I’ve been tagged by the lovely @sleepyowlwrites multiple times in the past few months, but I’ve been in a horrible dry spell with my writing and have had nothing new to share. So here’s some old stuff :)
(p.s. these words are from three different tags lmao)
Sharp Rules for the End of the World April 2022
“Okay,” Kiaan says, not quite a question.
“Okay,” Fin echoes, fiddling with the cracked corner of her phone case. She draws in a sharpbreath, hesitates, then asks, “Nothing could ever ruin our friendship, right?”
Send Rules for the End of the World July 2021
The fire crackles, embers popping in the air and sending a shower of glowing red specks across the night sky.
Slip Rules for the End of the World March 2022
A string of low, muttered curses pulls Fin’s gaze up to the familiar face of the newcomer who’s still holding Seth at gunpoint. It’s her sister, Delta. She stands a few paces away, eyes wide with morbid curiosity. She slipsher free hand up in an uncertain wave and drops into a crouch a safe distance away from the blood, gun still leveled on Seth.
Vein Pardoned (short story) August 2020
I’d flinched at every gunshot up to the forty-sixth, but then a numbness spread over my limbs, seeped into my veinsand into the crevices of my heart, and I felt nothing but an uncomfortable calmness when the forty-seventh shot sounded.
Waste Rules for the End of the World March 2022
!tw emetophobia!
Fin’s stomach churns, and she takes a moment to steel herself, begging her body not to lose what precious little food her sister had managed to convince her to eat this morning. Fin had told Delta not to waste food on her, since she hadn’t been able to keep anything down in weeks, but Delta was insistent.
“Our stockpile is running low,” Fin had been keen to point out, pushing the assortment of cans back across the kitchen table as she ignored the unhappy gurgling in her stomach.
Delta had scoffed at that. “Didn’t realize you planned to stick around that long.”
“Of course I plan to stick around that long.”
“Then prove it. Eat something.”
Fin ended up downing an entire can out of spite. She hasn’t regretted it yet, but the day is still young and the city is filled with more than enough horrors to send even the most menacing of her nightmares fleeing in terror.
Sideways Heartbeat November 2021
“I just want you to know I have no regrets.” They cast a sideways look at Jonah. “Well, except for him, of course.”
Strange Rules for the End of the World April 2021
His expression is contorted in pain even as he lays unconscious. It’s strange to see; Fin can’t remember a time when Liam Robertson wasn’t smiling or laughing.
Steam Rules for the End of the World March 2022
The three months since then have felt like forever, but if Fin closes her eyes she can almost still feel her brothers on either side of her, the crowd bustling and buoyant around them. She can almost still hear the carolers down the street and her sister mocking them loudly from where she strides a few paces ahead of Fin and their brothers, pushing through the crowd like a bulldozer. She can almost still taste the chestnuts and apple cider floating on the breeze and the steamrising up from the hot chocolate cradled in her gloved hands.
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@childrenoflight-darkness-nothing is the only person on my tag game tag list so congrats!! Your words, if you want them, are young, safe, taste, color, life, andhappy.No worries if not! :)
Creating a character is hard work, but it can also be very fun. This little game is a way to help you with that. You can use a randomizer to choose a number for you. The number will determine some aspects that you can use as a basis for creating an interesting character. You can also use your birthday for this.
Part 1: Names
Choose a number for the letter that your character’s name starts; you can use the day you were born:
1. A 2. B 3. C 4. D 5. E 6. F 7. G 8. H 9. I 10. J 11. K 12. L 13. M 14. N 15. O 16. P 17. Q 18. R 19. S 20. T 21. U 22. V 23. W 24. X 25. Y 26. Z 27. Ä 28. Ö 29. Ü 30. Ø 31. Ş
Part 2: Hair colour
Choose a number for your character’s hair colour; you can use the month you were born:
1. brown 2. blonde 3. red 4. blue 5. green 6. pink 7. purple 8. white 9. grey 10. black 11. more than one colour 12. bald
3. Part: Character Traits
Choose a number for your character’s characteristic traits; you can choose more than one and use your birthday for one:
Sooooo I was just tagged by the one and only @unicornaffair for this game!
Rules: Share the last line you wrote for one of your WIPs and tag as many people as there are words in the sentence.
I won’t share the VERY last line for one of my recent WIPs because it would be a big spoiler but I do have a line from Unsinkable that’s more of a teaser instead.
“Before Kim could place more blame on her shoulders, a cool morning breeze engulfed her senses, calming her brain for a split second. She turned her head towards the wind, just now realizing that she wasn’t the first one awake.”
I don’t really have a list of people that I would know enough to tag but I wanna tag @numberfiveisalive since I think they’re really nice and I love their writing!
Give yourself 15 minutes, get a random number between1 and 820 and search for that prompt (search in my tags: prompt #{number}) and then start writing.
And if you already used that prompt choose another one or write it in a completely different way.
Choose three prompts (you can use random.org) from my blog between 1 and 820 and search for it on my blog by using #prompt [no.].
Now try to think of a way to combine all of them in one story. No matter how outlandish they seem together at first, in the end this game helps you to see them in a completely different light and to get a new multi-dimensional idea for a story.
+ if you use even more prompts;
who can fit the most prompts into a drabble or a 500 word short story?
++ if you choose prompts that at first glance don’t seem to fit together at all
Choose one prompt from my blog (you can use random.org) between 1 and 820 and search for it by using #prompt [no.] on my blog.
Whatever your first inspiration is, the goal of the game is to write this one prompt in as many genres as you can think of for it. Write about 5 to 10 sentencesfor each genre and see the different directions you can take the same prompt in.
Choose a title or let your followers send you some in. Write a short drabble or a full story with that title. What is the first idea that comes to your mind?
+ if you take the same title and write completely different stories/different genres with it
2. Game:
Let your followers send you the titles and then create a short summary for what a potential story would be about.
3. Game: The Alphabet Game
Choose one title for every letter in the alphabet from these lists and fill them or let your followers pick characters for you to write a story for each title with. (Inspired by evilwriter37)
Three months ago I pitched an idea for a party game. Today, ‘WHAT THE PLOT?!™’ is a real game and available for pre-order! I am so excited. Thank you everyone for your support!
Click on a picture for higher quality! Tumblr compresses pictures so they might look a bit blurry!
What The Plot?!™ is now available for pre-order on planet Earth until January 1st! Definitely check it out; it’s pretty-ducking-epicthanks to your feedback and input!
this by itself already makes me wanna play this game
UPDATE: Friday 27, March, 2020
It’s a real game now! The manufacturer sent us 5 copies! The quality is amazing! Thank you all for making this game a reality! The games are currently being shipped from Poland to a fulfillment center in the US and the Czech Republic. If you preordered the game, you can expect to have it in your hands at the end of April (so far, the pandemic has not been impeding our schedule).
The print quality of the cards is superb. The photos don’t do it justice! The text is a bit blurry in the pictures, but it’s crystal clear!
If you want to get notified when the next pre-order round drops - click here!
This actually looks so good! I will definitely be getting this!
Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories. (If you have less than 20, just list them all!) See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Tag some people to play the next round!
(a note. i’m using only published stories here cause i am…lazy.)
1. The new neighbors had moved in, in the middle of summer with minimal fuss.
2. Sitting alone at a hospital fundraising dinner was not how Addison had envisioned her night going.
3. The address hadn’t been hard to find but Sloan Riley had not been prepared for the size of the brownstone.
4. She and Derek didn’t have a fight.
5. Mark winces as he hears the doorbell ring, praying silently that it won’t wake up the baby or Addison.
6. Derek isn’t sure what he’s expecting when he knocks on the door of the brownstone.
7. It’s fourteen days into your no sex bet with Mark when you start to feel sick.
8. Lyra could barely look at Edward Coulter’s dead body lying on the dew damp grass before her.
9. Kathryn had been nervous the first time she’d met Harrison’s sons but that had been months ago.
10. “It’s all going to change.”
11. She is still Mrs. Marisa Coulter when Lyra is born, two weeks early and with her husband still away on business; the both of them screaming as Lyra enters the world.
12. Marisa knew as soon as she stepped over the threshold that she should not be there.
13. It is the morning before they are due to start shooting and an early morning call from Hugh MacPhail, the Network Head for Reality Programming, does not seem like a good start to the season to Marisa.
14. “Are you jealous?” Asriel asked, voice smug and amused.
15. “The child,” Marisa starts, her voice low and deliberately despondent, “he was born still,” she tells Edward, eyes lowered to her hands and voice sounding as slow moving as treacle.
16. “Oh, my…” She is breathless and panting, clinging tightly to Asriel, as she tries to catch her breath.
17. Early morning light streamed through open windows, the fair light of a spring morning warmed Asriel’s master bedroom.
18. Mother and Father didn’t usually have parties.
19. It was as if they were pulled together by some unknown force.
20. The hug is unexpected.
It seems the only pattern here is that I like to use character names in my opening lines for the most part?? I never really noticed that but I guess I like to establish who is in it pretty quick? That and fairly short opening lines.
My favourite! It’s a toss up between 8 and 17. 8 because of the slight shock value to the opening line. And 17 because it’s the opening of perhaps my most favourite piece of writing that I’ve ever written. But let’s go definitively with 8 for the sake of it being an opening line I love: Lyra could barely look at Edward Coulter’s dead body lying on the dew damp grass before her.
Tagging:@caladeniablue@mia-cooper and whoever would like to do this! I unfortunately don’t know a lot of writers of tumblr.
Thanks@little-tayy! That looks like a fun thing to do. I have shortened the rule to 10 intro sentences, though.
Here we go:
· “How can you go to sleep?” B’Elanna hissed in a low voice, her eyes darting around the white walls of their small cell.
· Determined to fix the problem once and for all, B’Elanna clambered through the Jefferies tube’s hatch.
· The Bajoran moved around Tuvok, lying prone and restrained on a table.
· She shuffled to the side to make room for the woman who settled beside her with a frown and a grunt.
· Kashyk: Order our ships to pursue. Maximum speed!
· She’d used his rank a lot while on duty.
· “I really don’t understand how it works for them. According to their own records, they can undergo amplexus without a proper anchor. How come?”
· Thank you for changing your father’s mind.
· The cold murmurs of the various consoles and the slight trembling of Voyager’s engines rushing through space tore through Janeway as she stepped on the bridge for the first time in three months.
· “Come on, Chakotay. It all ended well, and Harry was very impressed with his posting,” Janeway said as they entered the turbolift.
There doesn’t seem to be a pattern, apart from 9 of them being Star Trek Voyager. 2 x non-recurring characters; 3 x dialogues; 3 x Janeway-centered; some long, some short. What I do try to do is get the reader embedded in the action as fast as possible, with minimal introduction. I think most of those opening sentences do hit that goal.
My favourite: Thank you for changing your father’s mind. The story, She changed, is about regrets, mistakes, getting older, about the past and a shorter future. One of my favourites stories on those concepts.
opening lines meme Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories. (If you have less than 20, just list them all!) See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Tag some people to play the next round!
Both @caldeniablue & @mia-cooper tagged me so I gave it a go. Mind you, I am not a prolific writer so…
Never ask questions about women’s toiletries. It’s none of your business.
Tom Paris was happy. He was more than happy, he was in fact - ecstatic.
It had been a long week, Chakotay decided as he input a minor course adjustments into Delta Flyer navigation computer.
I was not meant to hear it. It was a drunk, off handed remark, intended for someone else’s ears.
There were voices, so many voices… shouting, screaming, demanding, probing… then Her.
“Right, someone remind me again why I agreed to this?” the Captain asked wincing as the needle piercing her shoulder blade nearly made contact with the bone.
We are back in the Alpha Quadrant. Unexpectedly, amazingly, incredibly … suddenly - because you’ve kept your promise.
The transporter beam had barely finished the re-materialisation process yet ensign Munroe could tell she was being dismissed just by meeting the steely glare of the First officer.
It is most difficult to describe to a non vampire the World a vampire perceives around them.
Snowflakes danced lazily through the night sky, paying no heed to the silent figure on the porch.
As I sit here in this quiet corner, away from the immediate bustle typical of this time of day, I silently observe my soon to be interlocutor as he slowly makes his way through the evening crowd.
An earsplitting scream ripped through the night waking him violently from his slumber.
“Second thoughts commander?” Captain Janeway inquired of her first officer, attempting to fit into her costume.
Thunderous applause and cheering could be heard somewhere outside the pitch dark tunnel sheltering the small team.
“Are you ready Captain?”
“Oh god Chakotay! Stop, stop! It actually hurts!” Kathryn hissed.
Just another hour or so.
Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager was not a happy camper.
Comfortable… warm.
Jean Luc Picard was cold, wet, and above all else - miserable.
All but one are Voyager stories as I’ve found I write these characters more easily. Like Mia I seem to like establishing the action in the first line, or kicking off with dialogue and using the second line to place the scene.
My favourite opening line: #5- the angst is strong with that one.
My favourite fic from this lot: #10 - I am a sucker for fluff, even when I am the one writing it (yes, crack!fic is a close second).
Tagging@coffeeblack75 @ussjellyfish, @seemaunbound, @susann-noir and everyone else who feels like participating. :)
I wasn’t tagged… but I do want to play
opening lines meme
Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories. (If you have less than 20, just list them all!) See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line. Tag some people to play the next round!
1.“I’ll need to keep her another night, I’m afraid”
2. Kathryn tossed and turned on the ready room couch, staring out at the unfamiliar stars.
3. Kathryn combed her fingers through Chakotay’s scraggly grayed hair, now clean of the dirt and matted tangles he’d been found with.
4.“I can’t tell you how much you’re saving me with this, Tom,” Admiral Janeway sighed on the other end of the Comm-link.
5. Silent feet paced the decks of the Protostar: bow to stern, port to starboard, deck four to the bridge, and repeat.
6. Midway through October, the third year of their trek, Chakotay strolled into Kathryn’s ready room, laden down with a pile of PADDs up to his neck.
7. Rok-Tahk stood in front of the replicator biting her lip, rolling the Starfleet commbadge between her fingers.
8. “Is this… Is this thing on?” Mina asked as she braced the white front paws of her frustratingly small body on the computer screen so that she could be tall enough to scrutinize the webcam.
9. Rei smoothed down the front of the expensive white dress for the upteenth time, jaw tense as she waited on Hikawa’s steps.
10. “Identify the strongest ship in Starfleet’s arsenal,” The Starfleet Academy commandant ordered in a robotic voice.
11. There is something to be said for being in the right place at the right time - many branches of the multiverse hinge on such split-second cruxes.
12. Haruka clenched and unclenched her fingers on the wheel, glaring with mounting frustration at the red light mocking her from above the intersection.
13. “As the alleged bookie of this motley crew I find myself in a bit of a… moral dilemma.”
14. Janeway brooded over the unfamiliar starscape as she lay on her ready room couch, blanket knotted in her fist.
15. “Sweetdreams, Little Dove.”
16. “You like the decorations?” Chakotay asked as he sat across from Naomi’s highchair, wielding a spoonful of mashed banana.
17. It was well past curfew in the capital of Kalidos IV when the physician was summoned to the military hospital and told to prepare for a persuasion.
18. The blackout curtains around Sandrines were drawn tight, hiding the lights from within the club.
19. “Captain’s log, supplemental.”
20. In Cargo Bay One, she conducted a final crew inspection.
Patterns:all Sailor Moon and Voyager, hardly surprising. 40% start with dialogue or a 1st person log entry. And another 40% start in a liminal moment before a decision or an action, where there’s tension from the character waiting for the next play or brooding over their next move.
Favorite Opening Lines: 8 and16(which are both setting up humor fics interestingly) and 13, but that might just be because Eden’s Deception is the work I’m proudest of.
Look at me being bad at bingo with the ? marks lol. The pairing in question is Emilio/Bruno - Emilio is @seanettlles‘s OC. He is a baker and also everything good in this world
