Why a Cheeseburger?
"Titan.
On the bridge.
With a swampy cheeseburger."
It's exactly what I was looking for in the opening lines of my new SciFi multimedia project. Succinct. To the point. Slightly esoteric. Nerdy. A little weird. It's perfect. Won't change it for anything. I never paid much attention to opening lines until I heard Stephen King talk about them.
There are all sorts of theories and ideas about what constitutes a good opening line. It's tricky thing, and tough to talk about because I don't think conceptually while I work on a first draft -- I just write. To get scientific about it is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.
But there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.
~ Stephen King
As this project was conceived as a comic book I was far more interested in the opening image than in the opening lines.
Her desire for a perfect cheeseburger will quickly become a parallel for her looking for something she can't find. But she will continue looking.
That's why I like that they're a little strange. I would like the first image to do all the talking.
The image to the left is a preliminary artist rendering of Titan in one of her spacesuits. She wears a lot of different suits throughout the series. They change as her rank changes and as her body changes in response to some of the catastrophes she will barely survive.
The blue suit in particular is important because it is what she was wearing the first time she lands on a red planet. The lifeforms there have never seen the color before and it instantly marks her as a super being . . . and she meets her best friend.
A few of the off shoots of the Retrograde Nova Transmedia project-
