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starklyscifi · 5 months
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Nanowrimo update: Outlining is saving my life.
I only wrote 965 words yesterday and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because I’ve written more words on other days, to the point that I’m still on track for 50k this month.
And it’s really down to the fact that having an outline not only takes the thinking out of what to work on next, but also makes me excited to write all these scenes.
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starklyscifi · 5 months
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Sometimes writing happens at my desk. And sometimes it happens on the couch in my pajamas, typing notes on my phone about character motivations.
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starklyscifi · 5 months
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There’s something soul cleansing about a good jump scare
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starklyscifi · 5 months
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Smudges
Smudges - Flash fiction #WritingCommunity #amwriting #writerslife #shortstory #flash #horror #flash #fiction
Hi everyone, I hope you’re all keeping well and keeping creatively fulfilled. Today, I’m sharing a piece of flash fiction. I hope you enjoy it! Smudges Max couldn’t sleep. For weeks now, at bedtime, he had found himself transfixed by the strange image of a face in his bedroom window.      It wasn’t a real face, of course, that would have been impossible with him living on the twelfth floor of a…
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starklyscifi · 5 months
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We Walk With Ghosts
A flash fiction story by EJ Stark, written for @flashfictionfridayofficial’s prompt “torn veil”
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Her pursuit of the perfect fall photo lured her deep into the woods. One more tree. One more photo because look at how beautiful it was. Her frantic attempts to capture the fall colors drew her into the part of the foreset she had never been in. She wasn’t scared. These woods were sandwiched between the mall and a bunch of houses. It was quicker to cut through the woods than walk all the way around into the neighborhood, which resulted in a well worn dirt path through the trees. 
She always wondered why the city didn’t just put in a walking path. But such thoughts were far from her mind now. The pictures continued to show lush summer forests with just a hint of yellow, green overwhelming everything like a virus. 
Sam threw her phone. She didn’t understand how the brilliant yellow in front of her could show up like that in a photo. But it wasn’t entirely yellow. She could see that now. It was still summer foliage compared to the tree behind it. That bright red maple she had stupidly missed. 
Retrieving her phone and wiping the mud from the lens, she ventured deeper into the forest. The trees grew older as she walked. 
A sickly sweet smell permeated the air.
She did not know how long she had been chasing the next bright tree. But her phone would not take anymore photos, telling her the camera roll was full. Frustrated, she deleted a broad swath of photos. 
She didn’t care what time it was, intent only on reach that patch of delicate red orange color she glimpsed in front of her. The smell grew stronger. 
It was a clearing with a single apple tree, in full fall bloom.  
The ground was covered in apples. They sank beneath her feet, coated her white tennis shoes in their soft flesh. Her eyes watered with the sweetness. 
And there stood a man, with sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, dressed all in black. 
His neck creaked like the old stairs in a haunted house as he turned his head. His eyes were gone, two black holes staring out of his skull at her. 
Sam ran. 
She fell twice. Mud splattered her t-shirt. Bursting through the tree line, she was overwhelmed by the roar of cars splashing through wet roads.
. . .
“You’re soaked,” Mandy helpfully pointed out as Sam stumbled in the door. 
Sam peeled her coat off, tried to force the soaked tennis shoes off her feet. 
“Come on, we’re going to be late.” 
She looked up to see Mandy holding out a pile of clothes. Sam took the clothes and fifteen minutes later found herself dressed as a witch, complete with dollar store hat and Mandy telling her to keep her eyes closed while she finished the “wicked cat eye” she was doing. 
“Jesus, Mandy, are you trying to make her look like a cartoon character?” 
Leah was a nurse who had complained about nothing else since she got her schedule telling her she was working Halloween night. She was already in her scrubs, leaning against the door to Mandy’s room. 
“We all know you’re just bitter.” Mandy swept her makeup brushes into a dresser drawer and shoved Sam towards the door. 
“You girls be careful,” Leah said with a wink, “The veil is thin tonight after all.” 
. . .
They were hitting up the city’s carnival in the park before heading to the bars, where Leah made them promise to still be when she got off. A fog had sprung up. Sam didn’t have to ask Mandy to take the long way around the woods. The carnival was packed by the time they arrived, child screaming in delight and music drifting off the carousel. 
“I didn’t expect this to be so popular,” Sam said, smiling back at a cute guy dressed up in a poor Beatles costume.
“It’s not that busy,” Mandy said with a shrug. 
Sam glanced back at Ringo, but the sidewalk was empty. Something like fire light flickered across it, but she didn’t see any torches. 
“The 70s are really making a comeback,” Sam said, after seeing bell bottoms for the seventh time. A guy in a trippy shirt gave her a look as she and Mandy brushed past him, on the hunt for cotton candy. 
“What?” Mandy was scanning the horizon, in search of sugar. 
“The costumes aren’t even inspired, I mean, they just look like normal people.” 
“What are you on about?” Mandy said. 
Sam pointed at a girl dressed in a long old-fashioned dress, complete with heavy milk bucket. 
Mandy rolled her eyes, taking off in the direction of the spotted sugar rush. The girls walked around the park making fun of the costumes appearing and disappearing in fog while they ate the sticky cotton candy. Children screamed on a min-rollercoaster. 
“If you’re going to try for the 1920s, at least put in some effort,” Sam said.
“What is with you tonight?” Mandy giggled. 
“I’m just saying, at least go full flapper. Who picks an everyday outfit from a hundred years ago as a Halloween costume?” 
Mandy giggled again. She did that when she got nervous. 
“What is up with you?” Sam asked, finishing a cup of hot cider spiked with rum and throwing the tiny paper cup in the trash. It bounced out and onto the ground. 
“Did you get into Leah’s weed?” Mandy mouthed the word “weed”. She had been shocked when Leah, the ostensibly responsible nurse, had wiped out her trusty Altoids tin a week into all of them living together. 
“Do I seem high to you?” 
“You’re seeing people who aren’t there. So yeah, maybe.”  
Cold sweat dripped down Sam’s back. She looked again for the people with the bad costumes. They were gone. Normal families shuffled around the carnival. 
He was back. Standing in the center of the crowd. Looking right at her with his non-eyes. 
Without taking a step he was right in front of her. Nose to nose. Behind him, the sky was filled with flying things from her nightmares. 
“Do you see?” 
She met Death under an apple tree and now eternity was laid out on a soccer field. 
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starklyscifi · 5 months
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Honestly, urban and suburban horror is so under utilized
Getting lost in a parking lot full of endless rows and columns of cars. You can't find yours, you don't know how long you've been walking. You keep seeing cars that you think are yours, but they don't open when you try your keys. You press the horn button on your fob, but can't tell which direction the faint honking is coming from. The stalls are all full.
A grocery store late at night. No other shoppers are there. It's dark outside and yours is the only car in the parking lot. The aisles are filled with brands you don't recognize, but seem oddly familiar, all knock offs of each other. It's too cold. Your cart has a squeaky wheel. The cashier is the only other person in the store. They don't make eye contact. You don't remember what you came in for.
You're taking the garbage out late at night. Your elevator doesn't work so you have to take the stairs. The dumpster smells, and there is fluid on the ground beside it. You don't want to think about what it could be. You hear noises down the alley. You toss the bag into the dumpster, and run to the door. You fumble your keys and take longer to get in. You slam the door and lock it. The lightbulb flickers in the lobby.
Rows and rows and rows and rows of identical houses. You don't know how you got into this neighborhood, you can't afford any of the houses here. They all look the same, white square houses, white picket fences, perfectly even and manicured lawns. A good neighborhood. A nice place to raise your kids. There are no kids. The weather is nice, the sun is shining, they should be outside. You drive your used car, looking for a turn off to the exit, but there isn't any. Just endless white square houses, white picket fences, perfectly even and manicured lawns. You're sure you passed this area before, but there are no house numbers and they all look the same. The sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky. Or another living creature in sight.
You're on the bus. Surrounded by people, you stare at your phone and ignore them. More people get on. Your stop is coming soon. More people get on. You sit at the back of the bus to avoid conversation. More people get on. Someone bumps into you, and you apologize to them, but you're not sure why. They don't acknowledge you. More people get on. Everyone is staring at their phones, ignoring each other. Your stop is next. You try to stand up to get to the exit, but there are people in the way. You can't get to the button to let the driver know you need to get off. You try to get to the door, but there are so many people in the way you can't move. The bus slows to a stop, and you try to push your way to the exit, but the bus is too packed. The doors open, but you can't leave, and nobody hears you when you ask them to move. More people get on.
You walk downtown. You pass a billboard advertising a product you've never heard of. You keep walking, passing flyers, billboards, screens, all selling things. Things to make you prettier. Smarter. More successful. A whole new person. A new person to fit into society with all the other people, but only if you spend money. For just a few dollars, you can have a better life with our product. You need our product. You would be so happy if only you had our product. Look at all these people in our advertisement, aren't they happy? Don't you want to be like them? You could be if only you just had our product. You can't afford any of them.
You're in a crowd of people, walking the sidewalk. You have your earbuds in. You feel someone watching you. You casually glance around, to try to catch someone staring. You can't pick out individual faces among the hundreds of other people. You continue on your way, thinking you imagined it. You imagine you hear footsteps, and walk faster. The feeling doesn't go away.
Your air conditioner is broken. You told your landlord, he said he'll fix it. It's been days. The air is hot and muggy. Leaving the windows open doesn't help the heavy feeling. The air from outside is just as warm, and carries the scents from the city. There should be sounds coming from outside, but the city is silent.
You're walking at night. You can't see even a single star.
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starklyscifi · 5 months
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 Do you want to go ask the demon if it believes in God?
The Vibes for: The Last Normal Night on Earth (an adult horror novel about a group of twenty something friends who may or may not have woken up a deadly entity but either way they have to live with the end of the world)
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starklyscifi · 5 months
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On the one hand, Bradbury’s slightly overwrought poetic descriptions of literally EVERYTHING in Something Wicked This Way Comes are getting to me.
And on the other bony hand out stretched from the grave, I’ve highlighted an insanely good line on every page.
So.
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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My book club picked Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes for October and when I tell you I’m SO EXCITED
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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Things I’m Doing to Prep for Nanowrimo:
Reading craft books (currently reading The Story Grid by Sawn Coyne and loving it)
Reading in my genre (current read: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James)
Making an outline so I know what the hell is happening come November 1
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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Apparently a part of the reason why farmed bees stay in the beehives that humans build for them is because the farm hives are safer and sturdier. I don't know how a busy Discord server's worth of bugs that only have one brain cell each would logically conclude that the humans protect them from outside threats, illness and parasites, but if I understood right, the bees would be free to move away and build a new nest somewhere else any time they'd want, and they simply choose not to.
You know how in almost every culture, people have some concept of "if I sacrifice something that I made/grew/produced to the Gods, they will ward me and my harvest from evil"?
So, in a way, don't the bees willingly sacrifice a part of their harvest to an entity not only far greater than them, but nearly beyond their comprehension, in exchange for protection against natural forces wildly outside of their own control?
So tell me, beekeepers, what are you to your bees, if not a mildly eldritch God?
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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*sidles up to Tumblr* So did you show them the post?
*Tumblr* Who are you?
But seriously, I feel like we’ve entered the era of “no new growth allowed” on just all of the social media platforms. I’m not looking to become a content creator here, I just want to find more people who might like weird, offbeat sci-fi/horror. And who might write their own weird little stories.
It doesn’t seem like Tumblr is showing my posts to anyone? I know theoretically we’ve got a chronological feed still. And no one owes me a like or a reblog. But I used to have mutals that would tend to toss me a like on about anything I posted. And now it’s just crickets.
And it’s definitely not showing my posts to people based on the tags. Maybe I’m just using the wrong tags…. 🙄
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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A Misplaced Moment in Time
(a flash fiction story by EJ Stark)
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A thunderstorm is rolling in. The sun is still shining for now, but she can see dark clouds in the distance, eating up the landscape. The wind chimes ring furiously, threatening to blow off their hook. The wind is already here. She wonders if she ought to take them down.
She’s wearing a tank top and shorts, barefoot. But she shivers.
The wheat and corn in the fields — none of them hers — are bent nearly flat by the wind.
Kathy takes the wind chime off the hook, intending to take it inside. But the second it came off the hook, the wind snatches it away. The chimes land with a shrill crash in a heap on the weathered porch.
She leaves it and goes in the house. The storm door slams shut behind her. She stands just inside the door, the farmhouse lit with that strange pre-storm light. It’s dim and eerie. Normally she likes storms, likes watching their ferocity from safely inside the century old house. But this one has her on edge.
Something shatters upstairs.
Kathy doesn’t go upstairs. She never it liked it up there, and now with her mom gone and just her in the house, she sleeps in the guest bedroom on the ground floor.
She doesn’t want to go upstairs.
It’s quiet now. It might be fine. Maybe she’s hearing things again.
Kathy sighs and climbs the ancient, creaky staircase.
It was almost a year ago now. A bitter autumn night, a storm like this one in full swing. A tree branch cracked and fell to the lawn, louder than the thunder overhead.
It had been three weeks since her mom had died. Kathy had fallen asleep on the couch again, half covered with the ratty blanket her mother always kept over the back of the equal ratty couch.
An odd air had hung over the house all day.
It was the kind of atmosphere that had her tightening the blanket around her shoulders and adding another log to the fire. A desire for light, not coziness. Usually Kathy loved to be cozied up inside with a book and a tea while a storm rolled through.
This storm felt vicious. Or maybe it’s just in her head. After all, the farmhouse was empty now. It used to be full with Kathy, her dad, her mom, and her little brother. Now her brother was halfway across the world at a fancy job, her father disappeared years ago, and her mother was fresh in the ground.
Of course, being the one without a job when their mom got sick, meant that Kathy was the one who moved home.
She still didn’t have a job.
The house was old and it creaked. This was always her mom’s explanation when Kathy tensed up, thinking that she heard footsteps in an empty room above her head.
It was creaking in the storm that night.
There’s a tree that’s too old and too close to the house. Cutting it down was the last thing her mother asked her father to do before he got in his truck and never came back twenty years ago. These days, the branches scratch the windows at the end of the upstairs hall and in her brother’s old room.
That night, the tree had had enough. Its branches failed, cracking and falling. One of them crashed through a window.
Kathy jumped off the couch, screaming.
It was silent. Except for the storm raging outside, fading into the background of her fear. Kathy stood there for a good ten minutes, trying to will the danger away. Like nothing ever happened.
But Mama isn’t here to pick up the pieces and she’s going to have to find the cardboard and duct tape herself.
She knew it was a window, it was just a matter of which one.
She made it to the top of the stairs just in time to see the second window smash, sending glass all over the carpet and letting in the roaring wind. She heard the mirror on the wall crack into a million pieces, but when she looks, it’s her own face looking back at her, whole.
She heard the mirror crack, she knows she did, even if it was too far down the hall for the tree branch now sticking in through the window to have smashed it.
It takes her all night, fighting with the wind, to get the windows covered up. At some point, the exhaustion wipes out any fear she has of being upstairs.
She still doesn’t have a job. It’s hard to get one when she doesn’t like driving the ancient pickup truck the twenty miles into town for anything other than a handle of groceries, paid with money from a dwindling bank account.
The top stair creaks worse than the rest.
There’s shards of mirror all over the floor, lying like knives, mirroring the hallway ceiling back in tiny shreds.
The mirror is why Kathy hates coming up here. It appeared on the wall when she was thirteen and that was when she stop liking the top floor of the farmhouse. When the nightmares started.
For a moment, Kathy feels relief, looking at the empty frame.
Something white moves in the corner of her eye.
And that’s when she sees the figure at the end of the hall.
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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After Hours Discount
(a flash fiction story by EJ Stark)
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She’s fallen alseep in the middle of putting the laundry away. There’s a pile of clothes on her thighs, pressing her down. Her neck is stiff and she is sweating under the weight of all the unfolded laundry.
Unfolded laundry with the tags still attached. That’s werid. She blinks and rubs sleep out of her eyes. It’s late. The room is dark. The sun must have gone down. She doesn’t remember putting Lily to bed.
Lily.
She bolts upright, breathing hard, and stares at the walls of the Macy’s dressing room. The pile of clothes, originally carefully picked out to be tried on, gives way and tumbles to the floor. The clatter of the hangers is unnaturally loud. The walls of the dressing room don’t reach all the way to the ceiling, leaving an eerie green light filtering over.
She can barely see her own hand in front of her face. And of course, her phone is dead. She must have a million missed calls from her mom.
Who is watching Lily.
Julia sighes and slumps back against the wall of the dressing room, sliding down a little more on the bench. Her mother is watching Lily, everything is fine. When her mother heard that Julia had a rare day off, she insisted on taking Lily and that Julia go do something for herself. True to from, this sweet gesture was accompanied by a not so subtle comment about the stain on Julia’s sweatshirt. Which is how she found herself in the local Macy’s dressing room with a pile of clothes to begin with. She had sat down for just a second, to gather strength before the ordeal that is trying on clothes in dressing room lightening.
But if Lily is safe with her mother, maybe Julia will just grab another few minutes of sleep. It’s so quiet in here and even the bench in the dressing room is comfortable enough.
It’s quiet.
That makes Julia sit up, the comfortable haze of sleep gone in an instant. The errie green light, which she now realizes must be from an exit sign, seems more ominous that it did a moment ago.
Surely if the store is actually closed, someone would have cleared out the dressing rooms and woken her up.
The effects of the much needed sleep are quickly being outweighed by fear.
Julia cracks the door open, peering out into the dark store. The only light is coming from an emergency exit sign near her, clothing racks awash in it’s creepy green glow.
The rest of the store disappears into darkness.
But that’s the direction the door is in, so that’s the direction she’s headed in.
Her eyes begin to adjust after she runs into the third clothing rack. Every brush with unexpected frabic makes her squeak. She tries to make as little noise as possible. That feels important.
She cannot attract attention.
The escalators down to the home goods section are a black hole. It’s the level of darkness where you start to see shapes, your brain desperate for anything familiar. Like someone standing on the escalator, down in the middle just waiting for it to turn on and carrying them up to her feet.
For reasons she can’t explain, she’s sure that if she runs she’s going to die. She has to act normal. She has to act like nothing is wrong. Or the darkness will smell the fear and swallow her whole.
There is no one on the escalator. She walks past, her skin clammy and her shirt damp at the armpits.
Julia worked in a couple different clothing stores when she was a teenager, but they were all in strip malls. So she’s worrying about store alarms (how could she possibly explain that she really did just fall asleep and isn’t trying to steal anything?) but she isn’t thinking about the big metal grate at the store entrance.
It’s like being stuck in the lion’s cage at the zoe. She can see the rest of the mall so clearly, looking peaceful in the moonlight filtering through skylight onto the white tile floors. There’s so much light out there.
She hates this. She hates this so much. She just wants to be out of here.
When Julia touches the metal grate, it clangs. She tenses up, listening to the clanging echo through the store. She swears she can hear footsteps underneath the echos of the grate.
But when she pulls up, the grate moves. It rolls up and she can tell it’s going to fall the second she lets go of it, so she pulls until it’s high enough to get underneath and then she lets go and dives. The grate slams to the floor, scrapping the sole of her shoe on the way down.
She feels a bit safer out here in the moonlight. She’s sure she can find a nice night security guard who will laugh when she explains she’s just a tired single mom who took an unfortunate nap. He’ll shake his head as he unlocks the door to the rest of the world and tell her that she’s working too much as she laughs and says thanks and walks to her car.
She’s admonishing herself again for acting like a scared child when she sees it. It is standing perfectly still, sillhouetted in the moonlight. But the moonlight isn’t touching it. The moonlight gleams off the table and chairs of the food court that surround it, but the thing in the middle is sucking in light, not reflecting it. It is a dark mass, shaped like a sheet thrown over a person, like one of those who people put sunglasses and a sheet on and take fun Halloween pictures.
Julia isn’t getting fun Halloween vibes.
The thing moves, coming closer, floating arcoss the floor. She can hear her own heartbeat reverberating in her ears.
Now she can see the empty eyes, floating in rotting sockets.
She finally runs. Or she tries. She finds that she can’t move very fast. Her legs are moving slowly no matter how much effort she puts in.
She should have stayed under that pile of clothes, safe and warm.
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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traits turned sour
honest - insensitive
persuasive - manipulative
caring - overprotective
confidence - arrogance
fearless - cocky
loyalty - an excuse
devotion - obsession
agreeable - lazy
perfectionism - insatisfaction
reserved - aloof
cautious - skeptical
self loved - selfish
available - distractible
emotional - dramatic
humble - attention-seeking
diligent - imposing
dutiful - submissive
assertive - bossy
strategic - calculated
truthful - cruel
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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I wasn’t going to do Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) this year. In the past, it has been great for pushing myself to write a lot, but that has also been the problem. I end up writing a bunch of words to hit word count that aren’t actually useful for my story.
And while I do believe there’s not really such a thing as wasted writing, that the act of writing itself is practice, the level of extra writing I was doing during Nanowrimo isn’t helpful towards certain goals. Like finishing a manuscript.
However, never say never 😂. I have a new outlook on outlining and a solid new novel idea and would you look at that, there’s the perfect amount of time between now and November.
I’m starting to look at outlining as less of an Event A happens then Event B happens and more of a “is there conflict?” “are there character arcs?” sort of thing. This method of outlining is going to let me sort out a lot of those issues that lead to all the fluff writing I tend to do during Nanowrimo because I don’t have time in November to stop and go back to the drawing board when I need too.
All of this goes hand in hand with the other writing thing I’ve been thinking about lately, how much time ideas need to simmer, but that’s another post for another day.
(If this looks like a repost, that's because it is. Just as soon as I got my main blog out of Tumblr shadowban jail my sideblog was sent into Tumblr shadowban jail. So I just deleted the sideblog and I'm reposting things here)
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starklyscifi · 6 months
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I think one of my favorite creative joys is seeing how many different things people can do with the same concept. give ten writers the same starting point, or basic plot, or set of tropes to use and you're still going to get wildly different end results
the details you focus on, the ones you omit, turns of phrase, tone, and framing, the cadence and tempo of the sentences themselves, all the little fingerprints you've left littered across the prose — how you tell the story matters, and your personal voice is what makes it unique
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