time left — it was every man (or woman) for themselves. - Doctor Who: The Better Part Of Valour

12. It wasn’t the most hospitable of places: dank, dripping, cold and dark. Those who did visit shivered in their shorts and t-shirts, wishing that they’d stopped to consider the temperature and maybe picked up a sweater before they left the car. They stared around with awe, complained at all the steps they had to climb and how low they had to bend to avoid hitting their heads. But they were only visiting, after all, inside for maybe an hour before heading off to continue their holiday above ground in the sunshine, their subterranean adventure relegated to a few blurred snapshots and something tacky from the souvenir shop. - Doctor Who: Underground

13. The ceiling was cracked, the plaster flaking and yellowed. Like the rest of the room, it had seen no attention in years. Bush guessed that no one had used this house since the Revolution – what little he had seen of the exterior was decaying and in ruins, looking very much as though it had barely survived a devastating fire. The torn curtains that still hung at the boarded-up window were thick with dust, which caught in his throat as he tried to peer through the gaps between the wood to see where he was. The sunlight trickled through the narrow spaces, falling in thin lines across the filthy floor, but he could make out little of the world beyond this room; the room that had been his prison for the last two days. - Hornblower: Buried Truth (permanent hiatus)

14. “Smoke, candles, stripy wallpaper…well done, Doctor, looks like you’ve missed Blackpool, 2006, *again*. You doing this on purpose or what?” Lucie Miller glanced back into the TARDIS to see the Doctor looking vaguely apologetic as he reached for his velvet coat. “Where — and when — are we this time?” - Doctor Who: Waxing Lyrical

15. “Doctor,” said Charley, for what seemed like the twenty-fifth time.

So far she had failed to gain the attention of her Time Lord companion, so caught up was he with the dusty old book he’d found tucked high up on an almost unreachable library shelf. In fact, Charley had a pretty good impression that he’d forgotten her existence altogether. Even the arrival of a fresh pot of tea and a plate of new scones waved under his nose couldn’t elicit any reaction.
- Doctor Who: You Better Watch Out

16. “Sail ho!”

 Hornblower squinted upwards against the sun. “Where away?”

 “Two points on the starboard beam, sir!” the lookout shouted, pointing wildly.

 Beside Hornblower, Bush already had his glass to his eye. “It’s that French corvette, sir, I’d lay odds on it.” - Hornblower: Uncharted Territory

17. The storm had come upon them without warning.

Squalls in the channel were commonplace, but this was something far, far worse.

The ship pitched and tossed at an alarming rate. Hornblower, who struggled with seasickness at the best of times, did his utmost to hang on to his stomach contents as he made his way on deck. A particularly big wave hit the Hotspur, throwing him head over heels as he emerged from below. His slipped, skidded on the wet deck, and eventually came to a halt in a tangle of limbs on the quarterdeck. - Hornblower: Stormy Waters

18. “A letter from Admiral Pellew, no less.”

Lieutenant Bush raised an eyebrow. “A personal letter, sir?”

“Indeed. There is an enclosure for you.” Hornblower passed a sealed slip of paper across the table, eyes still fixed on the admiral’s missive. -
Hornblower: Should Auld Acquaintance

19. “STYLES!”

At the sound of the familiar bark, Styles jumped upright in a hurry, nearly knocking his head on the stove in the process. He looked up in trepidation to find Lieutenant Bush standing in the galley doorway, a pained expression on his face. -
Hornblower: Christmas Day In The Morning

20. At last! Finally getting Maria out of the house! Never thought I’d get her off my hands – any bloke she’s brought home has for some reason never been heard of again. No idea why – maybe they just can’t handle my scintillating wit and fascinating conversation. Their loss. - Hornblower: The Secret Diary of Phylida Mason (Duty)

21. What was I drinking last night? I should never have mixed my drinks. Guinness, rum and Ribena and Babycham are a lethal combination! Head feels like the Portsmouth marine band is practising inside it. Where's the alka seltzer?

Found out that Mr H has been visiting the pawn shop again. Sneaked a look in his sea chest - nothing there besides some old underwear, a shirt that needs darning and a rubber duck. I'd wondered why he wanted a bath so often. What do you mean, a landlady should respect her lodgers' privacy? How else am I to know when I'm likely to be paid? - Hornblower: The Secret Diary of Phylida Mason (Loyalty)

22. There is a theory that radio waves vanish into deep space, travelling further and further into the future.

If you subscribe to such a theory, then old television programmes are on a constant journey through the ether. Somewhere in the universe, other races could be sitting through Coronation Street from the beginning, finding Bless This House hysterically funny, or waiting to find out just who did shoot JR.

Aliens on a distant planet may just be picking up Doctor Who. All of Doctor Who. Even the missing episodes.

Think about it: somewhere out there, a big green creature with three heads could be videoing (or whatever the equivalent is) The Evil of the Daleks, or The Web of Fear.
- Doctor Who: Fandemonium (permanent hiatus)

23. After a few moments, the lighting in the console room returned to normal, all the little lights on the console itself flashing on and off in irregular rhythms.

Paul picked himself up off the floor. “Is everyone OK?”

“Are we dead?” India asked tentatively.

“No, mate, we’re not dead.” He put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Charley?”

“Over here.” She was crouched on the other side of the console, over a shape on the floor that turned out to be the prostrate form of the Doctor. “He’s still breathing,” she reported.
- Doctor Who: Unreality

24. "I don’t believe it.”

Charlotte Pollard – adventuress, airship stowaway and now time traveller – poked her head out of the door of the battered police box and frowned.

“You said you’d take me somewhere nice for dinner,” she called over her shoulder, “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Expecting what?” asked the Doctor, appearing behind her.

“Corridors. Yet more corridors!” Charley complained. “I think I could write a book about them by now.”
- Doctor Who: Mistaken Identity

25. The wind howled around the house, calling down the chimney, rattling the windows. Rain lashed against the double-glazed glass, pouring down it in torrents. The heavy curtains muffled the noise slightly, but not much. If Alistair hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that he felt the room lurch, as though it were a ship at sea.

It was what his mother would have called a “fearful night”. He checked his watch, glanced at the clock on the mantle-piece for confirmation. Doris would be back soon — the sooner the better. He should never have let her go out in this weather, but she had promised to help with the mulled wine and mince pies after Midnight Mass, and it wouldn’t do to let the vicar down.
- Doctor Who: 'Twas The Night Before Christmas

Hmm...not sure I can see an overall pattern. Expected my tendency to start with speech to be more prevalent than it is! :)




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