KJToo

After learning about PlotStorming.com at Con on the Cob, I decided to give the creative writing community a shot and signed up for a free account.

PlotStorming is, at its heart, a Simple Machines Forum (much like the one installed here at KJToo.com) where users can talk about various aspects of creative writing, bounce ideas off one another, submit works for critique, and even have special, private forums created for the purpose of collaborating on writing projects.

One of the cool things the moderators do is post a short creative writing prompt every day. The site generally leans toward the fantasy genre, so the prompts tend to involve a variety of fantasy elements. They’re short (usually just a few sentences) snippets designed to give the imagination a little kick-start and PlotStormers can post the results of that creative boost.

Here’s the prompt from 13 November 2007:

The first tongues of lightning lashed out from the front of the roiling cloud bank and the shields glowed indigo-azure in response. Brahm smiled. “It’ll hold.”

Cain couldn’t move his gaze from the artificial twilight as it spread with the storm until it engulfed the whole city. “I’d hold my tongue, Brahm. We haven’t seen the brunt of his wrath yet - we are dealing with a god.”

The prompt worked exactly as intended, and yesterday I sat down for about 30 minutes and wrote this:

Brahm looked at his younger brother. “Aye,” he acknowledged, nodding, “a god, indeed. But just the one this time.”

“The prophecy-” Cain began, but his brother interrupted.

“The prophecy was written ten thousand years ago,” Brahm said, “in a long-dead language. It’s been translated and re-translated so many times that its original meaning is as dead as the prophet who wrote it.”

Brahm started across the square, the cobblestones beneath his boots glowing faintly purple in the light of the shield high above. “Besides,” he continued, “you and I both know that prophecy is less about divination than it is about interpretation.”

Cain frowned, falling into step beside his elder sibling. “That’s no excuse for over-confidence,” he said. “It’s been nearly a hundred years since the Siege of the Ancients; the shield-weavers are-”

Brahm interrupted again. “-old men, yes. I know, I know.”

The brothers paused as they came to the monument at the center of the square, both men dropping to one knee in reverence to the Mother. Cain pressed his palms together and touched the sides of his index fingers to his forehead, nose and chin; a warmth radiated outward from the center of his chest as the Mother heard his silent prayer. For the space of three breaths he knelt in silence, his eyes closed, the feeling of apprehension banished–at least for the moment–by the Mother’s blessing.

Brahm and Cain rose as one, then continued across the square. The Mother’s calming influence receded as the men moved away from the monument, though the soothing warmth remained, as it would for at least an hour. Cain looked up again as a bolt of lightning cut a brilliant, jagged scar across the darkened sky and the shield glowed brighter. The thunder that followed should have been nearly deafening, but it was barely audible, most of its energy absorbed by the magical shield and channelled to the twelve shield-weavers. The more the storm raged, the stronger the shield became, but Cain was only too aware of the terrible price the weavers paid, their bodies ravaged by the mystical forces. If even one of them should die…

“They’ll be fine,” Brahm said, breaking the silence and seeming to read Cain’s thoughts. He reached his destination and pounded three times on the heavy wooden door.

Cain suddenly realized where they were. “This is-” he started.

“Yes,” Brahm said grimly. “I am confident that Alden and the other weavers can maintain the shield, but never mistake confidence for ill-preparedness, little brother. Should the shield fail, should the god breach our defenses, we will have no recourse but to fight.”

The heavy door swung inward, opening to a dimly lit room and a towering, bearded man whose naked, broad chest was criss-crossed with pale scars and whose left arm ended in a smooth stump just above the elbow. Recognition shone in his dark eyes and a cruel smile played across his lips.

“And if we must fight,” Brahm continued, “we would be foolish not to have a god-slayer fighting beside us.”

Now, I have no idea where this story is going. The whole exercise sprang from the last few words of the prompt: “we are dealing with a god.” My first reaction was “just one?” and I ran with that.

From there, my approach was simple: have the two men walk across the square and introduce a couple of interesting things along the way (the Mother, the power of prayer, the shield-weavers and finally, the god-slayer). I wasn’t thinking about backstory, I was thinking about cool; I figured if I got really interested in the story I could come up with the history later.

I’ve never really written fantasy, but I can see where it might be cool to continue. On the other hand, I’ve gotten in trouble with the “make it up as you go along” approach in the past (the very recent past).

I think I’ll do another couple of prompts over the next few days, because I can definitely see how the doors to creativity could be opened. Will anything come of it? I don’t know. I do have a bit of a penchant for not completing stories.

Posted November 27, 2007 Comments(1)

Today has thrown me for a bit of a loop. I was supposed to be working off-site all week: that has changed. I was supposed to have lunch with my soon-to-be-ex-boss: that didn’t happen. Things that were fine when I left the office in the middle of last week (I took two days off for Con on the Cob) are all sorts of not fine now. Needless to say, I didn’t get any writing done while I was scarfing down the two double cheeseburgers I picked up on the way back to the office from where I thought I’d be working all week.

Now I need to dash off to record this week’s Volcanicast at the PlanetRetcon remote studio, also known as Bob’s house. Speaking of upheaval, Wesley is out this week and possibly the following week and when we record on the 25th it’ll be at the new PlanetRetcon studio, also known as Wesley’s new apartment.

Given the status of things at work, I doubt very much I’ll be writing tomorrow at lunch time unless I find a dark corner and write longhand. There’s another write-in tomorrow at Morley Library, but will Laura kill me if I go out again? She might. She just might.

Gotta get this boat underway again somehow. Trouble is, the thing feels like an oil tanker and I’m standing on the poop deck with a broken paddle.

Posted November 12, 2007 Comments(2)

Hey, wasn’t I writing a novel or something? What happened to that, anyway?

Yeah, I took a few days off to attend Con on the Cob 2007 in lovely Akron, Ohio. I had a lot of fun, got to do some gaming, purchased some dice (nerd!) and a piece of artwork and pre-ordered a fantasy novel. I also interviewed some very interesting people, including legendary fantasy illustrator Larry Elmore.

But I didn’t write. Well, not my novel. I wrote about 1,800 words about a game of The Savage World of Solomon Kane one day and blogged at length about the convention, but unfortunately not a word of it counts toward the 50,000 I need to have written in just over two weeks.

This should be interesting.

Posted November 11, 2007 Comments(3)

I attended the first official Lake County NaNoWriMo Write-In last night at the Morley Library in Painesville, Ohio. There were seven people there, including myself, and everyone seemed to be having a good time and at least making an effort to get some writing done. And there were snacks: pretzels and tortilla chips and those rectangular wafer cookies with the frosting…yum.

Every year, I see at least one person writing their novel longhand with pen and paper, and sure enough two of the people at the write-in were busy writing in their notebooks when I arrived. On one hand, if they’re planning to upload their novel for official verification at the end of the month, this means they’ve essentially got to write it twice: once on paper and then a second time when they transcribe it to electronic format. That’s a lot of work. On the other hand, I’ve never seen a pad of paper run out of battery power after only about an hour of writing, and I doubt very much that anyone has ever spent twenty fruitless minutes (or more) trying to get their spiral-bound notebook to connect to a library’s wifi. The pen and paper may not be the most high-tech of noveling tools, but it’s very reliable and far more portable than even my laptop.

I did manage a meager 442 words before my laptop battery died (and me without a power supply), and would likely have gotten a lot more done had I not written myself into a bit of a sticky spot.

Chief Inspector Timothy Remington, Sergeant Michael Shaughnessey, Bannister Proulx and Emma Caldwell are all at the house on Ridgebury Lane. Emma, whose knowledge of human anatomy far surpasses that of Bannister Proulx, has finished her preliminary examination of the two murdered women. In reporting her findings to the Chief Inspector, Emma makes a fairly obvious observation: if the women were killed elsewhere in the house, the killer must have been strong enough to carry them to the bedroom. Chief Inspector Remington notes that it would be a simple matter for a strong man to do so and an even simpler matter for multiple men, at which point Bannister Proulx states that the murders are the work of a single person, acting alone. Remington, quite naturally, asks Proulx how he could possibly know this, especially since the detective had earlier suggested that the killings were done as ritual sacrifices, and rituals are often performed by groups of people.

That’s all well and good. Bannister is certainly correct: there is only one killer. The problem is that I don’t know how he knows. I’m sure he has some terribly logical explanation based on observations he has made since entering the house, but I don’t know what that explanation is.

So I finished typing the question, closed the quote, pressed Enter twice, opened a new quote…and stopped. I haven’t the faintest clue how Bannister knows what he knows, but I’m pretty sure he does. If he doesn’t…well, I’m not in editing mode, so there are no takebacks right now. Perhaps if I decide he doesn’t, I’ll have him explain his reasoning and then have Remington or Caldwell or, worse, Shaughnessey, point out the flaw in his logic. Wouldn’t that just get his goat?

But Bannister cannot know just because I know. I mean, I’m pretty sure he’s not writing the story…yet.

Posted November 7, 2007 Comments(2)

I wrote about 2,400 words yesterday, which would be fantastic were it not for the fact that the first 1,667 of them were supposed to have been written on Saturday. The allure of Arkham Horror was too much to resist, and so I spent several hours Saturday evening battling nameless horrors from realms beyond mankind’s understanding in a futile attempt to prevent the Ancient One from awakening and destroying Arkham, Massachusetts. Chris, Gus and I played two games. The first, against Shub-Niggurath, was a dismal failure; when the Great Old One awakened, we soon discovered that were were entirely unable to deal it any damage. The second game, against Yig, was much more successful, and I found that Sister Mary the nun kicked far more beastly ass than the gangster I was playing in the first game. Power of the Almighty, indeed.

Enough of that, let’s get to the meat of today’s post: the plot of my novel-in-progress, which involves neither nuns nor gangsters, nor slumbering horrors that will rip your sanity from you like so much plastic film off the top of a microwave dinner when they awaken. Well, not yet, anyway.

Cleveland, Ohio. January of 1938. The city has a new mayor, elected to the office under dubious circumstances, and a killer roams the streets, able to slay young women with apparent impunity. Chief Inspector Timothy Remington enlists the aid of Bannister Proulx, a detective whose consultations have proven quite valuable to the constabulary in the past two years.

Unfortunately for Remington, the new mayor sees Proulx as a threat to the department of police and the city of Cleveland. The mayor demands that Remington turn over and and all police files pertaining to Bannister Proulx and suggests that some very influential people are concerned that Proulx’s involvement with high-profile murder investigations paints the constabulary in a poor light.

On the heels of this news comes another slaying, apparently the work of the elusive killer who has haunted the streets of the city for some four months. But it’s worse than Remington suspects; the killer he has been pursuing since autumn of the previous year is merely an imitator of the true menace, and the gruesome new slaying is more horrific and more puzzling than anything the Chief Inspector has ever seen.

Despite the mayor’s admonitions, Remington again calls upon the aid of Bannister Proulx and his partner, the young, attractive, and exceptionally intelligent Emma Caldwell. Proulx quickly confirms Remington’s darkest fears. The murder of a mother and her grown daughter on Ridgebury Lane is not the work of the same individual who has been terrorizing Cleveland since the previous September.

Proulx determines that this new killer is far more meticulous and exacting than his imitator and reveals a supernatural element at work. The mysterious symbols and diagrams written on the walls of the murder scene are familiar to the detective, who is no stranger to the arcane and the occult. While Proulx attempts to determine the exact nature and intent of the symbols, he encourages Remington to continue his pursuit of the copycat killer in hopes that catching the imitator might gain them valuable insight into the identity of the true menace.

During the course of his investigation, Proulx learns that the grisly murder on Ridgebury Lane is not unique to Cleveland. Similar incidents have occurred in the cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and even Pittsburgh. Not only are the murders practically identical, they all took place on the same street in their respective cities: Ridgebury Lane.

While Remington races to find the copycat killer before he strikes again, Proulx and Emma Caldwell travel to New York City, where their investigation leads them to a secret society that has existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. This powerful group has influenced the architecture and infrastructure of every major city of the United States and western Europe, ensuring that certain elements—all but invisible to those who don’t what to look for—were included in the cities’ designs. Bannister learns that the presence of these elements, combined with the appropriate arcane knowledge, will allow near instantaneous transportation between any of these cities, and the thoroughfare connecting them all is Ridgebury Lane.

But who is using this arcane secret to commit gruesome murders from Cleveland to London, and why? The key to the mystery lies in finding the elusive copycat killer, but can Remington and Proulx find him before he, too, falls victim to the true terror of Ridgebury Lane?

Posted November 5, 2007 Comments(2)