Fic appreciation: beautiful sentences

[crowroad]

Borrowing and expanding # 9, memorable lines, from frozen_delight's fic appreciation meme <3-- because I love (love!)
well-crafted sentences. And how they speak to one another, make the whole.


From ad aeternum by alethiometry (Summary: Jess waits for Sam where she hopes he'll find her someday.):

"Posting cryptic comments on ghost-sighting YouTube videos from a metaphysical IP address had sounded like a lot of fun."

For its deft use of past perfect to give a sense of space and time.

*
From Paying for Time (Summary: Dean is old and forgetful. Sam is dead and maybe a ghost.):

"Sam was forty.

Sam woke up."

This one needs context--check out the use of short declaratives in amberdreams quiet, non-linear curtainfic. It also has a great, understated closing line.

*
From a western, i guess by obstinatrix:

"So. Picture the scene: two brothers roll into a saloon, dirt on their boots and blood in their mouths. They've rough-ridden wild over half the Wild West, Route 66 and Lincoln County road, and they've sure as hell gotten right to Armageddon more than once. You can get anywhere if you keep driving."

More than one sentence, but you know--the voice, the rhythms. The title shrugs off legend; the author gets that tone and rolls with it; happens in the phrases and radiates out.

*
From Crooked Young by Theboys. (Mind the tags; underage, dark):

"Mouth’s red like cherries, the kind on milkshakes. Maraschinos, Dean thinks they’re called."

For its sorta offhand interior deconstruction of a cliche.

*

From Sam Winchester's Guide to Blood Magic, or How the Rockies Were Made by thursdaysisters:

"He said nothing, drumming his fingers to the music as he stole glances at Sam and the growing inkstain on his right hand as he wrote in a spiral-bound notebook, diagramming an unnatural history of America."

For the way the phrases build breathless to that unnatural history.

*

From Welcome to Fog City by candle_beck:

"They traveled several hundred miles farther into the young summer. Everything was differing shades of green and gold, small clapboard houses swallowed by kudzu, pocketed ponds gleaming like coins at sunset."

For deft little sonically-sensitive swatches of scene-set & just a little figurative.

*
From West of Omaha by laughablelament:

"Trees and fence posts whip past, twilight blur."

For the way this opening line smacks the action right out there, like it's a verb.

and from Memory Foam:

"Eyelashes. Lips. Sam? African dream root vivid. Beard burn. Zipper."

No explication needed; you're there.

*
From The Babel Fish Has Forsaken Us:

"Down goes her hammer on her shale-stone base, and out comes lightning. It’s purple and white, smooth as diamond but with jagged cuts that she makes with angled swings of the iron hammer."

For the repetition & rhythm that gives life to this beautiful piece of slipstream by indiachick. For the "down" and the "out."

(Or this line: "The house knew no secrets then, and stood as clean as a scraped out egg." For the metaphor, slant but clear.)

*

From kalliel's gorgeous outsider-POV Like Water:

"She is as old as the boardwalk, as the sea. She is as old as the desert, as the dams on the Owens River, as the angels this city was named for."

For: sentence-level character sketch, person and place, knowing rhetoric that's bigger than this character thinks she is.

Or--plainspoken aphoristic:

"All of the worst ghosts, of course, are familiar."

from This is a ghost story.

(the "all of"/"of course" really gets me.)

*
From Sand Between Our Toes by frozen_delight:

"He stretches out his hand, the gesture encompassing the boundless sea ahead, the endless beach to their sides."

For the careful use of adjectives in the interests of the whole narrative, for the sound, and for the time & memory in them.



So so many more to appreciate, too! For next time.

Comments

[fanspired]

Thank you for this inventory of beautiful writing. It's like a reference work of all the people I should be reading - if I'm not already.

[crowroad3.livejournal.com]

I'd love to do inventory like this more often--so many sentences to appreciate. Need to catch up on your work as well!!

[sisokolo.livejournal.com]

[frozen_delight]

*hugs this post*

I could have kept reading forever and ever. You do such a wonderful job at describing what stands out to you about a quote.

Also, thank you very much for including "Sand Between Our Toes". ♥

[crowroad3.livejournal.com]

*hugs* So many sentences to appreciate! I think I'd like to do this more often. Thank you for the meme, for your words, for always being so thoughtful and excellent. <3

[madebyme-x.livejournal.com]

I love what you've done here - what a great way to expand the meme! Beautiful recs too :)

[crowroad3.livejournal.com]

So many sentences to appreciate! Here's one of yours I love:

"Dean's not sure he can do this now, bring up the pills and Billie; not with Sam still recovering in hospital, not when he still has his brother's blood under his fingernails, and a bullet stained with tacky blood in his pocket."

The way you choose to go exterior rather than interior, give us the blood under Dean's nails and the bullet, rather than naming feelings. The "not with" and the "not when", the way you give us "this", then tell us it stands for the pills and Billie, rather than the other way around, the way you break up the phrases.

Yep:<3

[madebyme-x.livejournal.com]

Thank you!!!! And your work is always so standout; the flow of the words you choose, and the feelings and emotions they evoke. I'm so happy to have you in this fandom ♥

[crowroad3.livejournal.com]

Aw <3!

[fanspired]

Can't promise sentences as fresh and original as these, but I can tell a story. And I have my moments :) I love your work, the poetry of it.

[backroadsspirit.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love this idea and the sentences you picked were all inspiring and absolutely beautiful! It made me think about sentences that stuck with me and many of them come from your stuff. I can´t tell you enough how much I love your style:) Just a few examples from "Like salt", which is probably one of my favourite pieces of writing out there:

"Living in a hellhole", Dean sings, well off-key, pounds the dash. (It´s not funny if it´s true. Or if at any point it was true.)
This get´s me every time, in all its desolation and melancholy and I can´t even properly describe what else.

Thing is, suffering is an offense, no matter who´s doing it.
Absolutely on point and very philosophical.

Don´t forget the stories, the real ones, ours, not myth or gospel or lore but flawed human truth. That belongs in the library too.
I LOVE THIS. Seriously

[crowroad3.livejournal.com]

So sorry it too me so long to respond to this beautiful comment of yours! I love thinking about sentence-work and how sentences operate--glad you do too.

And thank you so much for your notes on my sentences, too--I appreciate it so much. Motivates me to keep thinking about the parts and the whole. <3!