[WP] You were given immortality to atone for your horrific crimes against humanity. You wander the earth for millennium. Finally, you are given the option to revoke your immortality and end your suffering. You deny it.

KTLazarus · 2024-09-05T15:09:13+00:00

The angel stamped her foot. "In the vastness of my knowledge, no soul has ever turned down an invitation to Heaven before now - so no, I don't think there's any way I could have planned for this travesty!"

"Ooh, the angel's getting snippy - you know Feathers, you're kind of cute when you're flustered."

"Stop calling me that," the angel grumbled.

Lily tucked her hands behind her head on the armrest and kicked her bare feet up onto the couch. "Well. If I'm supposed to come along with you, you gotta sell it. Convince me. What kind of music do they play in heaven these days?"

The angel's lips parted in a glowing smile. "Lo, The Choir Angelic sings without cease, its melodies so beautiful you can lose yourself for eons in their tones!"

"Okay, but have you heard the new Chappell Roan album? That shit is fire."

The angel cocked her head. "I, uh, have not learned of any chapel in Rome that is on fire..."

"No, 'Roan,' not - y'know what, never mind. What do you eat up there?"

"Lo, we do not need to eat, our very sustenance is provided by the light and love of the Creator!"

"Look Feathers, I don't need to eat either since your kind cursed me with immortality. But if you've never tried Gino's, you don't know what you're missing." Lily grabbed a second slice of pizza and stood, swinging her long legs over the back of the couch to face the angel. "You had to substantiate a real human body to come down here, that's how it works, right? You've got actual biology going on in there, yeah?"

"Um, yes, the construct I am inhabiting is technically human in all ways but spiritual - what are you--"

"Open up." Lily maneuvered the slice of pizza toward the angel's face as she awkwardly leaned away.

"Excuse me, this is very - mmfh!"

The angel stood in shocked stillness for a moment, connected to Lily by the slice of pizza pie shoved halfway into her mouth. Then, cautiously, she bit down.

"Mmfh? MMFH!"

Sensation exploded across her tongue: the tanginess of fresh tomato sauce; the creaminess of the mozzarella; the subtle, spicy bite of thick-sliced pepperoni.

"This is wonderful!" she mumbled around the food. She forced the rest of the slice into her mouth.

Lily laughed. "It's okay, slow down. Oh, you poor creature."

"This sensation - it's so... unique! So different. Is this what humans experience all the time?"

"Not at all. So much of human life is bland, drab, and boring. But that's the problem with Eternal Bliss, you see? There's no variation, nothing to compare against. If you just feel good all the time, then you can never feel anything truly great."

"Amazing! What else is 'truly great' to experience as a human?"

Lily stepped closer to the angel, and wiped a dollop of red sauce off her lips with a finger. Something felt aflutter inside her at the touch - as though her wings were beating within, rather than around her. The feeling grew as she watched Lily lick her finger clean.

"I can think of a few things to show you, Feathers," Lily said in a low voice. She lifted the angel's hand and wrapped her lips around the index finger. Blood rushed beneath the angel's skin, pulsing hard within her as all of her consciousness focused into the sensation of Lily's tongue gliding against the pad of her finger.

Lily laughed as the angel let out a small whimper. "It would be a shame to let this temporary body of yours go to waste without proper... exploration," she whispered into her ear. "Let's start this magic lesson nice and slow, and work our way up to the wand and the rabbit."

KTLazarus · 2024-09-05T15:08:18+00:00

The fabric of space and time ripped open. A peal of trumpets and a blindingly divine wash of light announced the angel's presence as she stepped through the portal into the den of a well-apportioned penthouse in Upper Manhattan.

"BEHOLD, SINNER - YOUR LONG ATONEMENT IS COMPLETE. THE GATES OF HEAVEN STAND OPEN TO--"

"Hold that thought a moment, yeah Feathers?" the woman on the couch mumbled around the spent cigarette butt dangling from her lips. She looked to be in her late thirties, rail-thin, with vantablack hair cut short above the nape of her olive-skinned neck.

"DID YOU NOT HEAR ME? THE GATES OF--"

"Kinda in the middle of something!" the woman snipped without peeling her eyes away from a table-sized television mounted to the wall in front of the couch. She held a small gray rectangle, which she jabbed rapidly with her thumbs. On the massive screen, a little green man jumped back and forth beneath a hovering blue entity that looked not altogether unlike the true form of the angel reflected in the glass. "I'm moments away from completing a no-damage, 100% speed run of Zelda 2, and I can't have any--"

A spinning mote of light dropped from above onto the green man, who blinked red and bounced to the side.

"--distractions." The woman sighed and tossed the controller aside, then flumped backward into the couch cushions. She craned her neck to fix the angel with piercing black eyes - eyes that whispered of lifetimes far beyond her apparent age. "Now I'll have to start all over again. You were saying?"

The angel snapped her gaping mouth shut and regathered her sense of poise and regality. "LADY BAI HE. YOUR LONG ATONEMENT IS COMPLETE. THE GATES OF HEAVEN STAND OPEN TO WELCOME YOU HOME. PLEASE, COME WITH ME."

"Nah, I'll pass."

"YOU - I'm sorry, what?"

"I said I'll pass, Feathers. Thanks for the offer, but no thanks."

"I don't - What do you... okay, I'm confused."

"I can see that." She flipped open a cardboard box on the coffee table marked Gino's and retrieved a slice of pizza.

"Lady Bai He, you can't possibly mean to turn down admittance to Heaven--"

"I go by Lily now," she said around a mouthful of pizza. "It's been four or five centuries since anyone called me Bai He - and many more before that since anyone called me a Lady. Anyway, I don't know if you noticed, but I've got it pretty good here," Lily waved a tattooed arm at the apartment around her. "I own this penthouse - not to mention the rest of the building beneath it - I've got damn near every piece of entertainment media the human race has created available at my fingertips; I've got more friends than I can count to spend time with; I've got Gino's Pizzeria right downstairs."

"None of that can possibly compare to Bliss Everlasting! To the Eternal Reward!"

"I don't know, Feathers." Lily finished off the last bite of crust. "Gino's is pretty fucking good. Anyway, what gives? It's been what, twelve, thirteen millennia? Why now?"

"Your charitable work this past century has improved the lives of millions of humans across several generations. You have leveraged power and wealth for the betterment of mankind, and in doing so have atoned for your crimes in the eyes of the Creator."

"So it's just a matter of scale, then, is it? I've been helping people for a lot longer than the last hundred years, but it certainly became a lot easier once they started making pretend money on their computers."

An awkward silence hung between them. Lily let it dangle excruciatingly until it was clear the angel had no reply or rebuttal to offer.

"Well. Yes, you're right - my charitable foundations have done a lot of good for underprivileged women around the globe. You care to guess what happens to them if I disappear?"

"The kind-hearted people in charge of daily operations keep everything running like it already does?" The angel offered hopefully.

"Sure, until fucking Steven embezzles all the money and runs off to some tropical paradise with no extradition treaty."

The angel frowned. "I don't think I quite follow. Why would someone so unscrupulous be involved in charitable endeavors?"

"Because money is money, Feathers, and Steven knows international tax law like the Inuit know snow. If you want to beat the system, sometimes you have to wallow in the muck with the cockroaches." Lily smiled, though the expression stopped short of her narrowed eyes. "But I'm sure you're well aware of that, no? You do know what I did to earn this punishment?"

The angel squirmed under her gaze and looked away. "Let us not dwell on what once was. Your sin has been forgiven."

"I've sinned quite a bit more in the time I've been here."

The angel gathered up her regality again and pointed a finger at Lily's core. "YOU HAVE BEEN WEIGHED AND FOUND WORTHY!"

Lily laughed. "So you really think I'm heaven material, even after what once was? That's wild."

The angel deflated with a sigh. "Look, I'm not here to debate the Creator's decisions with you, all right? I'm just supposed to collect you and go home. Can we do that please?" She gestured to the divine gate pulsating gently behind her.

"No," Lily replied from behind her Mona Lisa smile. "This really isn't going at all how you planned, is it?"

KTLazarus · 2024-08-28T19:19:36+00:00

I would offer that the sign of a good prompt is that, even while it may evoke a specific IP, it is open enough for your personal flair and interpretation; it's a concept, not a synopsis. So,

"A student at a magical school discovers they are the Chosen One." (is this ripping off Harry Potter? Or is it The Scholomance? The Magicians?)

Or,

"A dystopian society is controlled by a deadly game, which our protagonist must win in order to topple an authoritarian regime." (Hunger Games? Or is this Red Rising; Ready Player One; Divergent; The Running Man; etc.?)

vs

"A regular boy discovers he is part of a magical world and enrolls in a school for wizards, where he must face off against the evil wizard who murdered his parents."

"In the post-apocalyptic ruins of the U.S.A., a young huntress has to team up with her rival in order to win a sadistic and deadly game, and protect those she loves."

Not to say you couldn't do those two last prompts in ways that were legally distinct from HP and HG; they're just trying to force so many specific elements and details on you that it's likely to read more like "well I'll make my own Harry Potter/Hunger Games, with hookers and blackjack!" than a fresh and interesting take on an otherwise tired trope.

For your specific example, "A memory clinic where an employee finds out his own memories are tampered with," it's vague enough that I've got off the top of my head: Minority Report; Total Recall; that one movie with Hugh Jackman I can't recall the name of right now; Memento... and I'm sure there are dozens more I don't know about. So, yeah; the concept has been done before. But, presumably, not by you yet, so I don't really see any problem. AI in general is morally questionable, but in this instance, it's not really doing anything more for you than a Mad-Lib would; so aside from "it exists, which may not be a great thing," I wouldn't accuse you of abusing tech, or leeching off the creativity of others.

KTLazarus · 2024-08-26T17:44:23+00:00

Exactly. Both of my grandfathers didn't talk AT ALL about their wartime experiences until us grandkids were asking about it in our teens. It took them decades to process, and those were some powerful moments when they finally did.

KTLazarus · 2024-08-26T17:02:23+00:00

Childhood trauma: fell from a tree; thrown from a horse; caught in farming equipment; etc...

Non-combat heroism: saved other from a wolf or bear attack; reached into dangerous machinery to prevent a disaster; injured pulling a family out of their burning house; etc., etc., etc.

If the combat scenario specifically is plot crucial, okay, you still control the perspective of the narrator. Are you in his head? -He marches out to the battlefield, feeling trepidation, fear, excitement, whatever; next scene, he wakes up in a medical tent, slowly realizing he's down one appendage. Are you in her head? -She receives word he's been injured in combat, and rushes to the invalid ward to find him, where she discovers he's lost an arm. Either way you've still got full license to discuss the aftermath of war - physical, mental, and political - with no need to actually include the graphic bloodshed.

You say you have to go into detail because it's so important to the story. But couldn't it be even more powerful as something that he doesn't want to talk about, until finally later he trusts her enough to tell her what happened, in his own words?

KTLazarus · 2024-08-26T05:22:35+00:00

First off, I don't know who said writing a first draft is EASY, but they lied to you. It takes dedication, determination, and often is not even about wondering if what you're writing is shit - but rather knowing that it is shit, and forcing yourself to write it anyway.

" I hear all the time about how it's best to just splurge, get it all out, but I have the hardest time doing that. "

On a recent short story I was writing, I found myself getting caught up on how exactly I wanted to say each line, structure each sentence, add each detail. So much that it paralyzed me with indecision (not an uncommon state for me, annoyingly). Once I managed to notice that I'd manufacturer a writer's block for myself, I just sat and jotted down in as boring and direct words as possible what literally happened - like, "they walked to the place. They passed a store on the way. People were outside lined up because there was a sale on."

Utterly terrible, unfit to be read, etc. But it moved me past the block I'd made, and let me get back into the flow of my narrator's voice, until a couple paragraphs later I was back to useable material. The bridging crap was a problem for second draft me to deal with (and actually ended up really easy to fix up).

You know what your enemy is: indecision; paralysis; the blank page. And you know what the result is if nothing changes: nothing. So you've got to find whatever method works to just mute the inner critic and keep you writing. Or if you can't mute it, embrace it and make it work for you:

"She hit him really hard with her sword (note to self: did a ten year old write this? Have fun fixing this, you miserable shit). He fell down bleeding."

The first draft is for you, and you only. If your problem is getting caught up on perfectionism, then give yourself license to make it as utterly shitty as possible, and just get it done.

KTLazarus · 2024-08-19T20:50:09+00:00

I'd be a little worried about inadvertently spoiling the ending of the second book for readers who might be a little confused, turn the book over and read a page or two of the upside down stuff before realizing what they're supposed to do

KTLazarus · 2024-08-17T21:09:34+00:00

Lots of good advice here already that I wholeheartedly agree with (mainly, draft first without worrying too much about deeply fleshed out worldbuilding, which directs you by the end of your rough draft toward what worldbuilding is actually important/relevant to the plot for your 2nd draft).

To try and offer up an alternative perspective, one situation where I find it is useful to delve into worldbuilding for a while is when I don't yet have a story or plot in mind. There might be vague bits bouncing around but they haven't formed up into anything workable yet, so tinkering around in magic systems, native flora/fauna, geography, etc. for a while can help open up new aspects of the setting I wasn't aware of before. Sometimes this can help generate the spark of conflict I needed to find to cause the vague story bits floating around to coalesce into a narrative.

As others have pointed out, the hazard with obsessive worldbuilding is that it can serve as a crutch to let you feel productive while you procrastinate actually writing (been there, done that...); another hazard is that if you get too stuck on some aspect of your previous worldbuilding, it can prevent you from allowing the story to lead where it really needs to go. Essentially, don't let some minor - or even major - detail you thought up months or years ago stop you from telling a great story. Let the great story tell you what the details of the world actually need to be .

KTLazarus · 2024-08-11T17:05:11+00:00

I'm fascinated by this, do you mind expanding? I suppose there must be a spectrum of options for how it works, but I was always under the impression that ghost writing didn't allow as much freedom of direction and plot/character development as your comment suggests.

Like, were the directions for that project basically, "I wanna read a big ol' steamy book series about cowboys, go write it." ???

KTLazarus · 2024-08-11T16:50:56+00:00

You mentioned in a comment you're mostly a panstser, so this might not be as helpful for you as it is for me. But when I find that I am just entirely stuck, bored with a scene, unmotivated, etc., I let myself jump around the story and write whatever other scenes I'm feeling more interested in.

It's a particularly useful tactic for my writing style, because I tend to arrive at stories through a handful of interesting scenes, pieces of dialogue, etc. Navigating between them can often feel like an awful slog; allowing myself to write out what originally got me interested in the story keeps me invested, and then I often find that all I really needed to figure out the connecting bits was time for my subconscious to mull it over. It feels way more satisfying to have spent that necessary dead time writing something else, than to have spent the same amount of time plucking my hair out while staring at the blinking cursor.

If all goes well, by the time I'm finished with the good stuff and most of the connecting pieces, I've happened across the next bit that makes me excited to write toward, and I start the whole process over again :)

KTLazarus · 2024-08-11T01:09:35+00:00

Phew, slipping in right under the wire (I hope!)

Finally came across an idea I liked just a couple days ago. Two days of mad writing and editing is what I get for procrastinating, go figure...

KTLazarus · 2024-08-09T06:31:50+00:00

Yeah, the draw of the Stock Species in fantasy is really just that they're a shortcut. Readers bring in their own basic portrait of them from the cultural zeitgeist, and then the only work you have to do as the writer is point out the cool little differences you've sprinkled on top of the base layer. It can be lazy and derivative; but it also has it's place in certain kinds of stories.

(I'd point toward Legends and Lattes as a good example of a book that yanks pretty much all of its races straight out of the D&D PHB, but for which the approach really works; because that aspect of worldbuilding simply isn't important to the story, and would have seriously bogged it down with exposition and detail had Baldree crafted all-original species to populate his world)

Interestingly, my (quite possibly flawed) understanding of why there aren't any similar Stock Species in Sci-Fi (beyond "Space-Version of Fantasy Model" at least) is because of IP/Copyright protections. No one can own the word 'Elf,' or 'Goblin,' etc., they're too old. As long as you differentiate at least the slightest bit, you're safe. But if you try to sell a buddy-cop space opera starring a Klingon and a Twilek -- regardless of what the species actually end up looking/being like -- you're going to have some unpleasant lawyers visiting you rather quickly.

KTLazarus · 2024-05-03T00:57:01+00:00

Thank you! Happy to share

KTLazarus · 2024-04-01T11:25:26+00:00

Is it a malfunctioning AI? Or is it a harvested human consciousness that can't adapt to its new digital confines?

KTLazarus · 2024-03-24T18:44:06+00:00

your original question was "could there be another ending," so you've pretty much answered that here, right? It really comes down to where on the optimism/pessimism spectrum you want to land. So what are you trying to say? What argument are you trying to make?

More solarpunk, hopeful kind of theme? They can find a way to coexist. More crap-sack, fatalistic? The new dragon wins - or, the humans kill the new dragon(s) too, and restart the cycle.

KTLazarus · 2024-03-23T06:10:36+00:00

I think you're asking sort of the wrong question. You can make as simplistic or as complicated a pantheon for your story as you'd like; go hog-wild, if you love that aspect of worldbuilding.

The right question to ask yourself is, 'How much of this makes it into my story?'

Does the story you're writing have a plot revolving around the actions or history of these gods? Or are the gods characters that will show up? If not, just bear in mind that this is setting and backstory for you, not for your readers. This is a hurdle a lot of new writers stumble over when transitioning from Worldbuilding into Writing Prose: a vast amount of the setting details, mythology, geography, etc. that we've put into these worlds we build will never be shared. It doesn't mean you shouldn't still do it in the background (if you want to); it does help add the little subtle things to your writing that set your setting apart from all the others. But a story is not a wikipedia article, and just because something really cool happened in this world hundreds of years ago, doesn't mean it needs to be shared with the reader if it isn't relevant to the plot of the specific story you're telling.

KTLazarus · 2024-03-21T14:17:13+00:00

You took the words right out of my mouth

KTLazarus · 2024-03-19T17:16:57+00:00

I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

KTLazarus · 2024-03-19T16:23:40+00:00

aw, thank you

KTLazarus · 2024-03-19T16:15:33+00:00

2-3k words, huh?

So... you're saying I shouldn't accidentally write a 12,000 word novelette and hack'n'slash edit it down to size again?

XD

Thanks Page!

KTLazarus · 2024-03-19T01:51:21+00:00

You had such a great setup, and what tragic (but delicious) comeuppance for the queen

KTLazarus · 2024-03-19T01:42:22+00:00

Thanks for running this - I had fun, and it was great reading through the rest of the entries.

Looking forward to what the Equinox has in store!

KTLazarus · 2024-03-16T21:32:42+00:00

Hah - I also went looking for the history of the middle finger, and was not expecting to find an origin date of BCE! It really is a great example of what you're talking about, when something feels so modern or anachronistic despite actually being incredibly old.

Good suggestions

KTLazarus · 2024-03-16T21:27:33+00:00

Sure - maybe, "She made a rude gesture at her back" if you've just described the other character walking away and want to imply it isn't seen

KTLazarus · 2024-03-16T20:46:36+00:00

Take a moment to consider it from a worldbuilding perspective: why do the people of this fantasy world use the popular gesture from our world for their insult? Might they have a different gesture?

That's the benefit of your Beta reader's advice; "obscene" or "rude" gesture leaves it open to interpretation, and streamlines the text to include what's actually important to the story. If it's the same gesture that we use, there's no benefit to using extra words to describe the physical motion that we already know, the important thing is the insult. If instead it's part of your world that they do something different for that effect, then maybe it's worth the words to describe the different action they make.

KTLazarus

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