“Quit it. You’re going to push yourself too hard and pass out. You’ll be no good to anyone then.”

“I don’t know why this spell isn’t working! If I can just –”

“I already told you to stop.”

“You have to admit that you need help!” He watched her, his best friend, struggling to control the chaos around her. She shook in strained effort as the objects slowly began to droop, crawling through the air. “Please! Just say it! Please!”

“So you were adopted by a monster?”

“I guess. It’s a pretty good parent too. Better than my dad at least.”

“Why? There’s no happy ending with me. There’s no ending where we both come out of this alive, unscathed, and still together.”

“Then I’ll go with you to the end. No matter how unhappy.”

“You will die by my hand!”

“I am favored by the god of nightmares. You touch me and you will never know peace again.”

"After all this time.. For how long- and you just kill them?! No mercy?? They were telling you their motive behind what they've done!" "I don't give a shit about their motive, they killed everyone. I'm only returning the favour."

Trope of the day is the parent by accident. Somehow someone who didn't and maybe shouldn't have kids before, acquires a child or at least a younger person, who's just not leaving anymore. Suddenly they are responsible for some little idiot's well-being - and they're unexpectedly great at it.

“Where did you get that necklace?”

“Oh, [X] gave it to me a while ago. Not really my style, but she was really excited to give it me.”

“I take it you don’t know what it means.”

Writing Prompt #2008

Years worth of careful planning and patient choices were, somehow, thrown out the window by the collective efforts of a handful of teenagers.

But I wasn't ready to give up yet. I'd stepped over and killed enough people as it was; I didn't mind adding a few children to the list.

“Where are your parents, kid? It’s not safe here.”

“Don’t have parents.”

“Well, who’s taking care of you then?”

“My big brother.”

“Please tell me he is not also a child.”

had a spontaneous deltarune brainrot today so here's my favorite sprites

Dialogue Prompt

“A, this isn’t you. You never used to be like this. You were so…”

“Weak?”

“Sweet. Maybe a touch naive, but innocent. Kind. But ever since B… you’ve been different.”

“You can say it, you know. Saying that B was murdered won’t make them any more dead than they already are.”

“B wouldn’t have wanted you to become this.”

“I didn’t become anything. The soft parts of me died, right alongside B, and this is what survived.”

- Lynn

"You help them still?! Why?! They left you to die on some backwater rock on the outer edge!"

"That's true. I'm just not the kind of person that can leave someone to their death."

Trope of the day is... injured one comforting the others. They are the ones who need to be taking care of, but they are still the one trying to comfort their loved ones. Goes hand in hand with being half-dead and telling their crying loved ones that they look terrible.

“All my memories of them are vague and blurry.” She whispered into her knees, her head pressed into them as if trying to make herself even smaller than she already was. “Like, I’m an outsider looking in. Watching a recording from somewhere off to the left. Their face is always covered.”

“Maybe they aren’t your memories.”

“Maybe I’m not really me.”

“Just because I love you doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. There are consequences that I won’t protect you from.”

“Will you report me?”

“… No, I won’t.”

“I’ve watched him starve himself for three days because you’re so bigoted you won’t even let him eat.”

“His eating endangers the civilians around us.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it!”

How To Avoid Plot Armor

Plot armor is when important characters seem to survive each and every treacherous obstacle that is thrown their way just for the sake of the plot. The readers know that your protagonist is important and won’t meet their demise because who else will defeat the bad guy in the end? This can result in underwhelming battle scenes, loss of suspense and an overall boring experience.

Here are some ways to avoid having your readers notice the plot armor (because let’s be honest, it’s there whether we like or not) or at least make it more realistic:

1) Injure your characters. Let it be known that no one is safe. During the heat of battle, the prized soldier loses his sword arm. The invincible superhero receives PTSD after witnessing a terrible event. Raise the stakes!

2) If they escape, make it believable. Did they sacrifice something to escape? Did a past experience give them the wits and knowledge to outsmart the danger? Justify your protagonist’s escape. Don’t make it an easy get away just because you need them out of the situation. 

3) There are consequences. Every action sparks a reaction. Have there be realistic push back. Your character shouldn’t be immune to the rules and laws of your world.

4) Detailed Explanations. So, your character needs their limbs, their sanity and anything else you could strip them of. How do you make it seem like they’re not immune to everything then? Equip them with what they need (knowledge, weapon, confidence, etc) and really sell it to your reader on how they survived. 

There’s no way a teenaged girl stakes a 400 year old vampire just by picking up a branch and defending herself. Equip her with some knowledge of vampires (fanfics to the rescue?), an ancient relic that she unknowingly wears around her neck and an insane amount of adrenaline… and maybe I’ll believe it.

5) Kill off other characters. Have their deaths affect the protagonist.

Instagram: coffeebeanwriting

Yes, I do teach creative writing: your opening scene

The opening scene is the most important piece of your novel. This scene determines whether your reader is pulled in or puts the book down. Here are some important do’s and don’ts.

DO write it as a scene, not a data dump. You may have a fantastic premise, a marvelous alternate history or post-apocalyptic world or magical realism to die for, but if you don’t engage your reader in an actual scene, you will bore them.

DO write a scene that immediately introduces a character that the reader can root for. Yes, I know Stephen King has had great success introducing victims that are then shortly afterward killed off. That’s a horror trope and we expect it. But if you are caught up in world-building and haven’t dreamed your way into a character who is worth following through 100,000 words of writing, your story is pointless. I have read many pieces of fiction by would-be writers who can’t grasp this essential concept, and without exception, they fail to engage the reader.

DO introduce the stakes right away. In case that’s a challenge that needs some exposition to develop, create some immediate stakes (a life threat works) that keep the tension high and the reader engaged until you can lay out the larger stakes.

DO begin in medias res, which means “in the middle of things.” Most beginning fiction writers make the mistake of starting too early in the plot. Meet the monster on page 1. 

DON’T include a flashback in the first chapter. Work on a scene, which means time is NOT compressed. It should include dialog, action, description, setting, and interior monolog. Keep everything happening within that scene for at least the first chapter. You can bring in a flashback in Chapter Three.

DON’T shift points of view within a single chapter. Let the reader establish a strong bond of interest (even if it’s with a POV villain) over the course of a whole chapter.

DON’T open the story with your character waking up unless it’s because she’s got a gun in her face (or a knife to her throat – you get what I mean). We don’t need to follow a character through their mundane daily routine. 

DON’T be coy. Beginning writers often have this idea that they need to hold back on revealing all their secrets – what’s in the box, who’s behind the curtain, where they’re going next, etc. Their well-meant plan is to slowly reveal all this over several chapters. Trust me on this one: tell your readers instead of keeping it a mystery. You WILL come up with more secrets to reveal. Your imagination is that good. Spill it now, and allow that revelation to add to the excitement.

Funny, that’s the part I remember from this too. 

Do it, bruh. Just make sure it’s the right “middle” of the right conversation.

Tbh, these “dos and don’ts” are little more than good suggestions because many good books don’t start out with all of these. Some good books follow some of these suggestions very well! Some genres practically require them! But not all stories need to apply every writing “rule” perfectly, it’s impossible.

Just, when you pick up a “bad” book with a lame beginning, it probably needed to follow a few of these and would’ve turned out much better.

If your beginning needs help consider these suggestions. If your beginning is doing just fine, you feel, keep these good suggestions around for the next book.

Not following these suggestions does not make it a bad scene/book.

Not following these suggestions does not ensure readers drop your book.

Not following these suggestions does not mean you’re a bad/lazy writer.

Write what you like, but when you’re editing/revising, take out this list and consider which suggestions your opening scene might benefit from.

PSA

Quick note because I see this one a lot...

Correct: Deep-seated

Incorrect: Deep-seeded

"Deep-seated" means "firmly established" like a "deep-seated belief" or a "deep-seated family tradition."

Less often, it can also mean that something is far below the surface, like "the infection was deep-seated in the tissue" or "the artifact was deep-seated in the layers of mud."