From ![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
recessional:
Inspired by Doctor Who’s “Turn Left”: Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you’d change. Something tiny (e.g. “and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold”) or big (e.g. “and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack”) and I’ll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.
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Davyn didn’t know where he was. Well, he was in a kennel, yes. He was in a locked kennel that had been moving for a while, that, yes. But the kennel wasn’t quite moving anymore. It felt like he was in a car – in a trunk, maybe? That would be awful – and the car was moving.
“Bark?” he tried quietly.
“Good puppy, that’s it.” The girl’s voice came from very close – like she was sitting next to Davyn’s kennel. But if she was there, who was driving?
“Listen, my parents are – ow, ow… oww.”
“Good puppies stay quiet, puppy. Now, what do you think I should call you?”
Davyn whined. He had a name. He had parents, who might actually miss him. He had a home, and this whole thing had been a horrible, awful, no-good plan.
“Let’s see. I think… Spots?”
No, no, whether or not he had freckles, he did NOT want to be Spots. Davyn whined louder, hoping he could get away with that much.
“Mmm. All right. I think Fleet. Fleet’s a good dog name, don’t you think?”
Davyn stayed quiet. There was nothing he could say to that. Heck, there was nothing he could say, period, not without getting zapped.
“That’s a good puppy. And here we are! We’re going to have so much fun, you and me, pup. Fleet. You’re going to be a good Fleet for me, aren’t you?”
What had he gotten himself into? Davyn stayed quiet, and hoped the crazy woman would at least remember to feed him.
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Okay, so for http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/878993.html (trope), I am creating a Whole New World!
Considering that pile of tropes, I am writing a romance/buddy comedy/something/detective story through space and possibly time. That means (lots of things, but for the moment, it means:) I have two protagonists, and because of my own pile of tropes (this is for fun, after all), one is male and one is female.
He is physically and possibly psychically stronger and bigger than her; she is likely smarter than him. He’s a criminal (but not irredeemable); she’s a bounty hunter.
That being said, I have nothing else determined about them, except that they are both “human”.
“Human” in this case, as this is a space story, covers a wide array of Roddenberry-alien-type modifications and alterations on a bilaterally symmetrical biped with the head on top, as well as a wide range of cultures.
So: what are their names, what do they look like, what can you tell me about their history? (I know a couple things about his and nothing about hers).
Edited to add: feel free to give me a single trait, like “he wears his hair in braids” or “she has green hair.”
* She’s fit and wears practical clothes.
* They’re travelling in her vehicle.
* Her father was a prostitute!
* She has naturally green hair but she dyes it orange.
* He has skull ridges/tentacles? that LOOK like braids.
* Assyra – female name
* Emmeth – male name
Or
* his name ends in an A
* She has a prehensile, forked tongue.
* He really loves orchestral music.
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My ![[community profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
trope_bingo card, because Rix had an idea and I like it
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 | accidental marriage: The Tod’cxeckz’ri Paper Part I |
mama didn’t raise no criminal | rivals to lovers | caffeine failure | annoying sibling |
| 2 | kidfic | secret child | presumed dead | monster is a mommy | telepathy/mindmeld |
| 3 | the food poison incident | kiss to save the day | WILD CARD | retail therapy | au: steampunk |
| 4 | amnesia | au: daemons | sex pollen | obnoxious in-laws | screw the money i have rules! |
| 5 | empty nest | animal transformation | au: apocalypse | deal with the devil | day at the beach |
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/878993.html. You can comment here or there.
Stories
Cleaning House (unicorn/Factory)
In Which Amrit is Amazingly Eloquent
Cali, Femdom, Catgirls, Part II
December Meme Finish-uP
Day Twelve – Fiction Characters
Day Fourteen – Books that Shaped my Life
Day Sixten – Something’s Missing
Serial
Jumping Rings Ch 14 – Valran – Agree
Edally Academy – Chapter 19
Another Landing Page Update – Facets of Dusk here.
The New Years’ Prompt Call
Girl in a Country Song
Cage Match
Failure to Properly Case the Joint
Positively Biblical
Turn, Turn, Turn
After Long Sleep
The Ruins of the Caschitari
After the Fire
Butterfly Mind
Butterfly Colony
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/878353.html. You can comment here or there.
Stories Submitted in December: 1
Stories Accepted in December: 0
Stories Rejected in December: 1
Words written in December: 20,019
2014 total words: 422,180
Published in 2014:
What Follows: How would an Immortal deal with the End Times?
*fireworks*
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/878252.html. You can comment here or there.
Today’s prompt is Books that shaped my life.
This isn’t a meme prompt, but Denise Drespling
posted a blog post in early December that made me start thinking.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – the whole series, really. I can’t pinpoint an exact change-in-thought from these books, but I can still remember the plots of all the stories, and reading them over and over again.
Ogre, Ogre, by Piers Anthony – okay, Piers Anthony and the whole Xanth series have flaws, nice big gaping holes, but this is the first “grown up” book I can remember reading – Mom left it sitting on the couch – and it got me started on a lifetime of reading genre fiction.
What’s more, that was the first time I started writing stories-in-my-head about another author’s worlds – fanfic!
To Sail Beyond the Sunset and Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein – parents, don’t let your tweens read these books.
I spent a lot of time with a ridiculously screwed up view of what women should be (hypercompetent beautiful 6′ tall geniuses who are dynamite in the sack and never screw up socially), and I went into high school with a mentality on sexuality and sex that was atypical and problematic for socialization. That being said, there’s a lot of really interesting stuff in these books (colonization, history, parenting, relationships).
The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach – a book that changed my mindset on love and relationships for a while, among other things. Also, taught me that you have to pay attention to paying taxes.
The Oversoul Seven Trilogy: The Education of Oversoul Seven, The Further Education of Oversoul Seven, Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time by Jane Roberts. *cough* Well, in addition to really shaping a lot of my thought on reincarnation in my teens, this book set started me thinking about aging and childhood.
Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear – I want to be her when I grow up. I want to write as awesomely as she when I get there, and I want to make writing a cast that is diverse in all ways look as effortless as she does.
There are more, I know there are. But this is a tidy short list.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/877758.html. You can comment here or there.
Content… warning…? Implied something uncouth, also kidnapping & rufies. And references to just about every country song ever made. And I actually listen to country.
It was the sort of thing country songs were made of: you go out, you drink with your buddies, you meet a pretty girl in painted-on jeans, you get her in your truck, and you go out to the fields.
It was the sort of thing your weekends had been made of, to be honest, different girls – college girls, sometimes, townies or passing visitors other times – different fields, same truck, same weekend, over and over again.
She had eyes the color of a cloudless sky and hair like wheat just before harvest; she was as perfect as God could make her and you didn’t pay much attention to the strange necklace she was wearing; she was a college girl, she said, majoring in agriculture. They did funny things.
Then you woke up in the back of your truck bed, and someone had used those tie-downs for all the wrong reasons, ’cause you were spread-eagled and couldn’t barely move. And the blonde was drawing on you in what you hoped to God wasn’t actually blood. And, Lord above help you, there was country music blaring from your truck.
“You’re perfect,” the blonde was telling you. “Absolutely perfect. You’ll make the crops grow. You’ll make the babies grow.”
And suddenly the music sounded a lot more ominous.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/877443.html. You can comment here or there.
I’m cleaning up!
Today’s prompt is from kay_brooke: How about fictional characters and your feelings? Who do you like the most? Who do you enjoy writing the most? Who do you frequently want to knock some sense into?
Fictional characters! I spend a lot of time thinking about them, you know, although I suppose I think more about scenarios than I do about characters.
When I get into a serial – and this was the flaw with Addergoole 9 not just for the readers but for me, too – I can get into the characters’ heads, and really play along with them.
Shahin, Shahin (From Addergoole: TOS) was a load of fun but I spend the entire series wanting to slap her. Most of the time with Kailani I kind of wanted to shake some sense into her – No, people don’t work that way! – and Jamian I mostly wanted to hug.
When I’m writing short stories, I don’t really have time to get into the characters heads much, so something like 7/10 of my writing can just be put over there in “mostly concept-based, not really about the characters.”
But long-running characters… *grin* Clearly, I love writing Cynara. She’s just fun, and she’s fun at any stage of her development. Her powers are entertaining, but the way she interacts with other people is just so much fun to write. And Luke. Luke harrumphs and grumps his way through life, and it’s fun watching the rug get pulled out from under him.
…these are all Addergoole characters. Whoops.
*big, unabashed grin* All right, side goal for 2015: Get into the heads of at least 2 non-Addergoole characters as thoroughly as I know Luke and Cynara. Doont.
This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/877177.html. You can comment here or there.
I will get to it tomorrow. Bottle of Mogen David, remember?
😀
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