“The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.” ― Douglas Adams
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@onedayiwillwritestuff
“The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.” ― Douglas Adams
You’re a demon. One day, you’re summoned into a living room, and an exhausted woman quickly rambles about needing to get to work and being unable to find a sitter before flying out the door. Now, you stand in your summoning circle, a toddler staring wide eyed at you.
Being Villagers
Based off this story prompt/fill (X) where you are born with a designation like Hero, Demon King, Blacksmith, etc.
Your name is Dolly. You are a Villager. You, as well as anyone, know what that means.
——————-.
You are sixteen and it is your first day at school.
Your first lesson is that Villagers are the only ones who start so late.
“Because there’s not much to be taught,” a boy says. His clothes are made of finer cloth than your mother’s wedding dress and his hair is as shiny as the brass buckles on his shoes. He grins at you, as proud as a peacock in front of half the class. “Don’t need to ask what your Destiny is, do I?”
You don’t know why he’s singling you out. A quick glance back into the classroom shows the rest of the students sitting at their desks with their heads low. They’re Villagers too. Most of you are. That’s why there isn’t anything special enough about any of you. You look back at the boy. “…are you going to ask me something else?”
“What?”
“If you don’t need to ask me my Destiny,” you say slowly, “do you need to ask me something else?”
“I don’t need to ask anything from a Villager!” the boy cries. He jabs a finger at his own bicep where his mark lies under cloth. “I’m a Lord!”
“Okay,” you say. The other kids behind him are frowning at you. Some of them are Villagers too, but different from you. They’re the children of merchants which is a different sort of destiny altogether. “I need to run some errands for my mother. Will you let me pass?”
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“The stone corrupts all those who wield it, it is fueled by their ambitions and dreams. So we need someone with no ambitions, no dreams, someone who doesn’t care about what the future holds for themselves. That’s why we found you.”
The first thought, in a moment like this, probably should not have been what came to your mind. Well, fuck you too, you thought, half incredulous and half apathetic. You leaned against the doorframe with one shoulder and eyed the group of three wizened people before you. Why was it always the elderly who came with big quests or brought important items that had to be hidden away?
Also, if you didn’t care about the future, didn’t that mean you didn’t care about the stone either? You might as well give it to someone else. Maybe someone better suited than you. There was this little girl across the street who had an acorn necklace and played in puddles and always sat very still until the every last stray cat felt safe enough to eat what she brought them. Maybe the stone should go to her, she at least gave a shit.
You debated arguing or refusing, but your disinterest won out in the end. “Sure,” you answered, holding out a hand for them to plop the stone into. You weren’t scared of it, especially since it looked utterly unremarkable. If you tossed it into a river, no one would be able to tell it apart from the other rocks.
The three wizened elders, apparently the smartest of their magic circle, exchanged grave looks and you waited until they were done with their silent communication and their leader stepped forward.
“We entrust you with the Stone of Possibility, never use it and always hide it,” they said, voice solemn and carrying the sort of undertone that spoke of great importance. You blinked slowly. “Give it to no one, no matter how noble their hearts, how pitiful their tale or how silver their tongue.” You couldn’t help but imagine a genderless person sticking out their tongue dripping with mercury.
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I find myself picking up my own garden rock sometimes because of this story. BEAUTIFULLY told and such a feel good way to spend my time
You were once the demon king. “Defeated” by the hero, you went into hiding to pursue a simpler life. Today the “hero” has appeared, threatening you family to pay tribute, not realizing who you actually are. Today you show them what happens when you have something worth fighting to protect.
You are told at seven that you won’t ever do anything good in your life. You grow up knowing that it doesn’t matter that you help your younger sister make her letters properly or that you’re the one who stays up late with mother when too many custom orders come through the tailor shop. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to hurt anyone or control anyone or anything of the sort. It doesn’t matter that your name means Light in your mother’s native language because as soon as they realize that you’re the Demon King, no one ever calls your name again.
You are chased out of your village the moment your powers bloom at fifteen years old, and the skies turn black with your fear. A rock hits you between your shoulder blades just as you make it to the main road and you stumble, falling to your knees in a mud puddle at the very moment the skies open up.
“She’s cursing us!” the midwife who delivered you screams over the thunder. “She’s damning us with her!”
Your mother is crying, but she doesn’t raise a hand to help you. She did everything she could, keeping your Role a secret all these years. She won’t risk anymore with another little girl to take care of.
No one tells you that you have a choice. No kind stranger drags you out of the rain and into the warmth of their home where a wise sage tells you it is not how we are born, but what choices we make.
Instead, you take the little pack your mother hid for you in the depths of the forest and sling it over your shoulder. There’s money, provisions, and more wraps to cover the evil mark on your left bicep.
“Your destiny will find you,” your mother told you only hours ago. “I forgive you for it.”
She meant the words as a comfort, but you only heard condemnation in it. Without having killed so much as a fly, she is already blessing you with forgiveness.
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Humanity has finally reached the stars and found out why no one had contacted us. The universe is in a sad state. As such, Doctors without Borders, Red Cross, and many othe charities go intergalactic.
The thing the recruiters don’t tell you about space battles is that you die slowly.
Ships don’t blow up cleanly in flashes and sparks. Oh, if you’re in the engine room, you’ll probably die instantly, but away from that? In the computer core, or the communications hub? You just lose power. And have to sit, air going stale and room slowly cooling, while you wait to find out if the battle is won or lost.
If it’s lost, nobody comes for you.
It had been about half a day (that’s a Raithar day, probably a bit shorter than yours) and Kvala and I were pretty sure we had lost. Kvala was injured, Traav and I were dehydrated and exhausted, and Louv was dead, hit by shrapnel when the conduits blew.
Most fleets give you something, of course. For Raithari, it’s essence of windgrass. I looked at the vial.
“It’s too soon,” Traav said.
Kvala gestured negation, shakily. She had been burned when conduits blew, and her feathers were charred, and her leftmost eye was bubbly and blind now. Even if we were rescued, she probably wouldn’t survive. “You know we’re losing the war.”
They couldn’t deny that. “It doesn’t mean we lost the battle.”
“Doesn’t it? The Chreee have better technology. Better resources. And they have their warrior code. They don’t care if they die.”
“We can’t give up!” Traav protested. They were young, a young and reckless thar who had listened to a recruiting officer and still believed scraps of what they had been told. “Any heartbeat now—”
There was a clunk. Something had docked with our fragment of the ship.
“You see?!” Traav crowed triumphantly.
Kvala exchanged glances with me. The Chreee never bothered to hunt down survivors. What was the point, after all?
The Aushkune did.
There weren’t supposed to be Aushkune here. They were supposed to hide in nebulas.
But if there were—
If there were, we were too late. The windgrass couldn’t possibly destroy our nervous systems in time to stop the corpse-reviving implants, and once you were implanted, it was over—or it would never be over, depending on how you looked at it and whether Aushkune drones were aware of anything—
Footsteps.
Bipedal. The Aushkune were supposed to be bipedal.
And then the blast door opened, and a figure stood in it. My first thought was, robot? That’s almost worse than Aushkune . . . But no, it was a being in some sort of suit.
Who wore suits?
“Friendly contact,” the suit’s sound system blared, as the being moved over to Kvala. “Urgent treatment. Evacuation.”
“Who are you?” Kvala struggled upright.
Despite the primitive suit, the blocky being was using up-to-date medical scanners. “Low frequency right angle shape,” it explained—or maybe didn’t explain. Two more figures came into the room and put Kvala firmly onto a stretcher.
“You’re with the Chreee, aren’t you?” Kvala was not at all happy to be on a stretcher.
“Not Chreee,” the sound system said. “You Man. Soil Starship Nichols.” The being hesitated. “Rescue Chreee as well. On ship. Will separate.”
“You what?” I said faintly. Who would do that?
“Oath,” the being explained.
“What kind of oath? To what deity?”
The shoulders of the being moved up and down. “Several different. Also none. For me, none. Just—oath.”
I exchanged glances with Traav, who looked as unsettled as I was. I had never, ever heard of groups cooperating when they couldn’t even swear to or by the same power.
The being scanned me. “Have water,” it said. “Recommend.”
Raithari have fast metabolisms. I could—would—die of thirst quickly, and painfully.
“Where will you take us,” Traav asked, “after you give us water?”
“Raithari to Raithar. Chreee to Chreeeholm.”
“Chreeeholm would kill them for failing,” Traav remarked.
The being hesitated, and then said, “War news sometimes bad. Sometimes lie.”
We had learned long ago not to believe the recruiting officers, but what did that have to do with anything?
“And you—what?” I asked. “Just fly around looking for battles and rescuing victims?”
The being seemed to consider this. “Best invention of soil,” it said finally.
Most of what it was saying didn’t make any sense. Did it worship soil? But it had said that it had sworn to no deity . . .
Madness.
On the other hand—war was a deliberate, rational act by deliberate, rational people, and I wanted no more of it. So why not embrace madness and see what happened?
“Soil Starship—Rrikkol?” I asked, stumbling over the word.
“Yes. Soil Starship Nichols.”
I followed the being in the suit.
Took me well over a minute to realize "low frequency right angle shape" was Red Cross.
I love how this shows the weirdness both of language and of culture. Excellent writing!
"Soil Starship Nichols"
This is what took me a moment.
Earth Starship [Nichelle] Nichols
how to write creepy stories
over describe things
under describe things
short sentences in rapid succession build tension
single sentence paragraphs build dread
uncanny valley = things that aren't normal almost getting it right
third person limited view
limited expressions
rot, mold, damage, age, static, flickering, espsecially in places it shouldn't be
limited sights for your mc - blindness, darkness, fog
being alone - the more people there are, the less scary it is
intimate knowledge, but only on one side
your reader's imagination will scare them more than anything you could ever write. you don't have to offer a perfectly concrete explanation for everything at the end. in fact, doing so may detract from your story.
@derinthescarletpescatarian
You're saying I need to make TTOU creepier? I can do that.
I was reading my writing today, and let me tell you, it may not be good, plot is not the best, and characters are a bit stereotypical, but boy do I have fun writing it
This is such a good mindset to have. There is positive energy in this post
i want to coin a phrase that's the opposite of writer's block. call it the muse's fire hydrant. thirty thousand story ideas are being beamed directly into your brain and if you don't write them all at once you will die.
yknow what i mean?
Writing advice from my uni teachers:
If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.
Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.
Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.
Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.
This is legit good writing advice, especially the first bullet point! In playwriting class we did a bit where every bit of dialogue had to be an accusatory question and it was glorious.
You know what I want more of? Variety in aliens. No, I don’t mean more designs for alien species. I mean variety within a species. They always seem to have the same government, the same culture, the same religion, the same language. Come on, humans don’t work that way!
“Say, there’s a Qualar over there. What are they saying?”
“No idea.”
“What?”
“That’s a Kinzian Qualar. I’m a Surolian Qualar. You’d have just as much luck understanding them as I would. You’re lucky I even speak Human.”
“Human isn’t a language.”
“What?”
“Carl, we’ve been speaking Russian. There’s also Arabic, French, English–about a thousand others–”
“HOW DO YOU HAVE SO MANY LANGUAGES YOUR PLANET IS TINY.”
My favorite part about this is that the alien is named “Carl.”
The number of Time to Orbit: Unknown readers who are over 60 years old is astounding to me. Not the audience I was expecting.
#I hate to break it to you Derin#But you write a good scifi#I grew up on the classics pssed down by my father#who loved to read sci-fi and fantasy#and time to orbit: unknown has scratched an itch a lot of modern scifi has lost
"Time to Orbit: Unknown has scratched an itch a lot of modern scifi has lost" is the nicest thing anyone has ever said about TTOU
#Omg they were right#what the fuck derin#this is killer#this is cool as shit#god now im self conscious of my own writing#i wanna read more but I know I'll get to frustrated with my own writing#it's so fucking cool#take it as a compliment that my self confidence took a hefty hit
Good! Read other people's stories and get frustrated with your writing! That's what we call "learning to write better"! Do you know why people think my story sounds like old scifi? It's because I read old scifi! Not all of it, not as a chore; I read the stories I find interesting! People whose stories are more enjoyable and interesting than mine, and make me feel frustrated with my writing! And then my writing gets better! Because recognising what other authors are doing better than you is a fundamental step in improving your own writing, which improves things for your readers!
You should seek out writing that is more enjoyable, more profound, better constructed than yours, and enjoy it! Read above your writing skill level and have a fantastic time doing it! It is the only way we ever improve. If you avoid works that you suspect will make you see flaws in your own, you will not learn to write better. You will always write stories of the quality you're writing now, whatever that is. Also, you'll miss out on having a lot of fun!
Now go forth and read everything Philip K Dick ever wrote! And top it off with every issue of The Magazine Of Fantasy & Science Fiction that you can find in your local second hand book shop! Then blindly reach into the bargain bin for some weird arse scifi title that no one's ever heard of that's going to change your life!
#you being a dick fan explains so much
If A Scanner Darkly didn't change your life, I don't know what to tell you.
the angel staying over at my house asked for a nightlight in their room and i told them buddy, don't you produce your own light? what're you gonna do with more? and they said they wanted to see why people like it so much. and also that the nightlight i own is blue and they're been trying to understand color. anyways i think they've stared at it for an hour now
the angel staying over at my house said their eyes hurt from staring, so i took them to the store to get some eye drops. well midway through the medicine aisle i turned around to see them flashing in and out of colors like a combusting star, so i asked them what was up without looking directly at them. they told me that there were too many people at the store and they forgot how they looked. which. is understandable to be honest they've only been on earth for a little over 24 hours. my phone started to melt a little when i showed them pictures of themself, but my hand feels fine even though they held it while calming down. they're currently resting and i am not sure what to do with 5 empty bottles of eye drops
the angel staying over at my house has been eating my food for the past few days and i don't really know if they can taste it because the food sort of bursts into ash and fire before it reaches their mouth? but they seem to enjoy eating it or at least watching me cook. they tried to help me fry some onions earlier but the stove flame turned from blue to white and the onions started crackling instead of sizzling so they backed off. however they have the ability to chop garlic like a pro
the angel staying over at my house is taking daily walks with me around the neighborhood and i don't think they know about animals yet. we were going past someone's house and this labrador started barking at us. normal, right? but the angel staying over at my house asked me if that was music. and i had to stop and think about that one for a second. in the end i said it can be music to us, it's just that the dog doesn't know it (and may never know it, which is a real tragedy). then they asked me what's a dog
the angel staying over at my house went to the library with me and they wanted to know if humans actually dream or if that was something people made up for television. guess what the staff told us that the full name of the angel staying over at my house couldn't be printed on a library card so i just said well couldn't we have one anyways? and now we do but it's really like the first third of their name and not written correctly. oh well. i have to go help carry some huge books about neuroscience into the house
today the angel staying over at my house came up to me and started crying tears that melted through my carpet. told me they realised they wouldn't be able to use their library card after they left earth and i. i honestly forgot that was going to happen. but i told them hey dude that's just how humans feel too. can't read all the books, but the fact that you got to read some is worth bragging about, right? they could tell all of their angel friends about the cool stuff they've done. and they said that they used to think that the world was so small and that humans were being petty about missing earth but now they live here and they feel small too. and they're not sure what to tell their angel friends.
so i asked to hold their hand again. they didn't burn me this time, either. and i asked them if this moment felt small to them. they said it didn't.
anyways we made popcorn and watched it's a wonderful life. they told me that angels don't speak like that at all by the way
oh so when the reader knows something i don’t it’s “dramatic irony” but when i know something the reader doesn’t suddenly i’m an “unreliable narrator” 🙄
bat opens up their little bat wallet to find they are all out of moths. A worthless $100 bill flies out for emphasis
From top-of-frame, a month flutters into the wallet. Confused, the bat looks "up" to see an equally-confused human standing "above" her, holding an open wallet containing a single $100 bill.
Camera rotates to reveal bat has been hanging upside down above a human doing the exact same visual gag and each ruined the other's bit.
Laugh track.
Obsessed with the fact that it’s Jon Arbuckle