A thriller story about two boys. One is trained to kill a girl. The other to protect. The one trained to kill is the girls actual brother. The experiment is set up by a deranged master mind who wants to so what prevails; nature or nuture?
Tag: fantasywriting
Writing Prompts: The School of Broken Queens
All throughout history, women in positions of power have been maliciously targeted, used, and even murdered. X is one such Queen. She is beheaded and, to her surprise, wakes in a magical grotto. This is the Haven of Broken Queens where a castle/school resides, where women who were wronged by the world are given a second chance at life and given powers to avenge themselves. The heads of the school include notable royals such as Marie Antoinette, Anne of Boleyn, Anastasia, Mary Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth the first.
Evening Poems: Ending
Like feathers falling on fresh snow.
It’s the price we all pay.
Don’t shield your eyes.
From the oncoming day.
You are now empty-you can see it in your eyes.
They are now singing
For a new soul shall rise.
All must pass, my darling.
This much is true.
And they are all so happy to meet
Someone as lovely as you.
They say this is death.
The sad, sad ending.
But they are wrong.
This is the healing-this is the mending.
My Beginner Writing Mistakes
So recently I came across an old USB drive of mine when cleaning my desk. Upon plugging it into my computer, to my delight, I found that it contained tons of my old writing and stories that I had written awhile back. And while I was happy to stumble across this little piece of my writing history, I was hit with a realization: my writing sort of sucked.
This didn’t bother me mind you; I was like 11 writing the majority of these stories, but I also couldn’t help but notice a few writing mistakes that I tended to make consistently. Some of these I still struggle with and some of these I have moved past but regardless I found it beneficial to note them and state them in this blogpost in hopes that someone else making these same errors could get some advice or find this constructive to their own writing.
Enjoy my analysis of my flaws.
Not utilizing paragraph breaks.
Or if I did, I used them incorrectly. I think this just comes with more practice where you get a better feel for when it is the correct time to press “enter”, but at this time in my life, I did not have such a sense. I either do not utilize paragraph breaks enough, resulting in long, sprawling pages of text or I used them awkwardly where it didn’t even seem to fit. The rule, as I’m sure you’ve heard, is to press enter and use a paragraph break every single time the “camera” changes in your story. This means someone else begins to speak, an unrelated action occurs, or a new line of thought comes into play.
Too many dialogue tags.
My writing didn’t flow for a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons it all felt so janky was I used waaaaay too many dialogue tags when writing. This caused the conversations to feel choppy and jilted and not at all natural.
“He said.” “She said”. “They said.”
Too many saids. Sometimes you should omit the tag and simply write what the character is saying only. Besides, a good writer makes characters that you can tell is speaking, simply by how they talk, not just by the “said” that the writer tacks on at the end.
Not enough dialogue tags.
There were a few times however, that I omitted the tags entirely too much. Certain stories I guess I simply didn’t care enough about and barely added any tags at all. In some cases, as I’m sure you can imagine, this became all too confusing and it was hard to keep track of who exactly was talking at times, especially when the conversation involved more than two characters and it wasn’t a sort of back and forth exchange.
Pro Tip:
Read your writing out loud, but especially the dialogue bits to make sure they flow.
Being overly flowery in my writing.
Another error of mine was just being plain pretentious in my writing style. How did I do this? By overly describing EVERYTHING and utilizing long (but admittedly fun) words. While I do remember finding this a fun way of writing, feeling almost like I was writing the script of a nature documentary for a British dude to read, it admittedly did not make for great story telling. My writing felt fluffy and long winded. So unless you’re specifically going for that pretentious vibe, I’d try and avoid it.
Being redundant (failing to expand my vocab when it came to words I use a lot)
There are just some words I struggle to find stand-ins for but it would have definitely benefited me to look up a list of synonyms for the word “smiled” before I ever wrote ANYTHING. My advice to you is know the words you tend to regurgitate and before you even start writing, look up or compose a list of alternatives to resort to later when you feel you’re repeating yourself way too much.
And that’s it! Those are all the main issues I found with my earlier writing. And while I’d love to say the stuff I put out now is WORLDSSSS better, I would venture to say it isn’t. Despite having written for 6 more years, I still find myself struggling with much of the same stuff, especially when it comes to the issue of redundancy. This goes to show that we will never be perfect as writers but that still doesn’t mean we can’t improve. And we do that by knowing our downfalls and, probably most importantly, continuing to practice and hone our craft.
Happy writing!
Writing Prompt: How to Train Your Cryptid
A group of teens find themselves at a very odd summer camp…
The woods nearby are teeming with odd wild life and the counselors tell then tales at night about the beautiful beasts that once roamed the earth that were forced into hiding.
The second week of camp it is revealed that this is a camp where teens are trained to house and protect different cryptids, choosing one specifically as their own companion.
The campers are arranged into “cabins”:
Nessie
Sasquatch
Yeti
Thunderbird
Jackalope
Kraken
Writing Prompt: The World in a Clock
A girl goes to visit a grandparents house only to find a giant grandfather clock covered in a dropcloth in the attic. In an almost Narnia/Alice in Wonderland style story, she opens the clock’s door and finds it big enough to walk through. Inside she finds a clock inspired world facing a threat that she must stop.
The Emotion Seller
Once upon a time, long ago in a land very far away, there lived an elderly shopkeeper. But, since tales rarely revolve around the ordinary, this was no ordinary shopkeeper. What was unique about her wasn’t her per se, but her wares. This woman bottled and sold emotions. Her most popular items were motivation, love, joy, bravery, and confidence.
But she has one very special bottle that no one had ever dared to touch; sadness.
“Why would I buy that which I could get for free?!” People often jeered.
Now this Emotion seller was very famous and rightfully so, news of this merchant being told far and wide. As a result of this, she gained many new customers, many of which who were very rich. But none dared touch the bottle of sadness even with her hundreds of new clients.
As news spread, An arrogant lord heard of this seller and ordered his servants to fetch her so that she could sell him some of her wares. Within a few days, she arrived at his castle and gained an audience with him where she showed him every bottled emotion she sold, including the bottled sorrow. The Lord is taken aback by this, shocked she would dare carry such a thing.
“What use is sadness to anyone?” He said in a mocking tone.
“If that is so,” the seller replied. “Drink it, and prove to me it is useless.”
Now the lord had no such desire to drink the potion, but being prideful and not wishing to back down, he accepted.
“The effects should only last a day. If you find the potion to be of no use, I will give you every bottle of joy that I have,” the seller promised.
That was enough to push the Lord to take the potion from the seller’s hands and down it in one gulp.
The seller didn’t even wait to see the effects set in upon the noble. She smiled at him politely and turned to exit, saying nothing.
The King could feel his confidence waning as she strutted out. He couldn’t imagine what reason she had to be so self-assured. He couldn’t see how she could possibly win this “wager”.
She is just trying to make you question yourself, he told himself as he went to sleep that night. The next day will be a miserable one but that should not matter as you will have guaranteed happiness for the rest of your life.
The next morning, as soon as The King’s eyes opened, he could tell he was not feeling well. Sure, physically he was in top condition but he couldn’t help but notice this awful weight in his chest. It was all he could to do to get out of bed. Momentarily, he thought about staying in the rest of the day and taking his leave as sick for the remainder of the potion’s time but the thought was fleeting. By now everyone in the court would have heard of his wager with The Emotion Seller. If he were to hide the entire day he would be nothing short of a laughing stock.
It was this thought that drove The King to drag himself out of bed and prepare himself for the coming day.
His day already was off to a dreadful start, as when he began to eat his chicken pie for breakfast, he found a bone.
“What on earth?” he grumbled to himself, spitting the bone out onto his plate. “Bring in the chef!” he commanded his servant. They scurried off and quickly returned with the kitchen’s head cook.
“There was a bone in my breakfast!” The King exclaimed, glowering at the cook. The cook shrunk away, wringing his hands nervously.
“I-I am so very sorry, my liege,” he stammered.
“Not as sorry as you’re going to be,” The King said with a frown. “I could have choked and died! You are hereby banished! You are lucky won’t try you for an attempt to kill the king!”
“Oh!” The cook cried in horror. “Banishment! Please, have mercy sire, I cannot leave my family here alone,” the cook began to cry. “They depend on me for the very food they eat. If I am banished they shall surely starve.”
Now, The King was not the most merciful of Kings as one could guess but this morning was a special one. To his surprise, he found that weight in his chest grew upon seeing the cook shed tears even though he was angry with him only moments before. The King drew in a long sigh.
“Well, perhaps I won’t banish you then,” The King relented, barely believing the words coming out of his own mouth. “But if this ever happens again, you shall face even harsher consequences! Everything that comes out of that kitchen is your responsibility,” He added grumpily though he found it hard for him to muster any sort of disdain for the man.
The cook blinked in shock, as did the other servants in the dining room.
“Oh-! Thank you! Thank you, sir!” The cook bowed low before he returned briskly to the Kitchen.
An act of mercy becomes a king every now and then, The King said to himself, slightly put-off by the occurrence. But it soon vanished from his mind as he became aware, yet again, of the sorrow that rested upon him. If only I can make it through today…
~*~
The King made his way briskly down the castle hall, a well-dressed Advisor at his elbow, penning something down as he spoke.
“The Ambassador of The Green Isles arrived just yesterday,” he talked quickly and cordially as if the fast pace of their walk was affecting his speech.
“And how are the people of The Green Isles?” said The King.
“Er, not so good,” The Advisor admitted. “I’m afraid they’ve come to ask you for aid.”
“Relations with The Green Isles are strained as is,” The King said more to himself than anyone else. “They’ve never really taken a liking to me as King, that much has been made obvious in the past years. Things must be pretty bad for them to come crawling into my court.”
“My thoughts exactly, sire,” The Advisor bobbed his head in an almost animated manner, fidgeting with his quill now. “I can’t help but advise you against helping them. They’ve been rather vocal about their disapproval of how you handle diplomatic relations. Perhaps it would teach a lesson to them as well as the surrounding Kingdoms. They too have voiced opposition against your “abrasive” way of dealing with the neighboring lands.”
The King slowed his pace as he thought.
“So you’re saying this is a chance to elevate ourselves?” he spoke slowly, a pensive look in his gaze.
“Precisely.”
The two finished the walk to the Diplomatic chambers in silence, The King thinking to himself all the way until they stopped before a large set of double oak doors.
“Well, I suppose there’s no use in putting off the unpleasant,” The Advisor reshuffled his papers and gathered himself.
“One more question before we go in.”
“Yes?”
The King inclined his head towards The Advisor, eyes curios. “What has brought The Green Isles so low?”
The Advisor sighed as he began combing through his papers for the third time that afternoon.
“Er, Plague or famine I think it was,” The shuffling of parchment filled the hall as The Advisor searched for where he supposedly jotted the information down. “Something of that sorts. Though I can’t see it being of much importance in this specific case. I think the course of action is clear where it concerns The Green Isles.”
The King found himself irked at The Advisor’s coldness, a trait he had never thought to dislike until this moment.
“If I deem it important it is so. And as far as a course of action is concerned,” The King glared pointedly at the man. “I am The King and I will decide what course of action is best. Are we clear?”
The Advisor set his jaw, realizing he had agitated The King; never a wise thing to do.
“Yes, sire,” he responded, still as cold as ever.
The King pushed open the doors, revealing a long, high ceilinged room with an equally long, stretching table with numerous chairs arranged around it. But all but one were empty. At the far end of the room and look very small was a woman clad in a modest, earthy-green cloak and dress. She wasn’t adorned with much else. No jewelry or intricate hairpieces. She looked common.
As The King neared her, it was clear to him that the woman he could already sense her nervousness as she rose from her seat and bowed.
“Be seated,” he told her before taking a seat himself. Not at the head of the table as he usually did, but at a seat at The Ambassador’s side. This confused The Advisor, his expression said as much. But still, he said nothing and hung back behind The King, ready to pen whatever was needed.
“Hello, Ambassador…what’s your name?”
“Elle,” The woman said quietly. “Ambassador Elle. I come on the behalf of King Daeryen of The Green Isles, as I’m sure you know.”
The King nodded. “You have come to seek our aid.”
The Ambassador drew in a breath before continuing to speak.
“The is correct, your grace,” She did not meet his gaze. “The King Daeryen says he knows he would be the last person you would wish to help. But he promises you his unwavering support if you were to show him kindness in our time of need, if not for him but for our people who have nothing to eat day in and day out,” she looked up and The King was just now noticing how pale and frail the woman- no, the girl, looked. She continued, her voice becoming faint and shaky. “People are dying and we cannot stop it on our own.”
A moment of silence ensued as The Ambassador lowered her head in what looked like defeat, even though she hadn’t yet heard the King’s response. It was apparent to everyone there she was without hope.
A deep sorrow overcame The King as The Ambassador’s words began to sink in. Families with no food. Children left with no parents. People dying in the street unable to take the heat and malnutrition. The streets filled with vagabonds unable to feed or properly clothe themselves. The desolation and destruction it not only brings to the Kingdom as an entity but upon every person who misses a meal to feed those they care about with what little food they have left.
“Send them whatever supplies they need,” The King found himself saying. “So that every empty stomach might be filled.”
The Ambassador and The Advisor’s mouths both dropped at nearly the exact moment.
“I’m sorry?” The Advisor said, clearly taken aback.
“Send them everything they need,” The King said again, more firmly.
“But-” The Advisor hesitated. “Do…do you think it wise, sire?”
The Ambassador sucked in a breath, waiting for The King’s response to this.
“Is empathy ever unwise? Now I repeat,” he turned to fully face The Advisor at his left. “Send them their supplies.”
The Advisor looked as if he might something else before opting to clamp his mouth shut, resigned.
“It shall be done.”
~*~
The King felt somewhat better after he met with the Ambassador even if he continued to carry the weight in his chest with him the rest of the day. But somehow, it now felt more bearable. And soon, before he knew it, night fell and it was time for him to retire to his chambers. But as he was escorted there by his Servant, he found himself pausing before a window, catching a glimpse of the bright orange sky outside. He stopped and took it in for a moment, noticing how the pink wispy clouds met the golden rays of the sun as they peeked over the edge of the Earth before shrinking completely out of sight. The King found himself entranced.
“It is very strange,” The King said to his servant. “I have never noticed how beautiful the sunset is until now. Has it always been so?”
The Servant paused, uncertain how to answer The King. It was just as well because The King didn’t really expect an answer.
“How is it I have lived my life without noticing this. And then the day after I take that Merchant’s potion, I find myself marveling at it?”
“Perhaps one must be a little sad to love a sunset,” the servant said in a low voice. “Will that be all, my lord?”
“Yes,” The King said with a nod. “You may go.”
The next day, The King awoke to a light feeling all over him, as if the weight he had felt the day before had been completely lifted. His morning was a blur as he dressed and ate breakfast, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the merchant. The King received news that she had arrived in the mid-morning and The King wasted no time in allowing her an audience. Just moments later, an elderly woman hobbled to the center of the throne room, potions clinking at her side as she walked. She stopped when she reached the foot of the throne and looked up at The King with old but curious eyes.
“I see you are doing well, Potion Seller,” The King remarked.
“Very much so, my liege. Business has been good since news of our little “contest” spread.”
“That is good to hear,” said The King.
The Potion Seller cocked her head at this remark. “Do you find yourself satisfied with my bottle of sorrow?”
A beat of silence ensued before The King responded with a simple nod of his head.
“And tell me, did it make a difference?” The Potion Seller flashed her signature smile, mischievous and crinkling at the edges of her eyes. The King felt she somehow already knew the answer.
“I spared a man and am revered among the common folk as merciful. I came to a Kingdom’s aid when I was overcome with sorrow for them and gained their loyalty. And I watched the sunset with new eyes,” The King spoke slowly and thoughtfully, something he had not been accustomed to doing until the recent days. “Tell me, how is it sadness is so powerful?”
“I think you know,” The Potion Seller said, surprisingly gentle. “It would seem I have another satisfied customer!” The older woman’s eyes sparkled with jubilee before clicking her walking stick loudly upon the throne room’s marble floor and turning to leave, calling over her shoulder as she went, “My work here is done!”
Writing Prompt: The Carnival
Every year a magical, twisted carnival arrives in your town. It shows up with no warning. No one sees the set up and no one sees it taken down. It just vanishes after a week’s time. Every game here promises magical and immense prizes but the prices to play are often more than you want to pay…
Story Starter Sentences
“Once upon a time, not so long ago, in a land uncomfortably close by…”
“So, I know it looks bad,”
“What could go wrong?”
“Some nay-sayers will say what I did was “illegal” or “detestable” but I’m here to tell you what really happened…”
“Once upon a time, nothing went as planned.”
“I shoulder have believed them.”
“The clock had stopped.”
“Everything was going so well…”
“I can explain.”
“I few regrets per the moment.”
“I’m not exactly sure where to start, but I guess the beginning is typically the best place, so here we go.”
“The sky above was entirely lit.”
“Once upon a time, the end was met.”
“I don’t know what’s with poet’s obsession with rain. It never did me any good.”
“Once upon a time, I grew up.”
“The sun was setting, but that’s when my day began.”
“Things are very different.”
“I looked into the distance, unable to believe my eyes.”
“So this tale starts boring, not gonna lie.”
“Some say I’m cynical, I warn you.”
“It started with an explosion. Do I have your attention?”
“I may have killed someone.”
“I stopped to catch my breath…”
Writing Prompt: The Emotion Seller
A merchant bottles and sells emotions. Emotions like bravery, love, happiness, and so forth. But they have one bottle that they sell that no one has ever bought…
By the Brooke 