Back in 2005, I posted a semi-humor piece called First lines for Mormon fiction. Back in June or somewhereabouts, it occurred to me that that same concept would be fun to use the motleyvision Twitter account for. I created the hashtag (a way to tag posts in Twitter) #LDSfic1stlines and started posting. A couple of other Twitter users thmazing (otherwise known as Theric Jepson) and chosha also got in on the act.
Twitter’s search functionality is kinda messed up (a bit ironic since the service just signed real-time search deals with both Bing and Google), but I was able to painstakingly grab most of the LDSfic1stlines that have been posted so far and have reproduced them below (not necessarily in chronological order). Here they are for your enjoyment — feel free to post your own in the comments or on Twitter (just make sure to use the hashtag so I’ll see them — or direct them to @motleyvision):
Wm: One fateful year, the Nielsens, as a show of solidarity with their Lutheran neighbors, gave up Jell-O for Lent.
Th: Porter Rockwell took a swig of his nonalcoholic whiskey and shyly waved at a lovely (yet modest) professional dancer.
Th: “Repentance is like soap!” LaVelle screamed at her husband. He removed the felt eraser & said, “Your mother’s right, kids.”
Chosha: Brent realised how far astray he’d gone when the Sacrament water suddenly resembled a tray of shots.
Wm: “I wish the Elder’s Quorum would stop assigning me home teaching companions who work for the CIA.”
Th: Call me LaMar.
Wm: The most difficult persons to haunt are: rock stars, actuaries, first grade school teachers and Mormon bishops.
Th: Janet felt the Spirit the first time she ever saw Jim, sitting up there being a lifeguard, glistening in sweat.
Wm: “AlooooooooooooooHa!” chorused the characters to the hip novelist. “Now leave us alone.”
Th: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was time for Primary.
Th: “I’d like to welcome you all out today,” said the novelist to his characters in an attempt to be hip and cool and postmodern
Wm: The day my goth sister turned in her mission papers was the saddest day of my life.
Wm: ….And that was how Sister Rasmussen learned that a Glock does sometimes jam on the ninth round.
A Motley Vision 
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It’s upsetting how lousy Twitter search is these days. I know at least a couple other tweeters posted some #LDSfic1stlines as well.
Those are all fabulous. Thanks for a great laugh! I might have to come up with a few myself.
— Elder Smoot found out the hard way that the Thai words for “cross” and “pants” are only one consonant apart when he cheerfully explained to a young lady that unlike other Christians, Mormons don’t wear crosses.
— Tithing Settlemnt … that time of year when Bishop Pratt had to try to get Sister Blessington to understand that one tenth of her increase did not include the dust bunnies she found under her bed.
— It was a dark and stormy night … _of course_ my companion insisted on going out tracting.
— The two interplanetary aliens leaned into the television cameras and asked, “What do you know about the Mormon Church and would you like to know more?”
— My non-member neighbor thought Mormons were so uptight, the Relief Society was some sort of constipation club.
— She walked into my office, all 102 pounds of nothing but sweet spirit with a pair of CTR rings that went all the way up to her neck, and you didn’t need to be some flea-bitten private eye with a two-bit diploma hanging on the wall to know she was trouble with a captial T even before she gave my standard works the once-over and purred in that Spanish Fark accent, “You Brother Marlowe?”
— There are two things you should never do to Nero Wolfe: never interupt his orchid time and never ever hand him a Book of Mormon. (from THE CASE OF THE QUERULOUS CONVERT)
— Manti, Utah, 1888: The Danish and Norwegians converts were feuding again and here I was a Swede…
— Della Street buzzed her boss, Perry Mason, over the intercom: “Perry, there’s a nice young Mormom missionary here to see you and I bet it’s another murder case — there’s only one of ’em.”
— Lee
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The Korean for missionary and sex teacher are one sound apart — two sounds I don’t both distinguishing between in my native language.
At the beginning of my mission, I handed out dozens of Books of Mormon with Elder Jepson Sex Teacher written on the first page.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of an honorable mission release must be in want of a wife.
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That one is too brilliant not to steal….
Anneke actually already riffed on this, as reported way back in the early days of AMV:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that dreamy, romantic girls of the scholarly type are all in want of a husband like Mr. Darcy. Most of these girls know about five young men of similar character and attitude and may even be good friends with them, but would never seriously consider dating them, missing the point of Austen’s masterpiece entirely.”
Marley was dead, so we could finally do his temple work.
(I’m full of stolen first lines.)
Amelia’s eyes raked the darkness below in growing panic — was there no Mormon temple on Howland Island to guide her safely in?
Creepy and a reference to my home temple. I like it.
– In a hole in the ground there lived a genealogical researcher.
– When President Ballard announced that he would shortly be released at the upcoming conference, there was much talk and excitement in the Oakdale stake. (It happened at ward conference last Sunday! Really.)
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In the
spirit of Katya:
5. Lolita Lee, light of my eternal life, fire of my eternal loins.
6. Unhappy families are all alike; every happy family is happy because they were sealed in the temple.
7. You don’t know about us three without you have read a book by the name of The Book of Mormon; but that ain’t no matter.
13. Perhaps he was a prophet of God, for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.
30: The sky above the stake center was the color of the souls of BYU fans on a bad year.
And one from the Greek:
Sing, O Lord, of the anger of Moroni, that brought gracious destruction upon our apostates.
It was the best of testimony meetings, it was the worst of testimony meetings.
One more riff, then I’ll try to be original:
There was a boy called Mahonri Moriancumer Christiansen, and he almost deserved it.
You guys are killing me.
At the beginning of my mission, I handed out dozens of Books of Mormon with Elder Jepson Sex Teacher written on the first page.
Well, if the label fits, write it in the most correct book and distribute it in a foreign country—then in cyberspace.
Ooo. Ooo. I want to play. Something stolen from Eliot:
Post-Manifesto Aprils are the cruelest months, Mormons breeding like polygamists, trying to make up for lost time.
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It wasn’t true at the time. But I’ve spent the rest of my life striving to make my past self honest.
I guess you had to give yourself something to grow into.
Listen: The high council speaker has come unstuck in time.
Brilliant!
— In my younger and more vulnerable years, my mission president gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my head ever since.
— One morning, as Glen Beck was waking up in bed from partisan dreams he discovered that he had been transformed into Al Franken.
— He was a senior companion who tracted suburban Munich with whoever happened to be his companion at the moment and he had gone eighty-four days now without teaching a discussion.
Oh, this is fun! More shameless stealing:
–For a long time, I went to church early.
–“To be born again,” sang Gabriel Farnsworth, tumbling from the heavens, “first you have to have a baptismal interview.”
–Utah is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
–Last night I dreamed I went to Manti again.
–If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, how goodly my parents were, and what learning I was taught in, and all that Nephi kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
This is so much fun. 😀
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It seems to me the quality of entry has been leaping upwards today. I’m getting intimidated.
“Last night I dreamed I went to Manti again.”
Nice! I thought of doing that same quote with the MTC.
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Renowned curator Peter Kimball staggered through the vaulted archway of the MOA’s foyer. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Teichert. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Kimball collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.
(Yeah, it’s looking like I wouldn’t read The McConkie Code either….)
“My desert island, all-time, top 5 most-memorable wives in chronological order:
1. Mary Ann Angell
2. Emily Dow Partridge
3. Eliza R. Snow
4. Zina Huntington
5. Amelia Folsom”
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Lol, William. Lol.
Oh, gosh, I just can’t quit. This time from the Latin via Dryden; we can call it the Ammoniad:
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by faith,
And loving Alma’s unrelenting grace,
Convert’d and volunteer’d, left the Nephite land.
Long labors he bore, under Lamoni’s command,
And in the doubtful fight, before he sliced
The robbers’ limbs, and brought the king to Christ;
His banish’d God restor’d to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the Anti-Nephi-Lehies came,
And the stripling warriors of Book of Mormon fame.
Clearly, I have no life. And Katya, I like your version of “Rebecca” better–we can call it “Sister de Winter.”
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I am a sick man…. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased…. Where the heck are my home teachers?
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There lived in Idaho, at the Bear Lake county seat of Paris, a young lad blessed with a most pleasant disposition and a Primary President who taught him that he lived in the best of all possible towns in the best of all possible counties in the best of all possible states in the best of all possible churches in the best of all possible worlds.
This is proving to be endlessly entertaining.
From Twitter:
The sky was the color of fry sauce.
How the fetching fetch did that sick fetch come up with such a fetcher fetching of a fetch!
Bad news, Nephihah. You’ve been reassigned. You’re now Glenn Beck’s guardian angel.
An ancient Nephite temple? How can an ancient Nephite temple be here!
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Great Salt Lake & he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
Bishop Kerby, Dr. Roberts & the rest of the Brethren having asked me to write down the whole particulars of MTC Island…
When Mr. Alma Jensen announced the celebration of his eleventy-first birthday there was much talk & excitement in Bountiful.
Hither came Ammon, a Nephite, dark of hair and sullen eyed–sword in hand, to tread the robbers under his sandaled feet.
There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of High Council talks. But it was A beginning.
When it comes to defining increase in relation to a MLM scam, things can get complicated. #LDSfic1stlines
Megan had always dreamed that her proposal would involve a white horse — it did, but then added “prophecy” to the end. #LDSfic1stlines
All relief society book groups are different in the exact same way. #LDSfic1stlines
Grandpa Pratt’s zombieometer had always seemed a paltry inheritance to Onthew; and then the virus hit. #LDSfic1stline
One day, the LDS Welfare app went feral.
ETA: It was when Charles decided the pioneer reenactment should strive for complete verisimilitude that things began to go wrong. #LDSfic1stlines