Dream Journal #12

I feel like I could actually make something out of this one.

1 Jul—2 Jul

There were two main characters: a brother and sister, who were both in their teens and had dark hair. They lived in some sort of modern-day rural area where most of the villagers knew each other and many buildings were bordered by woods. I had the feeling this was part of some sort of series starring the brother and sister, and I knew they had dealt with the supernatural before.

The siblings were staying at their grandmother's house (although they did have parents, or at least a mother, living in the village) and were on the old, wooden front porch with them when something that looked like one of the "bonies" from Warm Bodies came towards them. The skeleton wasn't moving particularly quickly, but it was menacing, and the brother and sister knew to run away. The skeleton took off after them and, without turning to look at the grandmother, who was standing on the edge of the porch, jabbed the first two fingertips of its left hand into her pupils. The grandmother screamed as her eyes withered away, and the skeleton generated the same eyes in its eye sockets. This took only a moment and barely hindered the skeleton, who continued charging after the siblings.

The brother and sister came to hide in a hotel, where several others of the village were staying. This included one of their teachers, a plump man with a rusty voice who taught chemistry. The hotel seemed safe, but one of the other kids told the teacher they smelled HNO3 in one of the rooms. The teacher, who referred to this as "caustic acid," went alone to the room to investigate. There he was possessed by the same spirit that was responsible for the earlier skeleton; I could tell because his eyes and some of the skin surrounding them turned black.

It wasn't long before the siblings were captured by the skeletons, although the latter had already stolen enough from the villagers to look more like slightly rotten witches. One who seemed to be the head witch ordered the other witches to force the brother to kneel in the centre of the room, which was made of old wood like just about everything else in this village. The sister was not restrained but knew she couldn't do anything; she just tearfully tried to convince the head witch she was wrong. The witch said something about her sense of incompletion and what it means to be human before walking back to the brother. After a moment of thinking, she decided she first and foremost wanted to hear again and so placed her hand over the boy's ear.

Outside, a few villagers and I were running from the possessed teacher. While we were in the middle of descending some tall, wooden stairs, we heard the brother scream. This brought us to a nervous halt, but we realized all we could do now is try to keep ourselves alive, so we went back to running. One of the stairs had several uneven planks jutting out over the next step, so I had to find a gap between the fingers of wood to keep going down.

The brother and sister had apparently made it out of the witches' house and were now in a scene at the local park, where several groups were running from their possessed loved ones. My group was going over the thin sheet of snow on the ground when I decided to try to throw a snowball back at our pursuer to dissuade her. I really only threw a clump of snow, and it didn't do much good, but I kept trying.

Another group joined the fray, fleeing from a possessed large woman with long, curly, red hair. They had apparently decided running wasn't fast enough, because they were skiing down the gentle incline of the park with makeshift skis that were just blocks of wood below their feet, attached to strings for them to hold as they went down.

The main characters were running from their possessed mother. Apparently this was actually a book, because the next chapter was about half of a page. The brother was relating the general chaos and hopelessness of the scene, and then at the very end confirmed that the witches had succeeded in making him deaf.

The scene jumped to the same village some time later, and the survivors (main characters included) were climbing up into a wooden play house in the park for some sort of gathering. It was difficult enough for them to get up there, since the ridged, wooden slope was sized for children, but they made it inside, where a blonde teenage girl greeted them. More and more villagers kept coming, and few had made it into the play house before the siblings realized there was not going to be enough room. They pushed their way out, and soon everyone was sitting on the sun-warmed ground, listening to someone giving an emotional speech about the events that took place here.

New Fiction Idea #29

This one's going to be fun.

Working Title: Blood, Brain, Body

Genre: Horror/Adventure

Protagonist: Felicia, an 18-year-old vampire girl who appears about 14. She has straight, dark red hair reaching to the middle of her back and is pale with blue eyes. She's a crybaby and doesn't like that about herself, but her recent infection of vampirism has left her physically weak as well. She's generally been a bit of a loner, and the apocalypse hasn't helped.

Other Main Characters: "Rachel" (actually Rachelle, but she thinks that's too girly, French, and weak-sounding), a 19-year-old girl of mixed European and Japanese descent. Still a human, she's sarcastic but cheerful and very much a survivalist. She has no qualms about firing on attackers or engaging in cannibalism (the most extreme case of her hangup on wasting things).

John, a 20 year-old zombie man who was loose friends with Rachel during high school. He has short, black hair and amber eyes. A joker, he can be just as sarcastic as Rachel but has feelings for her.

Antagonist: Pretty much everyone they meet.

Setting: Mid-apocalyptic modern-day America, in the heat of summer. Two big plagues are going around, of the zombie and vampire varieties (both transmitted by bite). Zombies take on a mottled appearance, develop an obsession for eating brains, and become quite strong and fast. Vampires go pale, develop an obsession for drinking blood, and become quite frail. Zombies have a very limited lifespan, usually ended when they go mad enough from hunger to attempt to eat their own brains (which doesn't end well), although this can be delayed by throwing out all human nature to eat more brains. Vampires are immortal but can be murdered.

Plot: Rachel and John take an SUV across America for sightseeing before the apocalypse (they call themselves the "Bucket List Gang"). Rachel takes pity on Felicia and lets her join (mostly because she looks so young and innocent), and happy murderous times ensue.

Point of View: First person (Felicia).

It Beats Killing Real People

Or: Writing for Stress Relief.

You see, I'm a murderous person. (I'm sure those that have read my Hunger Games fan fictions will be shocked by this revelation.) My "backup" career choice is based on my fascination with how people die.

At the same time, the Bible says murder is a no-no. I'm not going to get all of the schooling necessary for medical examiner-dom anytime soon, either.

The only instantly-gratifying, bloodthirst-satisfying solution, then, is killing people who don't exist. It's also great for stress relief.

For example, let's say I'm extremely upset with people who travelled long distances to Oklahoma in order to rob the people who had lost their homes, limbs, and/or elementary-age children to the recent tornadoes. So I write a story where some fictionalised versions of these thieves engage in such matters and either meet their terribly gruesome deaths or head home only to find their houses have been destroyed in one of the wildfires in Colorado. Or both. Yeah, probably both.

Of course, I do my share of killing off perfectly innocent characters as well. It's just whatever I feel like doing at the time, whatever would help blow off steam. That's the magic of writing—I can do whatever I want to these characters, and it will never be wrong. It might even be enjoyable or helpful to some people.

Do you like to get away with murder in your stories? What else?

New Fan Fiction Idea #13

Working Title: What Would You Do

Fandom: Hetalia: Axis Powers

Genre Tags: Horror, and either Drama or Adventure

Length: Multichapter

Protagonist: Liechtenstein.

Other Main Characters: Italy and Monaco.

Antagonist: Unknown/Spoiler.

Plot: The main characters awake in three rooms, where it is revealed to them that their protectors' lives are at stake. No one else can enter the complex, and it is up to Liechtenstein, Italy, and Monaco to save Switzerland, Germany, and France. They are given weapons, pointed down the right tunnels, and left to fight their way to their protectors before it's too late.

Setting: A futuristic sort of complex, entirely indoors. Several tunnels emerge from three central rooms, and each tunnel diverges into its own series of dips, turns, and other rooms to end in a unique room. Several obstacles, including human adversaries, are set up along each path.

Point of View: Third person, limited to each protagonist but mostly Liechtenstein.

They Say Three is a Magic Number

I've posted my first and second attempts at a cover for The Long and Winding Road; now here's my third (drawing heavily from the second, of course).

I changed the background to another photo by the same artist, but I had to add my own fog with different gradient styles, so I'm a bit unsure about that. It's much easier to see the title with this, although most attempts to place my name interfere with the most winding part of the road. I'd kind of like to figure out a way to put my name in two lines on, say, the bottom right side, but I don't know what I would use to balance it out. Currently, my best idea is wedging it between the arms over the straight section of the road.

I tried to go ahead and tone down the flesh colours a bit, but it really didn't look good. This photo does have more colour to it, though, so hopefully the contrast is less overwhelming. If not, I may just have to redo all of the colouring on the arms, which would not be particularly fun.

I fixed Charlotte's index fingernail and smoothed out some of the outline bumps. I think I might need to blur the texture on Arthur's (the front) hand a bit, since it stands out a lot more than that on Charlotte's.

I'm also considering changing the title again. I unfortunately fell in love with As We Wind on Down the Road, but since those are lyrics from a song instead of the title, I would have to deal with copyright, and I don't foresee much success in that endeavour. It's a shame, since I think Arthur could easily be a big Led Zeppelin fan. I may go with the earlier-suggested Along the Winding Road, although I'm not sure how I should divide that into lines for the cover. It all depends on whether any songs actually play a role in the story.

Feedback is always appreciated.

Dream Journal #11

One of those dreams where I always knew where I was, yet the surroundings were nothing like the actual place.

25 Jun—26 Jun

There was a girl with very short, blonde hair, who was going to my church. At some point she fell in love with a boy there, but for some reason neither could hang out in public. So the girl arranged her hair over one eye and covered the bottom of her face to look like a male and went into the men's restroom where her crush was. They met in the first stall to the left and somehow both managed to plunge wholly into the toilet bowl (which may or may not have temporarily changed into a swimming pool-type apparatus). They made out underwater and resurfaced in the restroom stall. The girl put her disguise back together and walked out feeling quite happy.

I was at my first high school, talking with L.J.* and some girl friends. I was sure to keep good track of the time, because my parents would expect me back after school ended (even though I wasn't actually taking classes). Getting nervous and leaving the classroom with my friends, I decided to wash my laundry in some sort of sports coach area of the school. While waiting for the first load of whites to watch, I went back and chatted with my friends, still feeling uncomfortable, until the washing machine made a beeping noise to signal the end of the cycle. How I was able to hear it from that classroom, which was quite distant, I'm not sure, but my friends were completely fine with me leaving to take care of it.

I switched over that load and checked my watch. It was almost 17:00. I had just decided I had to find some decent excuse for still being at school when I realised there was a chemistry lab going on. I hurried to the lab building, where I had to get in a very long line of other students in order to go past the teachers and get my lab supplies and reactants one by one. A friend ended up in line two spaces behind me, so we chatted a bit as I texted my parents (on my current phone) that I was stuck in a chemistry lab. Dad was very upset because I didn't need to be taking chemistry again, and soon I was becoming rather irritated at this as well. I drew close to the front of the line as I continued texting my father about this, and I let the two people behind me cut in front to buy myself some time.

Dad decided he just wanted to actually talk about this instead of texting, so I left the lab building and somehow called him through the texting page. The phone said I was calling several people at once, though, including Phillip**, so I hung up and went through to call my dad the normal way. He finally bought my chemistry lab alibi, but I was still upset about having to take chemistry and so decided to myself I would skip the rest of it. Instead I remembered my laundry and went back to check on it.

Although I clearly recalled having changed enough loads I should have been down to the coloured clothes in the dryer, all I had were the whites in the washer. It was 18:00, so I was extremely upset and sure I really had to get home soon. I didn't want to wait another hour for the clothes to go through the dryer, so I just set them there, on top of several neatly-folded quilts and blankets that apparently stayed on the bottom of the drying machine. Then I imagined that the sports coach would notice in the morning, get upset, and track me down (which would have been simple because he knew the kinds of clothes I wore), so I pushed all of my clothes to the back and folded the uppermost blanket over the top, vowing to take care of this tomorrow.

*L.J. is my professor for my summer term class that let me go to Japan and China. Pretty sure I would have noticed him if he had ever come to my first high school.

**Phillip is a friend who went to that old high school and was famous in our group for his "five-and-a-half-pack." I last saw him working at Subway, and I don't think I actually have his phone number.

Order Chronological Writing In

You know how they always told you to do all of the hard problems on a test first and then go back to the easy stuff? Apparently it's supposed to be exactly the opposite of that when it comes to writing. Write every scene that comes easily, that you see in your head, in whatever order you feel like writing them, and then go back and put in connecting writing later.

It seems I'm just too "OCD" to do either.

Maybe it's just because I'm used to publishing chapter by chapter, and usually at a pace that wouldn't allow me to jump around if I wanted to. Maybe it's my need for a sense of completions—I'd rather write a finished chapter than a disembodied scene.

In any case, other authors advise working like this, and it does seem like a good idea to churn out what wants churning out. Just the other night, I was held hostage (i.e. awake) by a variation of a future scene in The Long and Winding Road. Is that when I'm supposed to cast away the bedsheets, run for the computer, and write it? I think that would have been possible, but I'm already wary of editing a normal amount—having to go back through the earlier scenes that I would write later to go back to the future scene and adjust some mindsets, wounds, etc. would not be a lot of fun. And it would probably be as confusing as it sounds. I don't mind challenging myself, but... shall I mention again that I am "OCD" about these things?

I'll never know how much this kind of technique would benefit my writing until I try it, though, so I may experiment with one of my less serious New Fiction Ideas. If it turns out to be too conducive to writer's block, I can always scrap the idea and start at the very beginning (a very good place to start, might I add).

How do you do your writing? Follow the inspiration? Take it chapter by chapter? Utilise some other odd technique that works for you?