PaulaTheProkaryote

[crowsb4bros]

Hi y'all! This is going to be my spot to post my snippets from the writing exercises and hopefully get some responses from you!

 

My first exercise will be for Sense and the Senseless and the prompt was You may only use SOUND and SMELL in your writing.

 

The pungent odor of decay wafted through the cave and Cassia paused to listen for any sound that might be from Thomas. He'd gone left, she was sure of it, but the sheer number of tunnels made it impossible for her to guess which one he'd gone into. The slow trickle of water dripping from the ceiling down the stalactite and to the seeping ground below her echoed miserably. She had never felt more alone.

 

"Thomas?" She called desperately. The familiar agitated scent of ozone that always accompanied magic, particularly dark magic, wafted lazily around her. This was definitely the place they'd been looking for.

 

"Thomas!" She tried again. She closed her eyes and focused on the sound of the low thrumming that seemed to be coming from one of the two tunnels directly in front of her. She bit her lip hesitantly before deciding to go into the one on the left. Thomas had made a comment weeks ago about how everyone goes to the right in the forest and he was hardly someone to conform so the left would be more tempting to him. It was faulty logic, stretching a single comment he'd made in passing, but it was the best she had.

 

The thrumming seemed to build into a full drumming with every step and with each steady beat her own heart raced faster. She stopped short of the opening and gasped. Something was burning. It could be Thomas, sure. It could also be the thing that Thomas had been searching for. The dark, blurry, not quite human thing. She braced herself and stepped forward into the chamber.

[WindingArrow]

I LOVE this! The sounds and smells make the tunnels seem all the more imposing and a little disgusting, but you really get a feel for the dankness in there.

[crowsb4bros]

Okay I'm a little late because I was on vacation so I'll work on the first line prompt!

 

"Technically, I didn’t break the law." Cass grimaced as the handcuffs clinked together.

 

"We'll let Sheriff Mahoney be the judge of that." Thomas told her with a rather derisive snort.

 

"Seriously! The door was open!" She protested.

 

"Mr. Brittingham just reported his wife missing and you just so happen to be found at the scene of the crime?" Thomas rolled his eyes and opened the rear door for her to duck into the car. She let out an annoyed groan.

 

"Seriously?"

 

"As serious as a missing person report."

[WindingArrow]

(There is no being late, silly. )

 

The door was open! If I had a nickel for every time THAT worked... I... Wouldn't have a nickel... I know this is probably supposed to be a serious scene, but I keep laughing...

 

I actually really want to know what's going on in this scene... *moseys over to author thread*

[crowsb4bros]

It still feels late to me! Cass will find herself in cuffs a few times until Thomas discovers she's really on his side! I'm happy to meet you over in my author thread!

 

Genre: Fantasy

Character: Animal (fantasy/supernatural)

Archetype: Critic

Narration: Third Person - limited

 

Situation (optional): Household Invasion

 

Flicker paused from his incessant hammering on the kitchen cabinet he'd been nesting in to listen closely. He cocked his head at the sound of a door jiggling vigorously. He considered tilting his head the other direction to try to gauge the sound better, or perhaps calling out for Cass, but decided instead to flutter toward the noise.

 

He cautiously, quietly spread his wings and leapt from the cabinet. He swooped onto the entryway table, careful not to jingle the key basket as he landed. His feathers spiked in alarm as the door handle jiggled again. He decided against calling out for Cass, as she often acted before thinking, and shimmied across the table to the slightly cracked window. He squeezed through the windowsill and shot across the yard to the old magnolia tree. From there, he could clearly see the intruder on their doorstep.

 

It was the man. Not the man that Flicker liked. The one with all the wooden fingernail file in his pocket that sometimes was offered to Flicker. No, not that one. And not the one that smelled like a cedar tree. Not him either. No, it was the man that Flicker did not like. The one that was always watching. The one that did not belong here.

 

For the third time in a beakful of minutes, Flicker was considering calling out for Cass. He knew how she was though, so he decided to do what must be done. He nosedived from his tree to the front door and began pecking at anything and everything he could find until he heard the man shouting in pain. After successfully dodging the man's vicious swats, Flicker retreated to Cass's room to warn her.

 

I feel like it's important to note that Flicker is a woodpecker familiar.

[crowsb4bros]

You may NOT use SIGHT or TOUCH in your writing.

 

Suggested Starters:

Nature walk

Crowded train car

Bubble bath

Okay, so that means I can use sound, taste, and smell. Plus the other senses like thermoception, proprioception, etc.

 

Nature walk

Cass raced out of the house and sprinted towards the woods. She could faintly hear her mother calling after her, but she didn't particularly care. She just had to get out of there. She could smell the sharp tang of salty tears before she could taste them, slipping one by one down her cheeks and accumulating on the brim of her upper lip. She didn't slow her pace until she could no longer hear her mother calling after her. The woods were alive with the echoing calls for mating partners and the desperate, shrill advisories of danger. She collapsed on the ground, near the bank of the creek and gasped as she refilled her lungs with distinct odor of bacteria churning through the soil. Geosmin. That's what Daniel had called it. She curled her lips slightly at the thought of him. All cheekbones and feminist rap music. Her smile quickly faded at the thought of the conversation her mother just had with her. The tinge of dread and foreboding that laced her tongue as she finally had "the talk" with her. She felt like her entire world had chewed her up and spit her out whole and for the first time in her life, she no longer wanted to be a Greenwich. No, she wasn't interested in being a witch at all.

 

 

Bubble bath

Thomas sank into the pit of foamy water until at last he could drown out the words echoing in his ears. "I hate you." She'd spat it with a venom that had never laced her voice before. At least not since he'd been in town. Certainly not when she'd broken his nose for following her or when she slammed the door in his face because he had not-so-subtly implied that her mother was the person responsible for the disappearances. He was having trouble reconciling the Cass that scooped spiders up and carried them outside to a 'suitable habitat' with the Cass that could have so much hatred resonating firmly in her voice. It just wasn't her. It didn't add up. He twisted the faucet off and sank back into the water. Without the mindless droning of water surging from the faucet, he could hear her voice again on a loop. He'd give anything to make it stop, so he stood up from the tub, ignoring the nagging voice of Daniel in his head bemoaning all of the wasted freshwater and impeding doom that the world would soon be facing. He toweled off, changed into his sweats, and grabbed his keys. He had to set things right. He had to set her voice right in his head.

[WindingArrow]

Wow, those are really good (and who the heck is Daniel now?). I think you did a wonderful job of dancing around the sight and touch senses. Not using sight is pretty tricky enough, but touch is one we use a lot as well. I especially like the part about Cass' tears, how you described them falling down her cheeks without flat say 'she felt them.'

[crowsb4bros]

HELLO LIZ! I really have to go stop into the other threads, but every time I come here I get sucked right back into my own writing! Daniel will be Thomas's best friend/partner in law enforcement! Where Thomas is a bit hot-headed and impulsive and standoffish, Daniel is a cinnamon bun who makes friends everywhere he goes and wants to go back to school to get a science PhD probably in entomology.

 

"Technically, I didn’t break the law," she said from the backseat of Thomas's shiny, black government issued SUV.

 

Thomas glanced back at her in the rearview mirror and lifted an eyebrow.

 

"Oh, really?" Thomas turned on his blinker and the annoying beep-beep-beep caused Cass to grind her teeth. She had a thing about blinkers. They're big city things.

 

"You followed me into a dark alley and tried to grab me. It was self defense!"

 

"I called out to you several times before you ambushed me in an alley. It was fairly well lit, as well," he argued.

 

"Self defense," she muttered. A smirk of satisfaction crept on her face when his nose began to bleed again. A tiny sliver of red dripped from his nostril and he reached into his passenger seat to grab a bloody fastfood napkin to bring to his nose. He shot her a look of irritation in the mirror and the smirk bloomed into a grin.

[Guest Tanda]

It's an interesting shot using the rearview mirror and the beep-beep sound which makes the conversations between two people more impressive, Paula!

[crowsb4bros]

THANK YOU KENNY!

 

I have one I've been dabbling with...(or drabbling with lol).

 

If there ever was a ‘once upon a time,’ this was not it.

 

 

If there ever was a ‘once upon a time,’ this was not it. This was more like a 'once upon too many times' or a 'once upon a time that tended to be every few weekends at 3 a.m.' when Michael Wescott had spent a bit too much time The Swimmin' Hole Bar (and Grille, the owner kept insisting despite not serving anything other than microwave pizza rolls) and then Cass would roll over and look at her phone and see the alluring winkyface from him and roll her eyes before falling back asleep. This was one of those 'once upon too many times' except it was accompanied by a text from her brother right below the winkyface one.

 

I need you to come get me.

 

[crowsb4bros]

HELLO MY MUSE.

So I'm working on two main original fics now (I know, I know), so I think my writing exercises will be about both. The new one is a future fic in a dystopian society in which the ruling class has this sort of romantic idea of Ancient Rome so they borrow governmental structure and some phrasing and everyone has terrible names and it's super classist. The heroes of the story include Foster, a priveleged dude in the Senate (aka ruling class) who is basically a frat boy with no real world experience and Caia, a peace advocate from the Commons (aka the exploited class) that accidentally ended up as the leader of the rebellion. It's a whole thing and it's terribly unfleshed out. 

 

You may NOT use SOUND or SIGHT in your writing
Suggested Starters:
Cake tasting
Fabric store
Trapped in a dungeon

 

Quote

Caia had no idea how long she had been trapped in this cell. The stale scent of blood and dampness permeated every breath she took and her lungs screamed out for fresh air. She imagined her mother scrubbing tirelessly at the yellow tiles in their bathroom, clinical mask clinging to her nose to keep the spores at bay. She'd roll over in her grave if she knew Caia was in a place like this. The coppery taste in her mouth and the sharp buzz tracing her nerves sent a ripple of rage through her body. She'd just been trying to stop them from taking Aeliana. It was an honest mistake, but those beasts in the Vigiles didn't care that Aeli was only a child. They didn't care that she'd been playing too close to the protestors and was swooped up along with them despite her innocence. Common children were like livestock to them. Or perhaps they were less than livestock. Cattle and pigs could at least be used to supplement their rations.

 

[ShazaLupin]

 

Hey Paula! So your new fic sounds amazing (but so did the other one so who's surprised? )

I'm impressed with all of these, and how well you've managed to follow the prompts with them. I'd do terribly, hence my lack of thread!  The most recent one you've done is really impressive, I can see the cell and what it must look like even though you couldn't use sound or sight, which is incredible. It was interesting to see what other sense you used since you couldn’t use what most people would probably see as the most obvious one when describing a place- sight. (I suppose that’s the reason for these exercises though) I really liked your use of taste, especially to describe the air and how she could taste the different things in the room, like the coppery taste of blood.

Another one that really stood out to me was the Nature Walk one, because how you managed to describe a nature walk without sight is beyond me. But again, it still felt like I could see what was happening around her and what she could see as well.

These are all really impressive Paula!

[Pixileanin]

I just got here and read through your exercises.  I LOVE Flicker!  I could read a whole book about Flicker.  You captured the movements of the woodpecker so well!

[crowsb4bros]

I'm so happy for this to be back up!  Nim, you're a star. For this week I went with a story that's probably fine to be posted to the archive and doesn't need four million edits, but I'm my own creature. It's called Mouth to Mouth (a jily & wolfstar lifeguard! au). Sirius isn't really a minor character, but he's a background character compared to jily. Prompt #1: Rewrite a pre-written scene from the perspective of a minor character

Quote

 

Sirius didn’t mind the sun beating down on him nearly as much as poor Peter and Remus. Where James and Sirius were already crisping into a nice golden bronze, James much more bronze than Sirius thanks to his ancestry, Peter was turning a dangerous shade of pink and Remus was freckling something fierce. He didn’t mind the view of Remus applying and reapplying sunscreen though, especially not when he’d been asked to help.

They rounded the bend, the one they’d been waiting for all morning, and there she was in all her pasty ginger glory. Lily Evans. James immediately looked dazed with a goofy smile plastered across his face. Sirius rolled his eyes and pulled out his secret weapon.

Her eyes lulled shut under her sunglasses and he could just make out a bead of drool forming at the corner of her mouth. He pulled back the plunger, aimed for the middle of her forehead, and squeezed the trigger.

"Look alive, Evans!" he called to her and she looked as though she'd seen a ghost. She thundered his name, swinging down from her wooden throne and pointed a sharp finger in his face. He braced himself for the scolding with a cool smirk.

 

 

[crowsb4bros]

Prompt #21: Write a drabble based on the emotion or setting that comes to mind when you look at the colour gradient below. Have fun!

 

The sand fell from her fingertips in a swirling vortex. She stared numbly at the horizon. A skittish lizard sat beside her, an unwitting companion in reverie. There was only one option left. She stood suddenly, sending the lizard scurrying, and wiped her hands on her sweat soaked pants.