First Lines Are The Writing Equivalent Of Drawing Hands

First lines are the writing equivalent of drawing hands

Other authors: *kills or injures characters in their writing*

Me: How dare you

One of my characters: *taps me on shoulder*

Me:

writing tip #1032:

transform into a tree and wait for a bestselling novel to be printed on your body

forget slow burn romance, give me slow burn found family. give me enemies to friends to siblings. tired, weary old mentors learning to live again for their plucky young apprentices. heroes sharing apartments after world saving adventures because they’re so used to living with each other. dramatic “oh shit” moments where one gets kidnapped and the other realizes “god, that’s my kid.” i want to sit and watch in agony for thirty chapters while two idiots slowly adopt each other, someone get on it

Expository dialogue techniques that don’t rely on characters randomly explaining things to each other that they should already know, but do rely on your characters being obnoxious gits:

1. Character A fucks something up hilariously; character B upbraids them at great length about exactly what they did wrong.

2. Character A wildly misreads a situation; character B corrects their misconceptions.

3. Character A tells a complicated and implausible lie; character B points out the obvious holes in their story.

4. Character A can’t find their destination; character B provides rambling and discursive directions.

5. Character A has a straightforward question; character B requests a series of extremely pedantic clarifications.

I had come to live a penniless existence. I had come to write about truth, beauty, freedom and that which l believed in above all things: love.

MOULIN ROUGE! dir. Baz Luhrmann