I finally get to post a preview for my piece for @inkedfairytales
I got assigned to 1001 Nights and even though they encouraged us to think about of the box, I admit you’ve got to squint to recognize mine. I came up with a post-cannon type thing. It involves a hut in the desert, a mute character, a really tall jinn and human sacrifices. (I had to cycle through 5 ideas before settling, everybody else’s ideas are so good!)
This zine was so fun to be apart of and filled with so many fantastic pieces! I’m so hyped to see how everything turns out!
Extract:
“It’s not a good story to tell, little mouse.”
Almost as if to apologize, Ra picked up the book again and started reading. Ra had a way of forming words, his voice deep and mellow, blending with the turn of the page. Ebbing and flowing, the story drifted around him like dragging notes. Ra looked over the top of the cover as he read.
“I was a king once,” Ra didn’t say it like it was a story. He said it like a memory, bittersweet on the tongue. “They used to come to me. I’ve helped raise a city out of the sand. I’ve known the feeling of bringing armies victory. I’ve known the maddening years of darkness, waiting, seconds turning to centuries in darkness.”
Thoughts melted away as a familiar warmth settled over him, radiating from Ra like the afternoon sun. It felt like smoke coiled in his mind, slowed down and sluggish. Bo’s eyelids raised and lowered. He watched with dull entrancement as the colored shadows cast by the hanging lanterns first glittered and spun then morphed and arched into dancing figures that twirled and skipped across their walls, moving in tandem with Ra’s story. Bo’s eyes sagged then fogged. In the state in between sleeping and waking, his vision blurred, he saw Ra’s skin darken then shift. What are you?
Something fell then shattered.
angst with a happy ending is my favourite honestly like yes bitch give me emotional conflict but dont completely ruin my soul you know
The Dusk and The Dawn
If your character has a trait you consider one of their key features and it is never challenged in anyway, that trait will probably have about as much impact as their “tiny mole on their left buttcheek” trait.
For that trait NOT to fall totally flat, one or more of these things need to happen:
The trait exacerbates a situation in a bad way. (An extremely honest and trusting character reveals an important secret to the Big Bad’s lackey)
The character is given a choice to either act according to their traits or to subvert them. Often the subversion has the better outcome. They either maintain their trait and take a risk, or character development ensues. (A greedy character must escape. Leaving behind their riches goes against their very being, but it would allow them to escape easier. If they try to take some of their treasure with them, they do so at massive risk.)
The character is put in an environment or must work with a person that opposes their trait. (An extremely tidy person must live in their slob cousin’s filthy apartment for a week. / The character has a debilitating fear of being alone and they are stranded on their own on an island.)
The character is put in a situation that requires them to suppress their trait (A hotheaded character needs to have polite discourse with someone they hate)
the most heartbreaking part of hamlet really is the whole “goodnight sweet prince” part because when horatio says “and angels sing thee to thy rest” he is using the intimate form of thou, and it’s the first time he ever does it. hamlet consistently uses the intimate form of thou for horatio (only when they’re in private though, which – if shakespeare intentionally wanted to give their relationship homoerotic subtext, which he totally did – shows that hamlet wants to keep his romantic love for horatio a secret to the greater public) but horatio, being the respectful person he is and also given the fact that if he were to use the intimate form of thou it would pretty much be a romantic confession, never ever uses thou. except when after hamlet dies. when it’s too late.
here hamlet is, dying in horatio’s arms, asking horatio if he ever held him in his heart. and horatio doesn’t get a chance to reply. hamlet dies. only then does horatio realizes his mistake of not confessing sooner
When you have characters:
What does your character aspire to do or become? Making that aspiration really hard for them to reach.
What does your character love? Take it away from them and make them earn it back.
What does your character hate? Bind them too it and make them work to get rid of it.
When you have a world:
What is the most chaotic thing that can happen to this world’s politics? Find the character this chaos would effect the most and see what they do about it.
What is the most dangerous thing that can happen within this magic system? Figure out who would come to stop or reverse it and see what they do.
Who is the most damaging person in this world and what are they doing? Figure out who of those they hurt might rise up and defeat them.
When you have only spite:
What story do you absolutely hate the execution of? Take the very basic concept of its plot and build it into the story you wish it produced.
What plot structure do you enjoy but wish writers would be more original with? Take it and then throw a dozen spins on it.
** Remember to mix and match for more elaborate plot structures. Carry on this format with your own tricks to digging up basic plot structures!
me dividing my personality between my ocs
this is so self-indulgent is2g but what if this audio was in video form??
so basically what we have here is: makoto having the courage to leave a love message on haru’s phone and haru stays in bed and thinks about it while he plays it again and again
this took me like three hours j e s u s
imagine if the oceans were replaced by forests and if you went into the forest the trees would get taller the deeper you went and there’d be thousands of undiscovered species and you could effectively walk across the ocean but the deeper you went, the darker it would be and the animals would get progressively scarier and more dangerous and instead of whales there’d be giant deer and just wow
Hi! I'm Kit I write and occasionally do other stuff
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