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#writing fictional story
flawlest · 10 months
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writersbeware · 2 months
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Body Switch
Sports fans are often in awe of the superstars of their favorite teams. They’d love to meet them, get their signatures, and if they are athletes themselves have half of their talent. Imagine being able to switch bodies, as in many movies, and be a superstar one for just one game? Some of us are too old for such things, but might like a healthier body, one without excess weight and creaky joints.…
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strangelittlestories · 3 months
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After the occupation, the princess was confined to the palace.
Once a month she'd be taken on a walk around the city, heavily guarded of course, to show the people that she still lived. It also served, of course, as a reminder of what they stood to lose if they made trouble. The princess did her best go wave and smile and give the people what encouragement she could.
The rest of the time, her life was spent in musty rooms and dusty towers. She filled most of her time scouring the castle for materials which she would sew into more and more elaborate outfits, which she would show off on the days when she was allowed outside.
Indeed, the public loved their princess and her dresses so much they'd often sketch or paint them along the route and pass the images on so that all could see the princess at least was well.
This pleased the occupiers for two reasons. First: it kept the princess out of trouble. Second: it gave them a reason to sneer and they did love a good sneer.
"What a vain creature she is!" They would remark.
"Doesn't even care we murdered her brothers so long as she gets enough satin to make her little dresses!" They squawked.
This was unfair, of course, for to call her creations "little dresses" was to call Queen Murderfun the Needlessly Genocidal "a tad piquey". Her dresses were gravity-defying wonders lace and pearl. They were thunderstorms captured in velvet and waterfalls summoned in silk. She was a wizard with silk.
Still, she bore their mockery with a tight smile and careful deference.
"Please, good sirs, my home, my people and my city now belong to you. Let me keep, at least, this one last joy."
And they sneered and they crowed most unpleasantly, but they let her keep her sewing room.
Of course, they would have known their mockery to be doubly unfair had they realised the true purpose of the princess's elaborate designs. For hidden in the intricate embroiderings across her gowns, jackets and fans, the princess had encoded secret (and very detailed) messages. When she would go on her monthly walk, the city's loyalists would line the route, sketching down the patterns to decode later.
Thus did the princess transmit all the occupiers' secrets (unearthed while supposedly 'searching the castle for old fabrics') to the city and thus did she build her resistance.
On the day the revolution finally came, she girded herself in armour of thick spider silk and whale bone. She cut a fine figure with a lacy handkerchief in her top pocket and a razor sharp knitting needle keeping her hair up.
As she waltzed through the castle to open the door for her army, the Usurper King tried to stop her and she simply unfolded her handkerchief and showed it to him.
Upon seeing the impossible arcane pattern emblazoned across it, he fell to the floor with blood streaming from his eyes.
She always had been a wizard with silk.
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Thank you for reading. If you'd like to support my writing, you can do so at https://ko-fi.com/strangelittlestories
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xisadorapurlowx · 4 months
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Dr Doolittle-style show about a detective who can talk to animals, except instead of talking like people the animals still talk like animals, just translated into English sentences, so the plot of most episodes centres around trying to figure out what the star witness testimony actually means.
Victim's murder was witnessed by her pet snake, whose tank was in the room. Unfortunately pet snake is incapable of describing the world around them except in terms of 'rocks' and 'meat', with their descriptions of individual forms of 'meat' focusing almost entirely on body temperature and smell.
(Solved when it turns out that their description of 'warm-cold meat with rock' was actually an attempt to describe a suspect with a prosthetic limb, which is pretty unnoticeable to a human, but looks dramatically different in infrared.)
Murder at a honey farm. Each witness managed to see about ~0.06% of the full crime, in order to get the full picture, you have to get them to swarm.
Victim was found several days after death, already crawling with maggots. Days into the investigation, protag begins a frantic search to find any surviving maggots/flies that were on the corpse, after realising that how the victim tasted would give vital information about the poison used.
Also there's at least one or two animals who actually do talk in full sentences and in terms humans can understand, and the reason behind this is never fully explained.
All cats in this universe talk in terms of 'mine/not-mine' and mainly focus on territory, mates and food, with the one exception of the main character's cat who is named Watson and knows how to use sarcasm.
All insects speak in one word sentences where everything is 'food', 'enemy' or (for hive insects) 'friend' and 'queen', with the exception of seven-spotted ladybirds specifically, who for some reason speak in full English sentences and are up to date and knowledgeable about world events. The protagonists is as concerned by the full implications of this as you are.
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reidiot · 9 months
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don't fucking interrupt me when i'm reading my x reader fics it's rude
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”oh so how did you get into writing?-“ no, writing got into me. Actually it infiltrated my brain, starting with the slow takeover of my room with books to the extremely fast claiming of my notes app and now there’s no way to stop it and no way for me to stop.
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shhhhimwatchingthis · 2 years
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You want to know why Inigo Montoya remains such an iconic and beloved character even 35 years after the Princess Bride came out?
It's because he's one of the few characters in fiction who has a story where he has dedicated his life to revenge, his whole motivation is about getting revenge....and he gets it! and then he isn't empty or despairing! he doesn't regret it! he's totally satisfied!
because so many stories about revenge or rage are about characters "seeing the futility of their actions" or learning "their desire for revenge has only made them the monsters they hated" FUCK THAT.
Inigo Montoya kills the man who kills his father, is allowed to live in the narrative after and be happy about it and it is so satisfying. it's fantastic. it's iconic.
let more characters rage against the world, bring it down with bloodied hands, and let them be FUCKING RIGHT about it. Let them celebrate their success with sharp grins, and let them live happy, full lives where they always remain proud/fulfilled for what they've done
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blue-eyed-author · 4 months
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Writing rule:
Every character who speaks gets their own paragraph. If two characters are talking, each time they switch you must create a new paragraph.
Do not add more than one characters’s dialogue into a single paragraph or it will be too confusing for the reader.
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vastasynchronicity · 6 months
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Mimic
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Originally just a oneshot prompt response. This story has now metastasized into a multi-chapter ongoing narrative available on Scribblehub & Wattpad
What sat in front of me had uneven edges, straps in the wrong place, and was larger on one end than the other. It looked more like a child's idea of a chest than the actual physical item. I'd learned quick that the more a 'treasure chest' looked like a bad knockoff Picasso, the hungrier it was.
I hadn't been in this dungeon dimension for very many days— but it wasn't a hard lesson; avoid anything that even hinted at being a wonky chest, because it had a 100% probability of trying to kill and eat you.
This, though? This was such a pathetic attempt at a 'chest' that I actually felt a little bad for the thing. I'd been tricked by several very good fakes so far. Compared to those...
Man. This was an embarrassment.
As I'd come to expect by now, I felt the chest watching me after staring at it for a couple minutes. It was that feeling I kept getting in random encounters, like I'd forgotten something important that was going to get me in deep trouble.
Every mimic chest so far had felt the same, a deep-seated dread in my chest and stomach. This poor little guy felt like the Temu version of the Wish version of that.
I drained the last of my rabbit stew as I watched it. Every few minutes the smaller end— the one where none of the lines could quite square properly— shivered a bit, like it was cold and couldn't get warm. I knew it was an enemy. I knew it would kill me and eat me in the blink of an eye, if I let it. But, I mean, the thing was pathetic. It was the worst mimic I'd seen yet.
I realized I was full two bites into the sodden remains of my bread bowl. I kinda stared at it for a moment, then looked at the crappy excuse for a chest. "Hey." I said, addressing it directly like it was a person. "Chest. You hungry?"
It shivered hard, once, then went completely still.
I held up my mushy soup remains. "I'm not coming closer, but I'll toss this to you. It's not as tasty as me, but beggars can't be choosers." The wonky chest shivered again, harder this time. Then the lid cracked open to reveal a long red tongue and a set of carnivorous teeth. I took that as a yes and lobbed the bread bowl underhand. It sailed across and the chest leapt up, snapping it out of the air like a dog with a ball.
"Hah!" I said, surprised. "Good catch, mimic. You eat well now. No trying to devour me." It tilted forward twice as it chewed noisily. The movement was weirdly translatable as a nod.
I turned away and walked on, trying to find the way forward to better treasure and more powerful enemies. This particular dungeon hadn't yet yielded much loot, but from the state of it no adventurer had been through here in at least several years. That boded well for a real prize or three by the time I cleared it out.
I was in need of a better weapon— my water wand had slowly been developing cracks over the last week and I wasn't sure how long it would hold up. I had a backup air wand, but its stats and durability weren't nearly as good. From behind me came thumping. I looked back. The mimic had grown horrible appendages that looked like scaled-up chunky bird legs. It was following me. "Hey." I said. "What the fuck, man? I feed you and you stalk me? Uncool."
The chest sat down at once, legs folding up into nothing. It looked less like a joke now -- it had evened out its size from one end to the other and the woodgrain no longer looked like a mad child on crack had drawn it on.
Great. Smashing. I had just given one of my main predators better stats and a leg up on eating me. Fantastic.
It cracked its lid and belched loudly.
"Yeah, nice try, buddy." I hefted my wand. "I don't wanna have to, but I will use this." I sent a glob of magically-charged water spinning through the air to splash to its side to demonstrate. My wand promptly cracked in two.
"Fuck!" I exclaimed, dropping the pieces to the ground. "Mother of fuck, my good wand!" Frustrated, I stomped the useless remains. The mimic rumbled. I looked at it sharpish, wondering if I had time to dive into my bag for my shitty air wand before it attacked. Then it tipped forward, making sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball. I watched, perplexed, until--
It coughed and heaved one last time and spat a darkly glowing wand onto the ground. There was a delicate feminine hand still attached. Ragged bits of gangrenous skin hung off the wrist.
I started at the mimic. The mimic stared at me.
It stood up, its legs growing again out from underneath it. It pushed the hand holding the wand forward, then retreated and sat back down.
I stared at the wand in the dead hand. Sweat ran down my back. That was an arcane wand. Self-repairable. Infinite use, provided you took care of it and didn't get dead -- the problem its previous owner had obviously been unable to avoid.
I stooped down, keeping my eyes trained on the mimic the entire time, and picked it up, trying not to touch the severed hand around it more than I had to for prying the rigored fingers off.
I tossed the hand back and the damn mimic caught it again, just like my bread bowl.
“… The Fuck?!” More chapters available on Scribblehub & Wattpad]
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night-owl-writes1 · 4 months
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jonahmagnus · 1 year
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In world where there are two types of tower-dwellers, a Princess is locked in a tower.
There are two types of tower-people: A Princess, put there to remain pure until marriage or until rescued, and a Wizard, put there by choice to study and learn in isolation. Princesses are defined by their beautiful long hair, and Wizards are defined by their beards and impressive 'stache.
There is a Princess, and she lives in a tower. She was put there recently by her mother and father, to keep her pure and untouched until they can secure the marriage to another kingdom and a prince shes doesn't love. She has long, almost brown sandy-blonde hair, pale green eyes and a slim, tender build. She is not the fairest in the land, but she is tall and pretty. If compared to a rose, she would be the humble yet graceful willow tree, slender and long. She has wanted to be a wizard since a young age, but there is no way for a princess to become a wizard. Princesses are delicate girls to be protected and sold off until their either dead or Queens or have found True Love, unsuited to the life of experimentation and study of a wizard. That is what her mother tells her, in a quiet scolding that is far more forceful and cruel then it has any right to be. And the princess, terrified, believes her.
She used to run the castle halls, stick in hand, robe fashioned out of a delicate silk bedsheet, shouting fake spells at birds while her servants chased her. But as she grew older, her restraints became tighter, and more and more often, she was confined in her room to embroider in solitude with barely the comfort of a window or a maid. The life she is forced into makes her hang her head low, makes her hands be paper-soft, and demands her hair be long and beautiful and perfect like all other princesses. The world she longed to be a part of was a world of study and experimentation, and as the kingdoms princess and tool, she could not even dare to hint at her desires into adulthood. She could become a witch, she knew, flee the castle barefoot and sink into the loving embrace of the swamp. But witches don’t live in towers, and they make potions instead of spells, and they don’t grow the flowing whimsical beards that wizards do.
But that does not mean she has to be bored in her tower. Fascinated by magic as she always has been, she arranges with a long string of bribes for books on spells and forbidden potions to be smuggled along with her meals. She studies them while the clock ticks down for either a prince to arrive or her marriage to be finalized. Either one will doom her, and she wants to enjoy herself as much as possible until her marriage. She pours over the books long into the night by candlelight, and all day, she rests her pale, tired eyes. She experiments, and she reads, and she studies non-stop, barely stopping for meals and littering her books with an assortment of food stains. She cuts off her hair to use in bubbling gold potions, her skin becomes scarred with a rainbow of the consequences of failed experiments, and her dresses turn into makeshift cheesecloths and fire-fuel. She washes late into the night after she is done with her work for the day in the darkness, not glancing into the mirror that has become cracked and dusty. When her eyesight starts to fail from strain and working in darkness, she fashions for herself bottle-round glasses, blown by herself in the depths of her tower. Engrossed as she is in her studies, she does not notice the tower warp, and the meals stop rotting, and how she started out in one circular room but now has a loft and a second floor and the fact that the tower seems much much taller then it was originally.
What she DOES notice though, is when brushing crumbs from her face she feels facial hair on her upper lip.
She rushes to the bathroom and thrusts a candle into the holder as she looks at herself. In the dusty mirror, she sees the beginnings of a bushy mustache sit on her upper lip, much further along in growth then be logically possible without her noticing. It’s a pale blonde, like her hair, and she notices faintly that there are streaks of grey in it, a very familiar shade of classic wizard grey. She brings a trembling hand to her upper lip.
Much, much later, a prince rides up to the tower. It is tall, and warped, and very clearly belonging to a wizard, despite the royal family claiming their daughter lives here.
He shouts up, a bit nervous because of the thorny vines wrapping the beautiful stonework.
“Hey! Does a Princess live here?”
A young man with large bottle glasses and a rather impressive mustache leans out of the tower, his short, sandy-blonde hair spilling lightly in the wind. He starts to say something, then glances back into his house. A smile breaks out on his face as he seems to realize something.
“No!” He shouts back, after a moments hesitation. “But a wizard does!”
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writersbeware · 1 year
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Developing a New Character
            It’s easy to reuse characters that we know and love. We’ve already established who they are, what they like and don’t like and the things they do. We’ve created friends, jobs, homes. And enemies as well as tension points.             Your task is to create an entirely new character. Do some online photo research by putting in age, skin color and gender. From that range of photos,…
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qrowscant-art · 6 months
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MY BROTHER ; THE PARASITE
People die, and sometimes they come back. Your brother is one of those. Even as his body rots and his mind unravels, he still has control over you— just like when you were kids.
A short, interactive story about a corpse, a complicated sibling relationship, and the things we forget. Made in Twine. Written, illustrated, and coded in about three weeks for the IFComp.
Content warnings included on the itch.io page and in the story itself.
|| PLAY HERE! ||
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xisadorapurlowx · 4 months
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daily-prompts · 1 year
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What’s the best editing tip you have?
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