writing

Please tell me if you think this would be useful for you.

I'm working on a story plotting app which focuses on value changes as the basis of the app. For each section of the story (beat, chapter, act) there are value changes (characters getting closer or further from some goal, threat, or other value). And I want to visualise these changes on a graph, so you can see how everybody's fortunes rise and fall.

There will still be the standard components, something similar to index cards to plot out the actual action of each chapter and beat. But the unique addition that I'm bringing here is you can see everybody's changes of fortune, like watching the stock market, or maybe like reading music.

It will be a desktop application (written in python and JavaScript).

So, does anybody think this would be useful to your writing? Are there other things you might want to see added to such a piece of software?

“And if you follow me out there, I will shit a live ANIMAL!”

Mike Murray slams the crooked screen door so hard it boings back open. Nothing quite like a failed door slam to further twist a man. Torn between slamming it again and stomping off, Mike opts for stomp. Fuck her, he thinks, if Master Piggles slips in the dog door and tears shit up, her problem not mine.

His wife Sheila has that infrequent, yet persistent, bee in her bonnet this morning. That bee is named jealousy, and in Sheila’s case, it’s more like a hornet.

Sheila believes men are dogs that would fuck a snake, given an extra hand to hold its mouth open. There is no misandry involved in this belief, if you can get your head around that. She doesn’t hate men in the slightest. A cheating man is simply a man with an opportunity, a natural law of the universe, unavoidable as death and gravity. In Sheila’s world, busty blondes forever throw themselves at her husband’s feet and he, only a weak male, is powerless to resist. It’s her job to fend off the barbarians at the gate, keep her man pure.

He might actually sign up for that gig if he could get it, but middle-aged white guys, even with factory original teeth and hair, aren’t in that sort of demand unless said guy is loaded. Michael R. Murray is not loaded. Always a faithful man, old hound dog faithful, the accusations cut deep. If he’s going to be accused of dipping his wick in strange pussy, he might as well get some strange pussy. It’s just not fair.

The seed that grew today’s go round was a text message.

“HEY YOU! What’s up? Want to meet up tonight?” Either a wrong number or a scam, Mike doesn’t care. But Sheila cares. Sheila cares very much.

“Who is this person? Ha! Who will you meet? Ha!” She always throws that Filipino “ha!” when she’s bent. Today she’s well past bent, she’s positively corkscrewed.

“Hell I know babe, someone probably fat fingered their text.”

“I want to know who this is! Ha!”

“Then call the damned number and ask! I dare you! I’m out!”

Mike chunks his rifle case in the F150’s rusty bed, yanks his camo hat down tight and gives the key a vicious twist. I’ve got to calm my happy ass down or I’m getting pulled over before I get there, he thinks. He’s only had four Keystones, barely a buzz for an old soldier like Mike, but maybe just enough buzz to ride out the weekend in a freezing cell, both watched over by, and bunking with, Santa Rosa County’s finest. “Maybe I’ll get hammered out there, spend the night. Bitch thinks she’s mad now...” But that’s no good and he knows it. An hour after sundown she would come marching down the trail, hunting those ever elusive bimbos, stripping Mike’s very last reserve of cool. There won’t be any bimbos, and they both know it, but the forms must be followed in these sorts of things.

It’s a cool, breezy October day in the Year of our Lord 2024, Saturday, 19 past 2 o’ the clock, poofy cumulus graze an otherwise clear blue sky and he’s headed for their camp in the boonies. Camp is Mike’s little slice of redneck heaven.

Turning the corner just past where the road peters out into forest, visitors are greeted with a flag strung between two pines, “Welcome to Swinebrook! A place to camp, kayak, canoe, throw lead and other redneck business!” Centered between the text on a brown nylon background is a stylized pink pig, giving the viewer a porcine side-eye. As with the other signs, tree trimmings and miscellaneous obstructions, it’s hung to clear a 5’8” man. Swinebrook is a bit inhospitable for talls, and that suits him just dandy. After all, it is his place. OK, their place since he married Sheila, but he’s got 8 inches on her. The talls have enough advantages in life, they can duck now and again if they want to visit.

Swinebrook sits on 5 acres of prime Northwest Florida swampland. When his inheritance landed at the credit union (grandma having gone starkers with Alzheimer’s), he figured a land purchase was a now or never kind of deal. Knowing he would eventually nickel and dime the money away if he didn’t make a play, he found the perfect getaway spot. Just off I-10, buried far back in the forests on a dead-end private road (damned near impassible if the neighbors haven’t plowed the sand lately), Swinebrook is the sort of place no one stumbles into. Who would go back there and for god’s sake why? Guests often make a crack about banjo music. Yeah, that one never gets old, such sublime wit. But he’s not too annoyed. After all, if city people find the area sketchy, good, keeps ‘em out. Hailing from across the Pond, Sheila’s friend Nancy had come for a visit, and she is just such a city person.

One morning of her brief stay at chez Murray, Nancy came scrambling back in the house, having been enjoying her coffee on the front porch.

“Forgot I was in Florida and there might be alligators roaming about! What was I thinking?! Ha ha!” “No worries!”, Mike soothed, “We’re in town, far enough from water that they’re not walking overland. Besides, they’re lazy ambush predators, not going to chase anyone.”

He didn’t have the heart to tell Nancy that a gator big enough to take on a woman her size would be a rare one indeed. Americans keep monsters of that caliber stored deep in the Louisiana bayous where they belong, and in any case, Mike doubted Nancy could run from much of anything.

The Murrays, having gushed about Swinebrook, took Nancy out on her last night. Figuring it highly improbable she had ever seen an AR-15 in the London burbs, he thought she might get a kick putting some lead downrange, a crazy American tale to share over mulled wine (or whatever the hell they do) with the blokes back home. “My goodness Nancy, tell us you are pulling our leg! How very exciting! Does he carry it to market and is it true that Stateside visitors are issued loaner pistols? How many brigands has he gunned down?”

They never get as far as popping off a few. Nancy was getting visibly nervous as the sun went down. Truth be told, she was damned near twitching in fear. “Looks like it is getting dark! (big smiles) We should probably be going back, yes? Ha ha! But I really like your place and it’s been great, great fun!” Turns out, Nancy had never been in the woods before, was probably keeping her eye out for rabid leopards and toothy baboons. Mike is soon to find Nancy’s fear quite reasonable. There are far worse things lurking in the swamp than common reptiles. He was pretty much ready to roll out, which was fortunate, as scrambling into clothes, filling the cooler, and loading the truck, all while trying to pitch a meaningful conniption, kind of takes the wind out of the old sails. Even were it not God’s perfect day, Swinebrook would still be the place to get badly needed peace.
Mike has the routine down pat, after all, he’s done it 100 times.

Unzip the tent porch and peg the flaps back through the nylon loops, open the main room, grab some targets, tape and headphones, hang the paper on the range. Next, unlock the raggedy storage shed, fill a couple of glass ashtrays with today’s chosen caliber, maybe a box of shells if that’s what we’re doing. Back to the tent porch, twist the cooler spigot, and dunk the fresh ice and beer while last week’s water runs out the drain hose. Walk to the big table by the fire ring, set the beer down, have a seat, good to go, and… back to the tent, because he has forgotten to snag a koozie, inevitable as death and gravity.

If it were summer, he would grab the sun umbrella out of the shed, but it’s not that kind of day. It’s the kind of day for breeze in your hair and sun on your face and Mike is here for it. He is going to follow the usual plan, drink a beer and revel in the silence. And when that gets boring, he will crank Spotify’s country list and shatter that silence with his Colt .45 or shotgun of choice. That paper ain’t gonna put holes in itself. Today’s choice is the new-to-him Parkhurst coach gun, two barrels of old-school, 12-gauge fury. He’s pretty sure he’s got it working smooth, if only the new sight bead doesn’t fly off. Again.

He pulls the half rotten beach chair off the storage hook and unfolds it. Probably fair to say, Mike has no ass, or as first wife always said, he suffers a medical condition doctors refer to as “noassatall”. Lacking stature and padding, a couple of porch pillows lining the sprung seat is a must. The plan is to spend 20 or 30 minutes sipping beer and simply looking around, never know what might pop up.

Last month an osprey landed high up at the far end of the range, polite enough to let him watch through his scope for a few minutes. Two weeks ago he got his first up close and personal look at a pileated woodpecker. Those are some big mama jammas! Absolutely stoked, he ran straight to Dollar General and bought a feeder and pair of suet blocks. So far, no repeat performance, but Mike’s a hopeful guy.

He has just crushed his second Keystone Light and is headed to the tent for another when two local pups come tear-assing up the trail from the nearest pond, blowing right by without so much as a “Howdy do!” You know the sort of country puppy; big, excitable, friendly, dumber than a sack of hammers. These two doorknobs typically creep up on visitors, silent as ninjas. Mike has about jumped out of his skin a time or three, looking down and BAM, there they are, right at his knee, patiently waiting for a head rub. They are not waiting around today.

Nothing rustling out there, nothing giving chase, the hell? Still, Mike’s plenty damned spooked, this not being a normal event on a sunny Saturday afternoon. They wouldn’t run from a human, unless it was beating their asses, and even then, they would stop for him, hoping for succor. Black bears are around, and though they occasionally tump out the trash cans by the highway, he has never seen evidence of them close to camp. A Florida panther might be worrisome, especially a female trailing a pair of cubs, but they’re far rarer than black bears. He has only ever spied a single male, a hulking beast on a lonely creek far from here. Besides, if there was one back there it would probably have given a scream, and that distinctive woman-being-ax-murdered sound carries.

Slinging his AR over his shoulder, and promptly getting it ass backwards, he gets it right on the second try. He wears his rifle like all the cool kids, high and tight across the chest. Having studied a GunTube video presenting a pair of mercs taking some R&R from killing Russians, he thinks he’s finally got the sling setup right. At least it hangs comfortably, is quick to sight and he doesn’t get whacked in the dick every time he bends over.

Our man is not the shoot first, excitable sort. Mike thinks that particular brand of asshole deserves a Darwin Award, and they often get one. Still, he has his rifle pointed low but ready in case something murderous comes crashing out of the palmettos. Not taking his eye off the path, he finds himself both indecisive and torn with curiosity. Maybe an angry squirrel rattled them? They’re only puppies after all, might be running from a scary looking bug. On the other hand, if there’s a black bear or panther back there, he doesn’t want to put himself in the position of having to shoot it. Excepting wild pigs, Mike doesn’t have the heart to kill unless it’s a mercy thing, and those few times, though necessary, have stuck to him, every death a crystal clear memory. He may be a gun shooter, but he’ll never be a gunslinger.

He stands there a full minute, mouth slightly open, listening, head swiveling on a short arc.

“OK Mike, get your shit together and calm the fuck down.”

Hearing his own voice helps, though it didn’t come out as loudly as expected. Still nothing. He pats his left kidney for the third time, yep, pistol still there, loose in its holster, ready.

“Oh god damnit, grow a pair and just walk down there. Even if it’s a big animal, a shot or two will scare the shit out of it.”

Having got his pecker up, Mike sets off, not quite creeping, nor in any rush. 150-feet down he turns left into Sheila’s personal site, Brookside. Brookside has its own cute flag: “Sit a spell, relax and unwind, watch the sun go down.” Same statant pig, yellow on a blue background this time, a perfect Pantone match for Ukraine’s national colors. Mike is a big fan of both Ukrainians and vexillology, though he can only pronounce the former. Gaily decorated, yet tasteful, Brookside rests at peace. Minnows pop just under the swampy water, all the action there is to see. Maybe there was a low splash down trail? Turtle falling off a log no doubt. Happens all the time, too skittish to ever let him get a peek. Country animals are not city animals, country cousins run at a pin drop.

Pointing south, the trail widens into a boulevard flanked by the shallow ponds that make up a good chunk of Swinebrook. Rue Royal the sign says, très Vieux Carré. Mike being a drunk, and Sheila, born and raised a big-city Manilla girl, are right at home in the French Quarter. The next campsite down the rue is the Garden District and you can just bet it has its own cutesy flag. (Green pig on that one.) Mike lowers his rifle, rests his arms a minute, listens. Nada.

“In for a penny I guess. Let’s just walk to the end, see what we see.”

Feeling a little bolder, having sensed nothing in the wide open space, he sets off again with a little more spring in his step. Down at the Garden District camp, he hears another, closer splash. And was that a grunt?

God. Damn. Despite loving wild animals, and having a pet pig back home, Mike will shoot wild boars on sight. Thinking on the possibility of a charging pig, and it won’t be just one, he tightens up. A sounder of only 10 animals would level the main camp in an hour flat, he’s seen them in action. If he finds pigs rooting in the muck, Mike is prepared to kill every last motherfucking one of them. Only question is how many he can nail before they run oft.

Beyond the Garden District, the trail cramps up. Not much down here, he hasn’t cleared his way this far yet. Ducking a fat banana spider’s golden web and twisting past a pair of trees, Mike gets a good look at the far end of the pond and his brain promptly strips gears.

Sixty feet away, just across the water, a centaur is chowing down on a decomposing corpse. Not your Harry Potter centaur, chest muscles rippling, hair flowing, head held high and noble, no, not that sort. One of those would be a mercy compared to this abomination before the Almighty. Filthy and stinking even from this distance, it bends down to tear another chunk of pig flesh. Rather than bringing the rotten meat to its face, it bends at the waist and feeds, arms darting in and out of the corpse like a crab picking over a dead fish. The torso is sweaty slick, the flanks splashed with fetid swamp muck. Its hair, where patches haven’t fallen out (torn out?), is long and greasy, a sickly yellowish gray. Its right eye is a white haze, blind for certain, but Mike’s not seeing details right now. Mike has gone a little blind himself.

He stands mostly frozen, yet vibrating so hard you can almost feel the static rolling off his body. His rifle hangs loose in its sling, dropped to his chest, forgotten. Somewhere along the line, he’s fumbled the laser sight to ON. The dot jitters on the ground to his left like a nerve gassed spider. His arms hang slack at his sides, the left hand giving the occasional twitch, mouth loose, eyes jitter bugging in tight arcs. He can’t feel his heart, but it’s hammering and it’s about to choke him out. Though drawing air just fine, his neck walls feel like overinflated inner tubes, carotid pumping in, jugular pumping out, both struggling with the raging blood flow. To an outside observer, his neck pulses like it’s ready to give birth. He did promise his wife a live animal, but that was to come out the other end.

When a person is scared shitless, time doesn’t slow down, just seems that way. Instead, the brain speeds up, starts scrambling for options. My brothers and sisters in Christ, Mike is beyond scared shitless, Mike is bugfuck and his brain is running wide out on the open highway, hell bent for leather. Growing up in the sticks, he’s been in a few near-death scrapes, entertainment being different in the boondocks, but he’s avoided the aforementioned Darwin Award. So far. At those times when death was certain, a calm, and mostly unused, part of his brain kicked in and calmly informed him:

“If you don’t do something in the next, oh, 3 or 5 seconds, you are going to die. Right now. Your call my man.”

Before today, he had always found a way out, found that “something”, that ass-saving option. At the moment, no options are bubbling up. His mind has, at least momentarily, jumped ship. “OK Mikey take care love you bye BYE!” His mouth opens and closes twice, lips pressing together and out, maybe trying for a plosive? “Please”? Who he might be begging, and for what, remains an open question.

Hallucination is the idea that begins to get him unstuck.

OK OK OK. This can’t be real. So what did I get in my body to cause this?

A traitorous part of his brain pipes up, “C’mon! You ate your body weight in hallucinogens back in the 90s and never saw a thing that wasn’t there. Perhaps you’ve been on a 4-day meth binge and forgot? Nah. Also, see that pig head sitting on its stump staring back at you? See the flies blacking out it’s eyes and the maggots roiling out its snout? You’re not that imaginative my friend. While we taking a reality check, hear any birds? Even the insects have gone quiet. Suppose they’re all hallucinating right along with us?”

OK, I’m still calling this a psychotic break. I have to get out of here, get help.

“No warnings, no precursors, no sleepless night? Not even a twitch? You’re toodling along in the woods and BAM, centaur? Hell, if our brain cooked up a centaur, it wouldn’t be that horror. It’s there, I promise you.” Whatever I’m seeing or not seeing, I’m out.

Mike tries to turn, but his head is in a vice, no way on god’s green Earth can he take his eyes off the horror. The fiend, on the other hand, intent on his rotten pig, hasn’t glanced at him. Apparently decomposing swine makes for a toothsome meal.

Maybe it hasn’t noticed me.

“Yeah, right. You know it knows you’re here. He’s just busy noming up his succulent din din. That animal reeks and it’s grown maggots, been dead a week, easy. It probably slaughtered the pig and left it to ripen up in the sun, came back today for harvest. And you’re next.”

Had Mike summoned the courage to look further afield, he might have seen the wisdom in that penultimate phrase, “came back”.

30-feet behind and to the left of the centaur floats a hole in reality. Nothing of the Dungeons and Dragons sort, surrounded by shrieking dragon heads, promising eternal punishments drowning in the Abyss, only a perfect circle of vegetation, too perfect to be natural. 10 feet wide, it floats just off the forest floor. If he had eyes to see, he might note the quality of light past the circle, see a redder glow, as if the day is further along in that world. Through the looking glass, the vegetation is both darker and greener, listless despite the cool breeze on this side.

He’s screaming at his body to obey, turn, run, anything, just move god damn it. OK, compromise, just back up, slowly. He makes it 10 feet until he backs into a tree and his knees melt out from under him. Falling on his ass, the rifle’s assist button pokes him under the solar plexus, hard. Just what the doctor ordered, Mike scrambles to his feet and jerks his weapon level. The strap flies taught, a perfect fit, the red-dot sight points dead center on the beast’s torso. He jerks the trigger, no bang, no click, safety is up.
The centaur jolts straight, freezes and stares him in the eye. Black blood and greasy fat flow down its chin, dribbling on its chest. Mike’s soul comes unmoored, but his legs can still pump. He is on autopilot and he is off to the races.

Sun is down, moon is up, and Sheila is positively fucking torqued off. She slams her Toyota to a stop behind Mike’s truck and bounces out, lights on and running, intent on scalping the first floozy she lays hands on. Somebody, maybe two somebodies, is going to be very damned sorry in the next 60 seconds. She has no idea that a few hours ago, Mike was as sorry as he had ever been in his life.

She stamps halfway to the turn which will open onto the main camp before unease sets in. If Mike’s here, and here’s his truck, he should have lights going. Even if he’s out of batteries, there should be a blazing fire visible through the trees.

She calls out in a voice meant to project authority, meant to declare, “I am here on business and my business is you.” Starting off with steely command, her voice trails down meekly. “Michael! Where are you? HA! Why don’t you answer your phone Michael?! … Who is here?! Michael?”

Silence.

“Mike?”

Turning the corner, sure enough, the camp is cold and dead. Sheila can’t put her finger on it, can’t quite articulate what is off going by the slim moonlight. She fumbles her iPhone flashlight and shines it from side to side. Nothing is closed or put away properly, like he simply up and left. And even if he wandered off, and there aren’t many places to wander, most of the land being impassable muck, he sure as hell wouldn’t have left his prize 12-gauge hanging on the gun rack.

Now she is positively spinning in circles, sweeping her meagre light around and around. She has completely forgotten the keychain light her husband gave her. It’s tiny, but it outshines a lousy phone LED all day (night) long. She inches over to the table looking for clues. Maybe she’ll luck out and he brought her pink Bersa Thunder to play with. It’s the only handgun she feels comfortable with, and while it might take her a minute to get it in operation, it would sure as hell beat a sharp stick, which she doesn’t have either. Shuffling along the edge of the table, she kicks something soft, partially hidden. She doesn’t look, assuming it’s some of the crap he stores under there spilling out as it always does. Her lack of attention may be a temporary mercy because she’s pushed an old combat boot back under the table, a combat boot with the owner’s foot inside.

Openly weeping and nearing dead panic, Sheila flails out the Stations of the Cross, also known as the Way of Sorrows, and starts muttering a Hail Mary. She is feeling the need for all the Grace she can summon this evening.
“Oh, Jesus help me…” She pronounces it “jee-sous”. Mike always found that kind of cute.

And was that a grunt?!

Ever wanted to start a personal blog, but didn't know which of the 50 one-thousand-word-user-agreement writing corporations to sign-up with? Would you rather start a blog in the fediverse instead? Well, you're in luck or something: I started my own Write Freely instance, focused on creative writing and free expression, shunning soul-sucking monetization schemes and AI-garbage. It's a VERY simple UI that uses Markdown for post formatting and CSS for blog customization. No commenting, no like-system, just writing in a community of people who f&$king love writing.

More info in the main link, or here (same thing): https://howdoyouspell.cool/cool/community-guidelines

We aim to be a no-judgement place to just post whatever you want. Feel free to join at your leisure. Since it's privacy focused, you don't even need to put in an email to sign up. Registration is open for the next 24hrs or so. It's totally free - I'm just looking to build a community of like-minded writers. The community guidelines are outlined in pretty exact detail, so I encourage you to read through them before joining. You can have up to 2 blogs per user.

I'm a part of a writers group that meets twice a month. In that group there's an older man named Lee who write police procedurals, either novels or short stories. He spent much of his life as a cop in the area, so he knows the exact voice of those stories, and even draws on personal experience to make interesting or often fun little cop adventures. I got into a conversation with him after our group meeting recently, and we talked about the general unhealthiness of fiction publishing in recent years, if not recent decades.

"We're in a game of ego," he told me. And I wasn't entirely sure what he meant by that at the time.

Lee told me, "When I was younger, there were eight magazines that published police procedural stories. Do you know how many there are now?"

I expected, given the size of the internet, that he was going to say a truly gigantic number, but the didn't. He said it was two.

"Everybody else flocked to the internet. And on the internet, they don't even have to pay you."

There was a time, long ago, when people got magazines in the mail full of short stories and novel excerpts. Sometimes I when I read interviews from my favorite authors, the older ones will talk about their early inspirations, reading sci-fi magazines in the 60s, or short story collections of all genres. The authors of those times could mention specific magazines that were their favorites, and the writers who found fame and recognition by first being discovered because of the shorts within those pages.

I was born in the 90s. I'd never heard of such a thing. I don't think I've even seen any such magazine. There must be some in print, but nobody I know reads them. They just don't exist anymore.

If I wanted to be discovered as an up and coming author, my choices are, first, to attract a publisher without any past writing experience to my name, or second, to get my name out there via online journals, or third, to publish indie and hope that my writing is so wildly successful that a publisher asks me to team up with them.

That first option is like winning the lottery. To get the attention of a major publishing house, which are the only ones that could sell more than a hundred copies, you first need a literary agent. Literary agents receive thousands of query letters from aspiring authors and only take on a handful each year. If agents say yes to 10 in 5,000 authors, that is 0.2% of queries. Even if your writing is in the top 10% of quality, you still have a 1/50 shot of being selected. And that's just getting an agent. Getting representation from a literary agent does not guarantee that a publisher willl pick up your book. It's harder to find data on how many authors get through this next layer, but it's yet another cut into your already abysmal odds.

The second option, building a resume out of online journals, is futile. There are hundreds of these journals online who also receive thousands of submissions a day, and even if you are lucky enough to find a journal that accepts your work, hardly any of these journals are noteworthy enough to impress a publisher. I personally had two short stories published in small online journals back in 2017, when I thought this was a viable route. The only reason I won the numbers game here was because they were journals nobody had heard of, and both ceased to exist within two years, essentially deleting those lines from my writing resume. Writers might also feel tempted to win contests, which implies more prestige to the winners, but the majority of these have entry fees often over twenty dollars, which makes this only viable for somebody willing to throw hundreds of dollars into a lottery. Again, this is a lottery, because even if your writing is in the top 10%, there's still hundreds of others writing at the same level of quality.

The third option, being an indie author and praying for success, is a fucking hellscape. Since COVID in 2020, everybody suddenly wanted to become an indie author and use it to make money on the side. The largest of these markets is self-publishing on Amazon, and it's largest to the point that nobody can realistically expect to see sales without using Amazon as a publishing platform. This market is bloated and toxic. There are so many people fighting over scraps that it's even more of a lottery than finding a literary agent.

I've self-published on Amazon. It was a waste of my time. First of all, the only way to get noticed above everybody else it to pour money into ads and ad services. You're essentially guaranteed to spend more on ads than you're going to make in profit. Second, the market is toxic. When I self-published my first novel on Amazon, there was some asshole going around leaving one-star reviews on every new release in an effort to "weed out the competition." So my first release was instantly met with a one-star rating and zero sales. It was unsellable from day one. I took it down and put up a different book. Same result. Now we get to the third problem of self-publishing. Fake reviews. You can pay people to review your book for you. You can drop a hundred bucks, and a group of people will leave reviews without even buying your book. It's incredibly easy, and I'm sure every success story started by buying fake reviews. It's so easy to buy reviews, I did it by accident once. I paid an advertising service a couple hundred bucks, and they claimed to "market my book toward people who have a tendency of leaving reviews." A week later, I had six reviews with four- or five- star ratings, all of whom wrote reviews that made it obvious they hadn't actually read the book. One of them got the gender of the main character wrong. And then a few days later, somebody else left a one-star review, claiming that a few of the character motivations were unrealistic. Now, I've seen indie books on Amazon that were nigh unreadable and scraped by with two-star reviews. A one-star review because of clunky characters, though? Really?

So self-publishing is, like the writing contests, only a viable route if you have a ton of cash on hand to spend, like an investment. Even then, you're gambling. So how did we get here?

There are fewer major publishers than ever before. They just keep merging, creating a monopoly. But let's ignore the economics of monopolies and mergers and such for a moment. Let's return to my friend Lee and do a simpler experiment.

Lee claims that, since his youth, the number of procedural police magazines has decreased from eight to two. That means it is now four times harder to get your story published, simply because there's less room in the market. Not only that, given Lee's age, I imagine his youth is referring to the 60s or 70s. The population of the United States has doubled since then, and assuming that new aspiring authors are born at an equal rate across the population, the number of aspiring authors has also doubled. So now we have to cut our odds of success in half again, because the competition has doubled.

It is now eight times harder to publish a police procedural than it was fifty years ago. Rather than increasing the number of magazines in this genre, to account for the rising number of submissions, the magazines have dried up, preventing perfectly good authors from breaking into the scene.

There are one eighth as many authors in that genre as there could be.

"We're in a game of ego." Even if you are literally the greatest writer on the planet, the odds of getting published are shockingly slim. That's the game of ego. You can keep improving your craft, and improving, and improving, but you will be told no a thousand times no matter how good you think your writing has become.

I'm just starting to write and a thing I've noticed is that I can't seem to be able to just 'go with the flow' when writing the first draft. Like I often imagine stories in my head and how they would go line by line, problem is when I sit down to write all of that my brain kind of stops doing that and instead tries to recall what I've come up with before, which doesn't really work (or at least makes the process much longer). I know it will probably get better the more I write, but do you have any tips on how to overcome that?

I hope this is allowed here, if not, feel free to remove my post, mods

My name is Richard Silva, I'm a young Brazilian writer(17) who just published their first book. Since I was a kid I wrote things, but for the first time, I made something I am going to share with the world. Currently, I'm finishing Brazilian integral high school, which in other words, wastes 9 hours of my day with mostly nothing. It's very stressful, and leaves me with not much appropriate time for actually writing quality content, so you might imagine how many reviews this book had to get before I felt like I was satisfied.

I would like to encourage you to read my book, and share your thoughts on it, of course, it's me first one, so constructive criticism is very welcomed. My desire is to be able to make a living out of my art, and when reading this book, you are helping me make this dream possible :)

And please, if you did enjoy it(even if it's a little bit), leave me a review on google play saying how much you like it, and why you like it. As for you, fellow Brazilians, a version in Portuguese is coming soon!

Basically the title. In what ways do you share your writing? Do you look to self publish, go through professional organizations, or possibly publish online? I've never really shared much of my more serious or longer writing and would love to hear the ways people get their stories out there.

It could be something like, "I thought XYZ was easy and ABC was hard, but--"

Or it could be something where you thought you HAD to do something one way (organize, use a certain program, write in a certain POV, etc), but you ended up handling it in a fashion that was different once you became experienced enough to see things differently.

What preconception was dashed as you grew in experience and skill?

For me its:

1. The villain's motivation isn't revealed to the reader/audience (or, if it is, at the very end; and, ofc, the author should go through the work of providing the motivation if it isn't seen)

2. Some of the villains actions seem impulsive or out-of-the-blue. Especially for a villain that's usually cold and calculated this can seem especially creepy because you aren't sure if the impulsive action was intentional or if the villain is snapping.

3. There's a softer side to the villain. Maybe he just bombed a synagogue but he still needs to pick up wrapping paper for his son's birthday party.

There are a few more that are probably honorable mentions. And I'm mostly in agreement with the video about great villain tropes. But honestly one I've never really liked is the "villain monologue," and I'm surprised that made the cut (but I definitely don't mind seeing someone else's POV). It just seems too much like a Saturday morning cartoon. If the villain is really that dangerous, why doesn't he just kill the protagonist and be done with it? Why give him a few seconds (or 5 minutes) to escape? Perhaps to add to the screen runtime/word count?

What do other people think? Are there villain tropes you like? Are there ones you can't stand?

Hey all, I'm working on an old western which has some native characters, predominantly of a fictional tribe. I'm wondering if you all think it would be understandable if people spoke (in dialogs only) as the times and used terms like "Indian" or, even worse, "Injun", or should I stick with using tribe names and the word "native"? Or something different altogether?

Thanks!

Im trying to put a Scifi universe down on (digital) paper and Ive found that the process doesnt really lend itself to linear type word processing software. Least not for me.

Is there some tool that writers use for plotting out long arcs or keeping their reference material easily accessable to avoid anachronisms or inconsistencies. Possibly something that allows internal linking to other chapters?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3308843

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"What’s your process like?"

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Me:

So everyone's different, and I am autistic. I have an extensive memory for details, quick and sometimes instinctive understanding of many fiction principles, and a lot of visual thinking. (I have my shortcomings too, especially over-thinking and over-explaining instead of showing.) But I think at least some of what I do can work for you.

1. Discipline is better than motivation. Motivation ends, discipline stays. Eventually, hopefully like me, you'll get to a point where you feel wrong if you didn't write every day (or 5 days a week in my case). This hugely helps keep you motivated

2. I am a one-trick pony with it; but I always started with a theme, a feeling, something important I want to share and say. For me it was a terrible childhood, my desire for healing and family, my idealism towards wanting a greater world, and how we all need to become better and happier people to achieve it. I wanted to capture that idea and feeling since I was like six. While for my novel the lesson may be larger than life, every fiction should have a point to make, even if that point is "things in this book are awesome; here, have a good time because you deserve it". Your point should be memorable even if small.

3. Once you have a theme, start coming up with characters and scenes that support that theme. Write down the things that look or feel awesome in your head, the things that you always wanted to share and show, and come up with your best scenes first. Try to build a story around them. If you have important messages to say, build your plot around them. Have the characters' stakes revolve around those scenes. Once again this is just my method; but I don't think you can go wrong writing heart first.

4. For me, I found it easiest to quickly just outline scenes and jot down what you want to happen, what you want said. Finish all the basic sentences, events, and ideas for that scene, move to the next scene. Once you have all the chapters, this will be your first "outline"— even if you end up doing a little (or more) prose in that outline, like I did. Once you have that full story (which probably won't be good yet!) you can start figuring out where it needs fixing.

   This is my first novel, and I'm technically still doing the second draft. But I learn very fast and retain a ton of helpful information; so I mostly know what my next phases and fixes are, all the way through my first and later drafts. I made a little changelog of each thing I want to focus on in future versions, all numbered in preparation, as if this was a piece of software.

5. Once I'm done with the versions that I call "outlines", I will finally start drafting in full prose, allowing me to focus on the flow and beauty and clarity of my words, since the story itself will already be figured out and awesome.

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One way I think of the whole process of noveling is this, modified from game development advice:

1. Make it function
2. Optimize
3. Make it pretty (write your prose draft)
4. Optimize again

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There's a lot of other advice I can give, but I wouldn't exactly know where to begin! The most important thing, I think, is to figure out what time of day your brain writes best, and create a routine around it. No novel was ever finished without persistence! <3

Also, I recommend reading https://mythcreants.com/ and getting lost in https://tvtropes.org/. They can really help! Try watching Lindsay Ellis on Nebula, or http://atopthefourthwall.com/. Some of these may not be about novel-writing, but you can learn a lot about good stories through any of these platforms, and all of that helps!

So my novel takes place in an afterlife and focuses on one major character, as they try to heal from childhood trauma, learn helpful mental health tools, and newly take in this beautiful universe.

The other major characters are also developing ethically and emotionally, and we need to see inside their minds and watch them learn.

Meanwhile the past was literally a different life, and there's not a lot of past talked about in the narration— more thought about or talked about by the characters.

So with that, I've decided that the best way to write my novel is first-person present tense with the main character; and then with the occasional times where I need to focus on other characters when the main isn't around, third-person present tense.

This is not a common choice, but I think it is the best choice for my particular novel. I think it's the best choice for my novel's sense of immediacy, for getting inside characters' heads, and for experiencing many new things from the main character's viewpoint.

Also also, I intend to make my main character Chris/Solemn completely-ambiguous when it comes to gender; so that really works with the first-person perspective.

Tell me your opinions or tangents!

So I'm on v2 of my novel. I could call it "second draft", but it's more of the second semi-prose outline. I have a fight scene in Chapter 13.

The fight scene involves an inexperienced demigod villain, an inexperienced demigod hero, the hero's kung fu master mom who is not a demigod, and their support android. It's all at the mom's house in front of the ocean. The demigods have flight, telekinesis, increased strength, and semi-invulnerability when they maintain their personal body forcefields.

Either way, here's a few things I learned while writing this fight scene, off the top of my head:

1. Fight scenes really aren't natural to me. I always wanted to write this science fantasy action piece, and I'm learning that I'm much better at philosophy, and at painting a picture of wonder, than I am at action. I already instinctively understood how to pace a fight scene quickly with terse sentences and good flow, and to not focus on choreography. But planning out the actions is still tough.
2. I kinda knew this, but: never focus on choreography. The individual movements of characters, while necessary, are— in isolation— the least-important part of a fight. What's important is keeping tension; turning the fight into a mini-plot with stakes, problems to solve, solutions, and probably character and plot development/reveals; and having some kind of novelty in the fight if you can, in order to keep things interesting. The actions that characters do should display their personalities and mostly lead up to a development of some kind, instead of just looking cool.
3. My present challenge in writing a fight scene is finding the balance between interesting fight environments and actions, making sure characters behave and fight in-character, and directing the fight to develop and end a certain way. This takes a lot of brain power for me.
4. I found myself taking longer to write these chapters with fight scenes in them than many of my other chapters; because using this much brain power means I must end my daily writing early to regain my mental energy for the next. There's been a lot of times where I revised a chapter of my novel in one day; and so my first impression was that I would be revising most of my chapters in only one or two days. But revisions like these are taking me a week, and I'm learning to let myself be okay with that— that I'm not slacking, I'm just burning the creative energy candle faster.

Anyway, that's all I got for the moment. Happy writing! <3

I guess the way that my brain works is that I try to plan out the best ideas, the best scenes, the best actions first. I focus on what excites me and what will function the best. This uses a lot of brain power, and I can only do it for a bit before I get exhausted and end that day's writing.

After that when I edit, all I have to do is cut and rearrange things, make the dialogue better, stuff like that. (I'm not doing the full prose yet.) At times where I will have to punch up or completely rewrite scenes, that will be tough again.

. . .

I'm writing my first novel, and it's a blockbuster of a literary mental health work set in a space-age afterlife universe. I have full faith in it, but I'm always learning during the process. I pantsed for part of my first draft/pre-draft, but man does pantsing give me bad results. Now I just semi-prose outline the full novel, until the whole story works.

So among the other things I've discovered about writing and about my own processes, my philosophy is this— an edited version of something I read about game design:

1. Make it function
2. Optimize
3. Make it pretty
4. Optimize again

That "make it pretty" part is where I do the full, proper prose. That won't be for a few drafts down the line. I've almost gotten my full story finished now though! (Which is v2. "v1" had a lot of story gaps.)

Most people will agree that AI is an impressive writer. In seconds, it spits out text that stuns even skeptics. But there's a caveat. Two, to be precise.

1. The AI voice. When we write, our essays exude our personalities; they reveal our idiosyncrasies and quirks. We have opinions about most things and verbalize them in unique ways. Our thoughts have an emotional or rational appeal in a ratio that reflects our mood on a given day. AI does not have a mood, although you can fake it. But it is not you.

2. The AI bias. AI's opinions are deeply rooted in the biases of its programmers. It may seem a bit liberal or conservative, but it will never take a stand on polarizing issues. Instead, it will always take the apologetic "as a large language model" line.

So we must decide to what extent the AI's written output reflects our own opinions, beliefs, and word choices. Is the output formal, informal, or a little bit of everything? Editing an AI goes far beyond checking syntax (which is usually not required).

As most users take AI-generated text at face value or merely review the content for minor improvements, we are moving toward a future where AI becomes a cognitive influencer. Its ubiquitous presence ranges from silly social media posts about dogs to silly social media posts about elections. AI can incite people and fuel endless discussions with its encyclopedic knowledge that may serve hidden purposes.

So let's relinquish the role of clueless editors, take the reins of our own destiny, and ride toward a future where humans still hold the wheel. We stand at a crossroads where we either reclaim responsibility for our writing or delegate it to synthetic beings whose decisions may bring unpleasant consequences. Pick up your pen!

Made by me.

an article that seems to have been written by a chatbot.. can we normalize calling chatGPT and other a chatbot, so long they are not our overlords?

I am curious what kind of material prospective readers find interesting on an author's blog. My favorite authors range from not posting anything for months or years at a time, to talking about their health issues, struggles with getting themselves to write, or about the books of other authors they are reading. None of these seem appropriate for a new author trying to interest new readers, so I am curious what else you have seen that would be interesting, particularly for the blog of a new author without an existing following. For example, in my case, I've been toying with the idea of writing up some of the research I've done for my book, or of talking about hobbies, trips abroad etc.

There are like...ten gazillion books, guides, posts, comments, podcasts, videos, etc. out there covering basic things like grammar and punctuation and spelling.

But I always found, when trying to hone my skill as a writer, that barriers arising from my way of thinking were the things that actually held me back. I could look up spelling. I could look up grammar. I could carefully examine characters I loved and ones I hated, and come to conclusions on that.

But the psychological stuff—silent assumptions I had that weren’t actually correct, unspoken fears I had which were difficult to verbalize --were the things that seemed to provide the biggest breakthroughs in my Craft once I worked through them.

Let me give you an example. Editing.

Everyone talks all day long about how editing your work is really, really important. And I could see--logically--that it was. Logically. It seems SUCH a basic thing, right?

Still, for years I had an emotional block. I had this really strong visceral hatred of editing. I knew logically I should do it, but intuitively I had a great deal of hostility towards the idea. It made me really, really MAD and I got pretty hostile and grumpy when confronted with the idea that I needed to edit my work.

Eventually, I worked through all these loud negative feelings though, and you know what I discovered?

I hated editing because I was not yet in control of my Craft on a conscious level. Meaning--I would get really into writing this scene or story or whatever, and the words just flowed out of my fingers like magic, and I could tell if this scene or that scene was kinda good. From time to time, I would have things just pop out of my fingers that just seemed like diamonds falling from the sky. It was like conjuring something really awesome out of nothing. One moment it didn’t exist, and then it did and I had MADE it…but it came out of nowhere and seemed so fragile.

The creation process at this point of my journey was a black box to me. It was still half-unconscious. Things just happened, and I couldn't tell you for the life of me why the thing I just wrote worked. I could see that it did--but I couldn't tell you WHY. I was just conjuring the occasional jewel out of the ether, and I didn’t want that magic to go away.

So the reason I reacted so negatively to EDITING was because I did not trust myself to replace a scene I was editing with one of similar quality. I was not in full control of the quality of my output--my quality was still very up and down. I wrote things based on intuition.

And I KNEW if I decided to edit one of those things, and got in there and started messing with a scene I liked, there was good chance I would break it completely and would be unable to replace it with something just as good or better.

That’s where my instinctive hatred of editing came from. The certainty I felt that I would break whatever made the first draft of the scene work, and all the magic smoke would escape.

The thing that put to rest my fears about editing was watching my own skill increase over time. I started to establish a pattern with my past writing, where I could see a consistent repeating quality of output with my own two eyes. I had ten examples of a scene I wrote working, then twenty, then a hundred. Being able to use this past output as a touchstone reassured me that even if I had to edit a scene I really really liked, I WOULD be able to replace it with something equally good or better. Why? Because I had created a history I could refer back to, a history made up of hundreds of similar and dissimilar scenes, and I could see most of them had a pretty solid foundation.

I learned my Craft, and proved to myself that a good scene wasn’t magic, wasn’t a fluke. I could nuke whatever scene I wanted from orbit (even if I LIKED the scene and it just didn’t happen to work with the rest of the book) and replace it with something just as good—and I KNEW I could because I only had to look back on my own past writing.

And once that fear was gone, the fear that I'd break the magic genie bottle and never be able to repair it, editing became a breeze.

In fact, I shocked myself when I realized I enjoyed editing a lot. When you edit, the hardest part is already done. I had already bush-whacked a path through the jungle. The second/third drafts already had signposts on where to go--I just had to work on making everything work BETTER, while following the path I had established earlier.

(I should perhaps note that I am 90% pantser—also somewhat related to me not trusting my own skill, but that’s a post for later.)

Anyway--I wanted to share this experience because so much writing advice drones on and on about the nuts and bolts of spelling and grammar because it's easier and more objective and concrete to talk about that. But I feel the psychological growth and hurdles a writer has to overcome to move forward are just as important, if not more so.

Not everyone is going to share my experience above with editing. It very much arose from a distrust in the overall quality of my output, and whether I could maintain a given standard reliably, and not everyone wrestles with that sort of fear. I had a fear of breaking the magical scene-making box and letting the magic smoke out. You might not have that sort of fear.

But I’m sure you guys have had similar trials to overcome.

Do you guys want to share?

I’m a huge fan of podcasts, and I’m looking for some good writing-related ones. One of my favorites is Quitcast by Becca Syme. She talks about how techniques don’t work for every writer, and how to find what does work for you.

As a writer, I'm very much a, "Always go to the source. No, not the how-to-write book. Actually go open up a novel you love/hate/whatever and LOOK in it" person.

Mostly because it's the only place you can find actually-published-in-the-wild examples of techniques that are still connected to the FULL context of the rest of the work.

Actual published works in your genre are really rich sources of data. If you realize you're allowed to go back to them, refer back to them, just as you might a textbook.

They show you HOW an author did something. They ALSO show you--if you think an author didn't do something right--how much you are allowed to be "bad" while still being considered publishable.

Which I find kinda fascinating.

So, my question for you other writers is this...what is ONE thing, one example, of something writing-related that you learned from a very specific book?

It doesn't have to be unique to that book. And it doesn't have to be a mind-blowing relevation.

It can be something simple like grammar or spelling, it can be something related to characters, or how to write dialogue, or how to build world or describe a scene.

I just want to build up a store of examples here for writers new and old of how one might go to a "primary source" to learn something new about our shared Craft.

On a lot of other writing subs I see people asking questions that would often be easier to answer if they pulled a book in the genre they're writing off the shelf and looked inside it.

I will put my example below, in a comment.

...I went to the Kindle pages and read the opening chapters, just to see. And ALL TEN of them are written in first person POV. This boggles me. A couple decades ago when I was reading a lot of "how to write SF" advice, the most consistent message was "1P is a trap for noobs, don't use it!" Now it is apparently required to get a YA novel nominated. Amazing.

In which Time and Death arrive early to a party

Note: I also have an audio version of this story, which you can find here https://youtu.be/gxxM2loTeGc

In a sheltered valley hidden away in some sacred mountains, there was a great feast hall in which the gods would sometimes play. They would convene there every so often to celebrate their many victories, and therefore the continued existence of the universe. They were festive affairs with much revelry where stories were shared, grievances set aside, and the gods played tawdry games of anthropomorphic personification. Time arrived quite early as was her habit. Not being one for parties, she preferred to say her hellos and then slip out quietly once the drinking had started. She was followed shortly thereafter by Death, who always arrived whenever he chose and was often earlier than expected.

Despite their many obvious disagreements the two were friends and had been since the beginning. Time, being a gracious goddess and a good friend would send Death tributes and gifts at regular intervals. She had done so for as long as anyone could remember. The flowers had been lovely, as were the gardeners, the old kings, and the young beggars. All her gifts had been chosen with care, but despite the flowers, and gardeners and civilizations or the letters of well wishes, Death, being the less gracious friend would rarely reciprocate.

This inequity did not bother Time in the slightest. She was always generous with her gifts, and they were given with the purest intention. She rarely expected anything in return and had never been one to let the little things bother her. Truth be told, she just hoped that her gifts might bring the dour fellow some joy.

Death had admittedly once harbored a bit of an infatuation with Time. This had been back in the early days of course before the whole scene really got started. There was something about Time that he could never quite touch and as a god who is accustomed to getting what he wants this only further drove his infatuation. However, eons of flirtation were ultimately for naught and their relationship had settled into a comfortable friendship.

At rare meetings such as this one, it was not uncommon for the pair to needle each other playfully with jokes or mock insults at the other's expense. All in good fun, of course. Death would mock Time for her frivolity, her impermanence, and fickle nature. "It's just like you Time" he would say. "First it was the wheel, and now sailing ships. Your interests and hobbies dazzle and confuse. How fickle you are. What's next? Mortals soaring through the sky like birds? You slide from one obsession to the next with such subtle ease, and with each the last is forgotten. Remember when reptiles were all the rage? Reptiles, reptiles, reptiles, it was all you ever talked about and where are all those reptiles now?"

"I wrapped them up and gave them as gifts to you old friend, and I seem to recall you enjoying my reptiles then. Perhaps mortals should fly with the birds she mused. It would be marvelous to see, and at the very least it might hasten a few of them to your door." "Besides," She added. "All of your sour remarks, all of your clever quips, they are but expressions of your jealousy of me, for mine is the greater kingdom"

At that, Death scoffed. Loudly. A truly terrifying sound that presently startled some of the other guests, who had only just begun to trickle in. Night and Fire had arrived, with several of their attendant stars in tow. That pair were always great fun at parties, but upon seeing Death they regarded him only meekly. They looked at him oddly and gave polite hellos and hesitantly asked in which room Night might lay down her cloak. Death had seen that look before. Death was not great fun at parties, and the pair were clearly uneasy at seeing he'd arrived so soon.

After Time had pointed the two in the right direction, Death continued. "Why would I be jealous?" He said. "You see how our friends regard me. Do you know why this is so?"

"Because you are sullen, and selfish, and always showing up unannounced". She said bluntly. "and to be honest, you're just kind of depressing". She paused for a moment considering before she added, "I mean that with all due love and respect, naturally."

"No". Death replied flatly. "It's because when they look at me they see inevitability. They see everything they love, ebbing away. They are right to feel that way. That's why mine is the greater kingdom. They know that despite all of their endeavors, all of their striving, all of their defeats and victories. Despite all the wisdom they've gained, the pride in their life’s accomplishments, or the passions they felt in their tenderest moments, they ultimately come to nothing. I will be awaiting them at a time of my choosing, to cut short all of their hopes and claim the fruits of all of their ordeals. They will be mine and everyone who knew them will be mine, as will all who knew them. Turn by turn until a day comes that even the memory of them has died. Do you think gods are immune to this? Gods rise and fall with the mortals who speak their names, and may die with the nations that birthed them. But I am Death, and I am god of every nation".

"Yes..." Time affirmed slowly. "that is what I said".

Death sighed. If one were to imagine the sound of stone sliding across stone, like the lid of old sarcophagi with a hint of a scream into the echoing void, one might have some approximation of the sound. "Even the stars will die Time. When they've burned to cinders they will be mine. Their light extinguished forever. By that same token, our friends would like to mean something and I extinguish meaning. In the end, I win. What greater god could there be than that?"

"Well someone certainly does have a high opinion of himself" Said Time. "Look" She continued, "I've been around longer than just about anyone, and this has given me something you might call a unique perspective. You're not so frightening Death. I've seen you give peace to the suffering and rest to the world-worn and weary, and despite all of your self-indulgent musings of inevitability and eminence, meaning is something you can never extinguish." Abruptly she turned her attention to a new guest, just now entering the hall. "Music you look LOVELY dear". Time smiled wide and waved gingerly as Music passed, indeed she was lovely with indigo and moonlight woven in her hair. She beamed back, radiant, as she moved into the hall of revelers that eagerly awaited her arrival. Now the party was really starting. Time, however, turned back to Death and continued.

"It's like the starlight," she said. "Certainly the stars will one day die, and you will own the cinders. But the starlight will always be mine." Death looked puzzled, thus Time continued. "Do you really think the light dies, when the candle is extinguished? Nay. The light goes on, faster than a dream. It will always be mine. I am Time, I am the wellspring of things that will be, and I am the ever-deepening sea of things that were. The stars existed, and they were beautiful. These mortal lives that you claim to hold in such low regard? They existed, and they were beautiful, and that is something you can never take away. They continue in me Death. That's why my kingdom is greater. They meant, something, and thus they always will. You don't extinguish meaning death, you focus it, you give it urgency. You make the moments precious, and before you act all high and mighty remember this. One day, long hence when you've accomplished your goal and the stars have shone their last, when the last mortal has drawn their final breath what will a god of death be then? You too will be a memory, passing into the sea of things that were. I will remember you fondly Death, and you will be important."

At hearing her words, Death found himself struck dumb. Humbled, and lost in thought. He had never considered such things before, and the idea that one day he too might end freed him somehow. Time had given him many gifts, but none had moved him so. For her part, she merely stood and brushed the dust from the hem of her garment before straightening Death's collar and resting her hand gently on his shoulder. "You are kind," she said. "Now, ready yourself. Let us join our friends, and when Music has begun her art we will slip away quietly. The last things people want to think about at a party are Death and Time."

The End.

And what are your hopes and dreams for it?