gravityeyelids | Entries tagged with writing

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fencer-x:

marcvscicero:

writing style: author from the 1800s with a severe love of commas whose sentences last half a page

I came out here, to this point, to this place, hoping against all hope and despite signs and portends suggesting otherwise that I might, somehow, find myself having a pleasant experience, and yet here I stand, alone against the world, feeling assaulted, attacked on all fronts, knowing not my enemy’s name nor his face nor whether our battle is done.
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mysharona1987:

Writing agent Jonny Geller gives advice to young writers.
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agwitow:

elumish:

A couple notes on eye color descriptions:

First, eyes are small. If someone is more than a few feet away, there’s very little chance they will notice someone else’s eye color. Same is true if it’s dark or if they’re wearing glasses.

Second, people don’t pay that much attention to eye color. Most people don’t think of others (I don’t think) in terms of eye color. I’m not actually sure of the eye color of most of my relatives or friends

Third, this is in no way a useful descriptor unless it plays an important role in the story. Harry Potter’s eye color mattered because of his mother. Hermione’s eye color didn’t.

I know eye-color hair-color skin-color is a common descriptor for people when they’re first being introduced, but try something else, and stop relying on a thing that doesn’t matter. And, especially if the story is in first person or close third person, stop having people be able to tell eye colors from unrealistic distances or in unrealistic situations, or when they wouldn’t have any reason to pay attention to them.

Some other first-impression-descriptors you could use:

Height (if it’s noteworthy–most people don’t really notice unless it’s unusual in some way)

Posture/their “walk” (e.g., do they slouch? hunch? scurry? stride? etc.)

Facial expression

Clothes (again, if it’s unusual in some way)

Hairstyle

Hands (gestures and appearance)

How they interact with other people and/or the environment

There are other ways, of course, to describe characters–see what other ways you can come up with that don’t rely on the standard eye/hair/skin colour descriptions
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differentjasper:

ok you know that ‘make the princess laugh and you can have her hand in marriage’ thing?

imagine so many come in.

they try, so hard, to make her laugh.

she just sits there, morose, ignoring every man who tries to coax a smile.

one day she’s sitting on the balcony. she just looks so sad.

of course that little thief tries to make her smile.

a girl who goes through the (semi public) royal gardens every day to pick flowers, even though technically only the royal family is allowed to do that.

she sees the princess while she’s picking them up to sell on the streets, and she’s just… so sad. this princess needs someone to cheer her up.

and she tries. she’ll do silly dances when she comes in, she’ll bring up frogs from ponds and act out comedies, she’ll make flower crowns and exaggerate just how hard it is.

the first few days, the princess doesn’t even look at her.

then she starts noticing. this girl, trying so hard to cheer her up. she probably hasn’t even heard of the hand in marriage thing, she doesn’t know she’s trying so hard for nothing.

but she does it anyway.

one day, the princess starts talking to her as she does these things. “You do know that it’s useless?”

“What?” the thief says. “No way! I’m going to get you to laugh!”

“The best jesters in the kingdom have tried, don’t bother,” the princess declared pessimistically, staring down at the girl.

Then the thief puffs out her chest, “Of course I am! I’ll find the best jokes, even better than the jesters have found! I’ll… fight a fire breathing dog for them!”

There’s no laugh, but the corner of the princess’s mouth twitches. it’s sad how she thinks she can make me laugh…

the girl keeps trying, for years, making more silly stories and trading flowers for jokes rather than food or money. the princess slowly realizes the girl is getting closer and closer, asking her for responses in knock knock jokes and encouraging her to speak when she wouldn’t respond immediately.

the princess eventually had the girl hanging from her balcony, holding on tight to the rail and feet wedged between the columns, grinning and telling yet another iteration of that already old chicken joke.

the princess has been smiling, slightly, but she mostly just looks unresponsive. the girl is happy, it’s better than looking so sad, like she had been years before.

the girl moves on to puns, pointing at the exotic lunch the princess was eating. “Why do the melons have to go to get married? They cantaloupe!”

“You only know that word because of me,” the princess snarks, but there’s a small smile there, a bit of happiness. This little flower girl, this thief has grown into an amazing friend, a wonderful person who genuinely just wants to help. she doesn’t know of the deal, only nobles and jesters could know, not the commonfolk.

“Well, it makes quite the pun,” the girl says, proud of her joke. a smile! what an accomplishment!

“Say…” she continued, “What would you call a princess who got swept up in conversation a thief?” she pulled a flower out of her pocket, waving it in front of the princess’s face. the princess’s eyes crossed to see the flower before they rolled at the obvious setup.

though, it was interesting that it obviously involved them.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, sighing in preparation for another horrible pun. “What?”

the girl grinned. “A pretty theft!” she exclaimed, ticking the flower against the princess’s nose.

the princess froze for a moment, stunned. she had been complimented a million times over, called graceful by etiquette instructors, been called beautiful by many a suitor, been called wonderful by her mother before… she stopped thinking about that.

she had never been called pretty.

she burst into laughter at the commonplace compliment, as if she was some sort of milkmaid who had somehow grown up to be good looking! it was ridiculous, the notion, yet somehow it had her blushing all the same.

then she suddenly stopped, realizing what she’d done.

the flower thief was staring at her in amazement, a blush of her own speckling her cheeks. her flower tilted out from in front of the princess’s nose, as if it had it’s own amazement.

“Wow…” the girl breathed. she’d never heard something so beautiful in her life.

The princess was silent, knowing what she had just done. She had just laughed for the first time in years.

The girl may not have been aware of the arrangement, but she was quickly swept up in it. A maid had heard the laughter and burst in, to find the thief and the princess, caught up in each other’s eyes, reveling in what had just happened.

The wedding was beautiful, a flower filled affair, a wonderful nod to how it happened. The king was so happy to see his daughter with someone who made her smile for once, tearing up as they were wed.

The princess’s laugh was still incredibly rare. She still had a hard time smiling. But a well timed joke from the girl– no, her wife– and another flower that had a hidden meaning behind it, than maybe, maybe you would hear it.

After all, the princess had finally laughed with the one she loved.
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baskerville-leviathan:

Have I ever mentioned that this man is a genius? No?
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kleenexwoman:

pinglederry:

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

glumshoe:

I’m suddenly laughing at the idea of a cliche noir detective story written in the brutally concise style of Hemingway.

A woman walked into my office. She had legs. I noticed her legs. “I have a problem. I need your help,” she said. They always said that. I knew her legs weren’t the problem. I hoped she might want my help with them anyhow.

“Can you pay?” I asked. Of course she could. Her shoes were worth more than my rent. She could pay.
“I can pay,” she said. Her eyes were wet. I wondered if anything else was wet. Probably not. I am not handsome. Not since the war.
She was looking at my scar. Lots of people do. Most look away. Not her. She did not look away. She looked at my scar and I looked at her legs. There were two of them. I liked that about her. I liked that a whole lot.
“Will there be danger?” I asked. There always is. This city bleeds danger, then drinks it right back up again.

“I’m afraid there might be danger,” she said. She had the voice of a beautiful woman. She also had the face and body of a beautiful woman. She was beautiful.

The light from the window was striped. It made stripes on my cigarette smoke. The end of my cigarette crumbled into ash. My marriage had also crumbled into ash.

“I can handle danger,” I said. I patted the butt of my gun. My gun was a Colt. My gun and my scar were all that was left from my time as a soldier. My gun, my scar, and the nightmares. I looked her up and down. “I am good at handling things.”

“It’s about my husband. He’s gone missing.”

She was not wearing a ring. It means something when a woman does not wear a wedding ring. Usually, it means that she is not married. “Seems your ring has also gone missing,” I said. I hoped her dress would join it.

Her red mouth curved upwards. She was smiling a little. “I don’t wear it outside. A diamond that large would only invite trouble.”

“In my experience, trouble doesn’t wait for an invitation.” I looked at her legs again. They were both still there. “When did you last see your husband?”

@kleenexwoman it got better!

i would read a whole novel like this seriously
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alisayamin:

applehemmings:

mrv3000:

Imagining a story in your head:

Writing down the story:

As a writer, I can confirm this.

Thank you for the visual aid of every story I ever wrote
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wondrousworldbuilding:

blue-author:

blue-author:

Go to YouTube.

Watch Bob Ross.

Listen to him talk about painting.

Seriously, this guy… this guy is full of advice for a writer who’s having trouble getting started.

He’s not writing, he’s painting, but… okay, like, he can sit there and talk about geology and the diffusion of light and make it clear that he knows what a mountain is and he knows what goes into the interplay of light and perspective, and then you’ll watch him smear some black paint on top of a still wet canvas with a thin metal wedge, and then take a brush and push it downwards so that it mixes with the base in such a way that it ends up lighter at the bottom and eventually just fades into the background.

And then he’ll take some titanium white paint and do the same thing to add snow and light, and you’re thinking… “But… interplay. Geology. Perspective.” and he’s just pushing paint around, talking about figuring out where the north slope lives and how there are no mistakes, just happy little accidents and then he steps back at the end and holy moly, it looks like he painted a mountain.

It doesn’t look like he pushed paint around for ten minutes, it looks like he looked at a real mountain somewhere and copied it.

Is there a real mountain that matches the painting? No. Could he use this method to exactly replicate an actual mountain? No. But he made a mountain that looks real enough, and even if he didn’t have 100% control over the final look of it, he conjured it out of his imagination.

This is the trick that more writers need to learn. It’s possible to create a story or even a whole book through meticulous planning and careful construction, but… most people can’t do that. It’s not that we’re not willing to put in the work, it’s just too easy to get stuck. Too easy to never leave the “Well, I’m still worldbuilding/researching” stage. Too easy to write oneself into a corner or get bogged down in the details.

So this is my advice today for fiction writers:

Learn how to speed paint.

Learn how to work wet on wet.

Learn how to push paint around on the edge of a knife.

Learn how to figure out where things want to live by feel and how to allow for happy little accidents.

There will be places for fine details and intricate sketches. But when you’re staring at a blank canvas and you have no idea where to start… paint the whole thing blue and start scraping up some mountains.

Quick, broad strokes. That’s all it takes to get you started. Quick, broad strokes and a few happy accidents.

Reblogging for myself.

Fabulous.
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priestessamy:

nezclaw:

hraap:

writing-prompt-s:

A knight in shining armor outsmarts the dragon and climbs to the highest tower, only the princess locked away at the top of the tower is… a lesbian.

“Oh thank god,” Thomas says, laying his helmet down. “Because I kept thinking on the climb up here that this was going to be a really awkward first meeting, and its stupid to expect you to fall in love with me just because I saved you.”

Lucinda gives him a surprised look. “You’re rather weird. Usually I get guys that demand I fall in love with them because they ‘saved’ me. Which by the way, you didn’t actually do.” She jabs a thumb towards the direction of the dragon. “She’s trained. I tell her to keep assholes away from me, but if I tell her to let you in, she won’t do anything to you.”

“Oh.” Well now he feels a bit better. “But um, the whole lesbian thing? I uh… god this is going to sound weird, but would you consider dating my sister if I brought her to you?”

Lucinda blinks, opens her mouth, and then shuts it. She finally settles on, “Is your sister cute?”

“Um, I don’t know? I mean to me she is, because she’s my sister. But um.”

“Describe her.”

“Red hair, freckles, five foot… two, I think? Likes to make dresses and pretty headdresses out of flowers, her favorite activity is scrapbooking. She’s nineteen and looking for a nice girl to settle down with.”

Lucinda admits, she sounds tempting. “Fine, I’ll meet her. But why are you acting as the go-between for your sister’s love life, exactly?”

Thomas grimaces. “Dad wants to marry her off, and she’s… kind of a lesbian too. Except dad thinks if he throws her at the right dick, she’ll suddenly want that, so… yeah.”

Lucinda cackles. “Oh my god, you climbed a tower to wingman for your sister?”

“Um, yes?”

She stands, brushes her dress off. “I like you. Show me this cute little sister of yours. We’ll take the dragon - let’s see what that old man of yours thinks when a stolen princess shows up riding a dragon wanting to marry his daughter.”

“I think he’ll have a heart attack.”

“Even better. Now let’s move. Pudding, come!”

“You named your dragon Pudding?”

“He named himself Pudding.”

You have done a good thing
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saekas:

ivaan-ffxiv:

amielleon:

julystorms:

an-ime-goil:

thewritewire:

Show vs. Tell

Great description of the difference.

In one of my fiction-writing classes, we had a workshop where we critiqued each other’s writing. There was one student that had a story about a poor boy, who had to work to help his family. At one point, the writer describes his room, and it sounds pretty standard: “vintage posters of rock musicians on the wall, an old board game his family had kept for years, battered Nike sneakers under the bed”. Our teacher said, “Your main character’s pretty selfish.” We all stared at her. “I mean, his family barely has enough to eat, and he’s spending money on buying expensive vintage band posters and Nike shoes?” I was shocked. I hadn’t thought anything of that description - it was just to paint a vivid picture, right? And I didn’t know vintage posters were expensive. What if the Nike shoes had been given to him as a gift? What if the mother had bought them? But it was the moment I realized that great writers put a lot of thought into all those seemingly useless details they leave in there, and they’re all clues leading to a larger truth. It’s not good enough to paint a vivid picture and put in details. Those details will be read into, and they need to point to the truth of your story or your character. That student certainly didn’t mean to make their character come across as selfish. And yet that was the conclusion that the details led to.
At the same time, sometimes the curtains are just blue, so to speak, and it doesn’t mean anything. Which is why consistency is also important. I wouldn’t have necessarily surmised that the character in the original post was clumsy just cause he tripped once - so establish this trait, remember that you made him clumsy, make him drop crumbs all over their lap and almost drop things that are handed to him. Otherwise I will assume his clumsiness is a one-time thing. It’s your job as a writer to include meaningful details, just as it is to establish when something is just a coincidence, or a plot device.

This is good. I bolded the part I felt was most important; good writers include details and keep things consistent, but I agree that great writers include those details for a reason and make them actually mean something (versus allowing them to simply be decoration).

The commentary’s better than the original post.

When I was a young writer, I thought details were there for the sake of being details. You enter a room, you describe the room so the reader can see it in their head, the end.

But in fact, nothing is supposed to be so pointless as to simply check off a box next to “Imagery” in an English class workbook. These details are meant to give the reader something meaningful about the impression it makes on the perspective character, or what’s up with this world and its people.

As for the original post… I think either could work depending on context. If you were trying to have that awkward kid really own this story, making it a story about her perspective rather than a series of events we the readers are watching, you’d go with the left, because it captures a sense of the kid’s understanding of the world rather than appealing to ours.

It’s also worth noting that the right example is very zoomed in, and forces you to go into the details of this particular event and follow it to a reasonable stopping point, which may or may not be desirable.

This is something I have to work on x_x

This is important for DMing too!
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I grew up surrounded by words, quite literally. By the time I was six months old my parents had taped words to every surface in the house, so the walls said “wall” the window said “window” and so on so forth. I still don’t know how they managed to get the cat involved but some things are meant to be wondered at.

But for the next six years the world was covered in words, as first I learned to read, and then my brother. I dare say if you move some furniture in my parents house to this day you will find a faded piece of paper that says “shelf” or “bookcase” on it. It was a sad day when they were taken down, they were like old friends. But by then the magic had already worked. I was able to look at the world and see words, whether they were printed there or not.

I was four when I sat down to consciously write my first story. I remember it vividly because I had my bright yellow Cadburys Caramel mug, that had the purple flowing font on the side with the bunny rabbit lady on it. It was filled with “baby tea”— mostly hot milk with a splash of tea from the pot to give it color— and I was holding it in both hands, sitting at the little “art” table dad had built for me in the corner so I had a place to sit and scribble that wasn’t the walls. Contemplating my next masterpiece I looked around the room for inspiration. Would it be an exploration of color through pinky finger painting only? Or would it be the greatest macaroni interpenetration of a dog we’d ever seen? Sadly we’ll never know how this might have worked out, as at that very moment, mum came in holding a crystal mobile and hung it up on the window sill. This in turn had the effect of creating a living, dancing rainbow in the living room, and something in my brain short fused.

That was the day I learned the word “iridescent”. It was like learning the language of angels.

After that I was always scribbling something. My school books were a mess of words, crammed into margins and on back pages. I was always in trouble for letting my mind “wander into whimsy.” Once I got a report card that said “fantastical leanings towards flights of fancy.” It was meant as criticism, but dad still has it framed in the office.

Then there came the time a few years later when I was reading the Hobbit with dad, and I turned to him quite seriously and asked “where are all the girl hobbits?” and dad hemmed and hawed before eventually telling me “they’re in another book, darling…having their own adventure…” and I accepted this and settled back down to let him finish the chapter. He probably thought I forgot about it until that weekend I marched up to the Librarian and asked for “the girl hobbit book please”, which was met with much confusion and my dad rushing over to tell me they probably wouldn’t have it yet because it was very rare. A few weeks later, dad handed me something. It was sheaves of paper bound together by string. It was, he told me, a very exclusive copy of the girl hobbit book.

I still have it somewhere, back home. Probably on a shelf somewhere that still says “shelf”.

And sweet, naive thing that I was, I believed him. It wasn’t until later on and someone else popped my bubble, that I realized dad, not Tolkien, had written it. And oh I was furious, furious because the story had been so good and because dad had lied about not writing it himself. But that small bubbling anger was nothing compared to the heat inside my brain when my dad confessed he’d tried without much success to find books I might like with girls in them. All the heroes were boys, you see. It made me quite tearful actually, that no one had ever thought that someone like me could go off on an adventure and save the world, when I knew it to be a blatant lie. Old Mrs McDougall across the street had been a land girl and saved a man shot down from his spitfire. Mrs Mitchell had been the emergency coordinator and saved people from burning buildings when the Nazis bombed the shipyards, and her skin was all bubbled and tightly pulled across the left side of her face because of it and her hands didn’t quite work because she’d gripped burning metal to try and free the men inside. Those, were heroes. But we never learned about them at school. We only learned about kings and tyrants and the kind of heavily filtered history that lead you to believe that women were in there somewhere, but only in the same sense that a wall has paint on it.

And now my books, my lovely wonderful books, where you could travel through space and time or climb up volcanoes to throw rings inside and save the world…those wonderful colorful worlds that spoke the language of angels, were just the same.

I was ready to cry and be defeated about it until dad, raising his eyebrows at me and offering me a notebook, said, “well, maybe someone ought to write one.”

And you likely know the rest by now. But in short I write because there are stories to be told. I write because it’s the closest I’ll ever be to how the word iridescent feels. I look at the world and I see words, dancing like rainbows, singing like angels.

There’s words everywhere. I’m just scribbling them down.

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writing-prompt-s:

firemageking:

nerdygayholtz:

prismatic-bell:

writing-prompt-s:

Valhalla does not discriminate against the kind of fight you lost. Did you lose the battle with cancer? Maybe you died in a fist fight. Even facing addiction. After taking a deep drink from his flagon, Odin slams his cup down and asks for the glorious tale of your demise!

Oh my god, this is beautiful.

A small child enters Valhalla. The battle they lost was “hiding from an alcoholic father.” Odin sees the flinch when he slams the cup and refrains from doing it again. He hears the child’s pain; no glorious battle this, but one of fear and wretched survival.

He invites the child to sit with him, offers the choicest mead and instructs his men to bring a sword and shield, a bow and arrow, of the very best materials and appropriate size. “Here,” he says, “you will find no man who dares to harm you. But so you will know your own strength, and be happy all your days in Valhalla, I will teach you to use these weapons.”

The sad day comes when another child enters the hall. Odin does not slam his cup; he simply beams with pride as the first child approaches the newcomer, and holds out her bow and quiver, and says “nobody here will hurt you. Everyone will be so proud you did your best, and I’ll teach you to use these, so you always know how strong you are.”

————

A young man enters the hall. He hesitates when Odin asks his story, but at long last, it ekes out: skinheads after the Pride parade. His partner got into a building and called for help. The police took a little longer than perhaps they really needed to, and two of those selfsame skinheads are in the hospital now with broken bones that need setting, but six against one is no fair match. The fear in his face is obvious: here, among men large enough to break him in two, will he face an eternity of torment for the man he left behind?

Odin rumbles with anger. Curses the low worms who brought this man to his table, and regales him with tales of Loki so to show him his own welcome. “A day will come, my friend, when you seek to be reunited, and so you shall,” Odin tells him. “To request the aid of your comrades in battle is no shameful thing.”

———-

A woman in pink sits near the head of the table. She’s very nearly skin and bones, and has no hair. This will not last; health returns in Valhalla, and joy, and light, and merrymaking. But now her soul remembers the battle of her life, and it must heal.

Odin asks.

And asks again.

And the words pour out like poisoned water, things she couldn’t tell her husband or children. The pain of chemotherapy. The agony of a mastectomy, the pain still deeper of “we found a tumor in your lymph nodes. I’m so sorry.” And at last, the tortured question: what is left of her?

Odin raises his flagon high. “What is left of you, fair warrior queen, is a spirit bright as fire; a will as strong as any forged iron; a life as great as any sea. Your battle was hard-fought, and lost in the glory only such furor can bring, and now the pain and fight are behind you.“

In the months to come, she becomes a scop of the hall–no demotion, but simple choice. She tells the stories of the great healers, Agnes and Tanya, who fought alongside her and thousands of others, who turn from no battle in the belief that one day, one day, the war may be won; the warriors Jessie and Mabel and Jeri and Monique, still battling on; the queens and soldiers and great women of yore.

The day comes when she calls a familiar name, and another small, scarred woman, eyes sunken and dark, limbs frail, curly black hair shaved close to her head, looks up and sees her across the hall. Odin descends from his throne, a tall and foaming goblet in his hands, and stuns the hall entire into silence as he kneels before the newcomer and holds up the goblet between her small dark hands and bids her to drink.

“All-Father!” the feasting multitudes cry. “What brings great Odin, Spear-Shaker, Ancient One, Wand-Bearer, Teacher of Gods, to his knees for this lone waif?”

He waves them off with a hand.

“This woman, LaTeesha, Destroyer of Cancer, from whom the great tumors fly in fear, has fought that greatest battle,” he says, his voice rolling across the hall. “She has fought not another body, but her own; traded blows not with other limbs but with her own flesh; has allowed herself to be pierced with needles and scored with knives, taken poison into her very veins to defeat this enemy, and at long last it is time for her to put her weapons down. Do you think for a moment this fight is less glorious for being in silence, her deeds the less for having been aided by others who provided her weapons? She has a place in this great hall; indeed, the highest place.”

And the children perform feats of archery for the entertainment of all, and the women sing as the young man who still awaits his beloved plays a lute–which, after all, is not so different from the guitar he once used to break a man’s face in that great final fight.

Valhalla is a place of joy, of glory, of great feasting and merrymaking.

And it is a place for the soul and mind to heal.

I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING

THIS IS GLORIOUS

Beautiful.

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wagnetic:

fatally-procrastinating:

Adverbs aren’t evil; said isn’t dead
Please stop hitting the wall with your head
Active is grand but not always the best
Sometimes it’s passive that passes the test
Some write with style, others write plain
Let’s all agree that writing’s a pain
The ‘rules’ can be broken, twisted, or bent
All that matters is that you are content
Make your own story and write your own way
This has been a writer’s PSA

The only writing rules I will accept.

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I’m assuming the line here “I’m hitting panic over if want to read a story…” was meant to be “I’m hitting panic over if people want to read a story…”, okay? So my answer is based on that read. If it’s wrong, please let me know.

Here is my answer:

Who cares?

Like, literally, who cares? Unless you have a contract compelling you to write a specific thing, you are writing this story, first, for yourself. You are the only audience who matters. You are the only person you need to entertain. This is the first draft: it exists to be bad, to be self-indulgent, to be a mess. If it does those things, at least it’s there. Write what you want, what you covet, what you love.

Maybe when it’s done, you’ll find that your story doesn’t leave room for your characters, or that your characters don’t leave room for your story. Maybe you’ll have to balance, and rebalance, and rebalance again, until you want to scream. But you’ll get better every time, and eventually, bit by bit, you’ll find your footing.

I won’t lie and say that this is the next James Patterson blockbuster. We need diverse books, but so many people have been conditioned that any book that isn’t primarily straight, white, and male is somehow “not relatable,” and hence not for them, that the sales are not always what they should be. But if it’s a good book, and if you write it for you first, the audience will find you.

If you write it, they will come.

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dreadpiratekhan:

bluestockingt:

There’s a seriously delightful conversation in one of the LARP fb groups about adventuring over 40. Many of us aren’t 20 anymore, and it seems silly to have our characters not be our own age (or close to it). But they’re still starting characters (as it’s a new campaign), which implies they chose this path recently.

That thread is mostly joking around, but I kind of love the idea of hearing The Call when you’re not a teenager, and starting your in-game adventuring life later as some kind of mid-life crisis, religious epiphany, empty nest reaction, etc.
Which got me to some ficlets, and here’s the result.

—

“Well, your mother always wanted to be an adventurer - she was a hell of an archer when we were your age - but we got pregnant, and your grandmother needed some help, so we put that life off for a while. But now that you’re off at university, it seems like a good time to pick up the bow again, and go fight evil.“

—

“There was just something missing, y'know? I mean, I liked being a toymaker, but one day I realized - I really wanted to put on some plate mail, and go fight demons. So here I am, livin’ the dream.“

—

“Sometimes, relationships don’t work out. She got the business, I get to start the life of adventure I’ve always wanted. Did you know I minored in alchemy? It’s good to get back into it again.”

—

“Your Aunt Maribel and I had always talked about doing this, when we were girls, but it just never seemed like the right time. But now that Uncle Haro has passed…Mari just wants to get out there and do it. I can’t let her go alone, can I? Someone has to watch her flank on the line, and remind her to keep her shield up.“

—

“What can I say? Sometimes you fall in love with a mage. When you do, you grab your hammer and you go where he goes. Someone has to keep cute Dukes from flirting with him. Back off, gentry! He’s all mine.”
“Kevin, you’re being ridiculous. I’m not going to fall in love with some Duke.”
“Whatever. I’m not taking any chances. It took me this long to find you, and I’m not letting you go without me.”

—

“I’m your Dad. If you’re going to go and fight evil, I’m going with you, ‘cause I support your choices.”

—

“Er…Mom’s heading off to check out some evil gate she heard about. Someone needs to go with her, ok? I squired for her last time, but I just can’t right now. It’s your turn. Make sure she does her exercises, ok? Her back is going to be horrid if she doesn’t.“
“Fine. I’ll handle the evil gate with Mom. But the next time she heads into the swamps to fight some lizard thing, you’re doing it. I freaking hate swamps.”

—

“His husband left him for an elf. He’s got some anger issues that he’s working through, ok? Better that he work through it on some bad guys.”

—

“What was that?”
“Undead again.”
“Oh, for the love of..look. They’re a freaking plague, and it’s getting worse. If we don’t want to keep dealing with this, we’re just going to have to go to the source.”
“But….the carrots…!”
“Hang the damned carrots. I’ll hire that nice boy down the street to take care of our field while we’re gone. Clean yourself up and grab your holy symbol. We’re not putting up with this for one more week.”

—

“Well, I always wanted to see the world. I got a small inheritance recently, and thought, why the heck not? No time like the present, right?”

—

“If that Sorcerer thinks he can just waltz in here and take over this town, he’s got another think coming!”
“Doris, calm down. We’ll write to the King, and…”
“I WILL NOT CALM DOWN. Sally, I swear, you drive me nuts sometimes.”
“I’m just saying - there’s diplomatic solutions to this.”
“The hell with diplomatic solutions! I WILL END HIM. ”
“Fiiiiiine. Do it your way. End him with fire.”
“Thank you!” *smooches* “Love you. Back when I’m back. He has NO IDEA who is coming for him.”

—

“What can I say? Adventuring pays the bills. I have a family to support, and turnip farming doesn’t make money like it used to.”

—

“Hey Phineas - for guys’ night, I have a thought. Rather than just going down to the pub like we usually do…I found a gate. No idea where it leads. Let’s go check it out. Could be fun, right?”
“A gate?”
“Yeah!”
“This is a terrible idea. I’m in.”

—

“Um….well, this is awkward. You know that Goddess who spoke to me last spring?”
“Oh yeah! Your whole conversion thing. Nice to see you found faith. It’s been good for you, I think.”
“Well, she has something she wants me to take care of.”
“What, like…a message delivered or something?”
“Noooooooo?”
“Seriously? You’re a florist. What does she want you to do?”
“Well, now when I sing, things blow up. That’s good, right?”
“This can’t end well.”

—

“We left for THREE WEEKS, and Barbarians razed our village. I swear, do I have to do everything myself? I JUST RE-DID THE ROOF, YOU JERKS.”

—

“He doesn’t think our family is good enough for him? I’ll show him who is good enough for him! My little girl is going to live in a castle, even if I have to conquer it myself!”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way.”
“We’ll see what he has to say when I walk into Summertide with a demon’s head on a spike! Who’s good enough now, you two-bit merchant?!?”

—

“Your Aunt recently found out that Throgg the Destroyer is that brat she couldn’t stand at the Academy. She’s not taking it well, so we’re going to be off on a trip for a while…”

—

“So….funny story. You know that favor I owe the Countess? From like 20 years ago? She finally called it in. She remembered that I’m really good with Ancient Runes, and apparently there’s something she needs checked out.”

—

“I thought you said this adventuring thing was just a hobby, Brianna. Something we did on the weekends.”
“Well, but…y'know…I really like it. I think I could be good at it. I’m getting better with the spear, you know?”
“I don’t even know you anymore!”
“Can’t you just be supportive?”
“Well, but where does it end? First hobgoblins, now orcs…what’s next?”
“I heard about this cursed tomb…”
“Absolutely not. I draw the line at tombs. NO TOMBS.”

—

“I told you not to date that vampire. Didn’t I tell you? I told you!”
“Let me live, Sergio.”
“Let me unlive, you mean.”
“Ok, that’s just rude.”

—

“Oh, sure - one good healing spell, and you think you can conquer the world.”
“I can! I have the knees of a teenager again!”

—

“Grandpa, you’re embarrassing me.”
“What, I can’t visit my grandson while he’s adventuring?”
“Well, I love having you here, and everyone knows you’re a good healer, but…”
“I’ll be fine. I like it here. I think I’ll stay.”

—

“C'mon, let’s do it. We’ve always wanted to.”
“But…we don’t know what we’re doing.”
“We do! We’ve each read The Book, what….15 times? I know you basically have it committed to memory.”
“I don’t think ‘To Catch a Rogue Lord’ was really meant as an instruction manual.”
“C'mon…how hard can it be? You’ve seen the adventurers who come through here.”
“Excellent point. I’ll get my herbs.”

—

“Honey? There’s a kid at the door. He says you’re the Chosen One.”
“Arrrrgh. We talked about this! Come back later!”
“He says the stars are aligned?”
“Not doing it! Tell him to go away.”
“Oh, and the seal broke. The seal broke, Stephen. It sounds important.”
“But…”
“I’ll pack you a lunch.”

“Call Sharon. She and her stupid birthmark are coming with me.”
“I thought you said that translation of the prophecy was incorrect? Something about a miss-translation of verb.”
“…well, at least if we fail, I won’t have to listen to Karl talking at Guild Meetings about how he was right.”

these are perfect and everything is perfect and nothing hurts

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