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flo-but-as-a-writer · 5 years

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Guide To Writing Enemies To Lovers

– I decided to format this article like its accompanying post, Guide to Writing Friends to Lovers, which you all seemed to really like. I hope this is as helpful as that, and thank you to everyone who responded to the poll that contributed the questions I answered in the “common struggles” section. I have a feeling I’ll be reaching our for direct topic-specific questions through polls more often, so keep an eye out. Happy writing!

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Take The Time To Make It Believable

There is a certain amount of care required in the depiction of these stories because they can be really touchy and very easily lead awry. It needs to be handled with care when you tell the reader that this character is going to forgive the other one for doing this, and why. Show the thought process, show the growth, show the reason, and give the story time to make that change reasonable in the reader’s head.

Roll In The Tension

Let the tension build, thicken, and sit in the reader’s tummy. That’s the most delicious part of reading this trope, and the most fun part to write, so enjoy it, and don’t ask yourself if it’s “too intense” or if you need to speed up the pace. Let it simmer, and let the reader stew in it. The longer you draw it out, the yummier the resolution will be.

Give Up Pride, Not Values

Your characters should not end the story by forfeiting what they feel and believe in order to win the other over. That’s not how life works, and that’s not a good way to depict love and forgiveness. Forgiveness is the main theme of enemies-to-lovers stories, after all, and if you’re writing romance, you should imprint a healthy romantic story into your reader’s memory, even if it’s bumpy, tense, and dramatic for the majority of the actual events.

Make The Relationship Improve Them Both

Romances usually hold a meaning or message about romance that the reader will take away from the story at hand. Your message should, ultimately, be that these two people, despite their differences and shortcomings, grew to forgive each other for their mutual mistakes, found common ground, and even fell in love. The end of a romance should be positive, or at least transformative to the reader in a positive way. The couple you depict, if they are meant to be a good couple in the context of the story, should improve each other, and make each others’ lives better.

Abuse vs. Rivalry

There is a poignant difference between two people who are abusing each other and two people who don’t like one another. Abuse can be heavily romanticized or forgiven when this trope is approached with inadequate care and attention. If one or both of the members of the couple actively bring each other down, truly, in an emotional, mental, or physical way, it’s abuse, not enemy-ship, and if that’s intentional, you shouldn’t call your story a romance. Abuse is not romantic, and it never should be depicted to be so.

Common Struggles

~ Where do you draw the line between hurtful and unforgivable?… That depends on your characters’s values, and you need to think long and hard about your characters’ individual boundaries before you even start writing. Your reader will get to know your character. If your character forgives something your reader knows they would never forgive, that will destroy their personal understanding of them.

~ How do you solve the difference between them without making one change for the other?… Explain their thought processes, I recommend by choosing a flexible point of view to write the story from, and show where that understanding comes from. You need to set those boundaries within your characters that make sense for them, and you need to hold to those. The point they should be at by the end of the story isn’t in total agreement, it’s at a compromise where they meet halfway. They should learn by the end to love each other wholly, not when they change for one another.

~ Going from actual dislike of each other to attraction without saying they liked each other the whole time… It’s simple; give them legitimate reasons for not liking each other in the first place. Don’t make their rivalry based on something like a third grade spelling bee misunderstanding with a little “he’s cute though” sprinkled on top. Show a real misunderstanding, or real clash in values, and explore its implications for the reader to understand.

~ How do you show the forgive part between them without including the forgetting?… Let the reader know by the end of the story that the characters have acknowledged the hurt they’ve caused each other, totally and openly through an honest conversation about everything that caused their mutual dislike of each other. Show them confronting the problem, and admitting that it will always be a prominent part of their past, but that they’re willing to try in spite of it.

~ How do you show forgiveness between two people who physically fought without making it romanticize abuse?… Give legitimate evidence that a) nobody was/is a victim of actual abuse and b) they both know that the physical fighting was wrong, painful to the other, and that it can/will never happen again. Ever. In the action or more violent sort of genres, this is way more flexible, because there are more grey-area situations, but as long as you make it very clear that there is no possibility of them hurting each other, in any abusive context, during the relationship or afterward, then you shouldn’t have a problem.

~ How do you establish the growth in trust between the two characters?… Make it occur naturally and at their own individual paces.They’ll grow toward one another at different rates, and you need to pay attention to letting it grow on its own rather than fitting that growth into whatever parameters you’ve set for your story structure. Also, show the little things that make that trust bloom, along with the big ones. Make them noticeable, but simple and ultimately built upon one another.

~ How do you make two characters with completely different morals grow to love each other?… Compromise and honesty. Communication and understanding. Those are the four foundations of any relationship, and especially these ones. Make your lovers listen to each other, and make them see the other side. That doesn’t mean agree, and that doesn’t mean conform, it just means you have to make them see where the other is coming from and empathize with their process of validation.

~ How do you write the characters’ friends growing to support the relationship?… This can be tricky, but it depends on the friends’ individual relationships with that character and their lover. With this subject, if you keep to the manner in which you’ve developed them, they should grow to understand (or not understand) their relationship in a way that makes sense to the reader and enhances the story. If there’s tension, let it lay, and if it makes sense, let it pass.

~ How do you pace the evolution of their opinions/feelings about one another correctly?… There’s a few stages to telling an enemies-to-lovers story: 1. they dislike each other 2. that dislike becomes a problem for them 3. they begin to see the other’s point of view 4. they understand the other’s perspective 5. they don’t dislike each other anymore 5. they grow feelings for each other 6. they get together. The first stage should be established and explained really well. The second should be simple but important, and very impactful to both of the characters. The third stage should be slow burning and very uncomfortable, but transformative to both of them. The fourth should happen as the result of events building on one another, not one single event. The last two should be clearly separate, and the fifth should be a slow burn on its own. This pacing strategy should allow for a lot of tension, build up, and a very satisfying ending.

Resources

Enemies Turned Lovers Prompts

Skinny Love Prompts

Angst Prompts

How To Make A Scene More Heartfelt

20 Mistakes To Avoid When Writing Young Adult Fiction/Romance

Tips On Writing Skinny Love

A Guide To Tension & Suspense In Your Writing

Writing Arguments Between Characters

Pros and Cons of Different Points Of View

Tips On Writing Intense Scenes

Resources For Romance Writers

Useful Writing Resources

Useful Writing Resources II

Resources For Describing Emotions

Giving Characters Bad Traits

Relationships Between Characters With No Connection

Relationships Between Polar Opposites

The Terror Behind Your Beauty Playlist Listen On Spotify

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flo-but-as-a-writer · 5 years

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Here There be Monsters

I noticed it when I was in third grade. We had this globe on my father’s desk in his office from the 1970s. My father got a kick out of things that were slightly wrong or outdated or simply nonfunctional in the regular sense.

This map in particular still had the Soviet Union on it and in one piece. It also mislabeled Arkansas as “Arckansas” which he loved and they also forgot to print half of New Zealand. It’s almost impressive at that point when you manage to forgot half of an entire country.

It was also one of those topographical maps with edges that stuck up and ridges that represented mountains or oceans. I used to like to sneak into his office when my mom was on the phone with her friends and my dad was still at work.

I would run my hands up and down the ridges of the rocky mountains and trace my fingers over the valleys in India. I was always a kinesthetic child: plunging my hand into the sandbox just to feel the granules, threading my fingers through my mother’s soft hair when she’d let me, doing as much finger painting as possible with long watery strokes.

I was lost to the feel of those fine little details of rivers and valleys when my eye caught on something. It wasn’t large or very impressive, but it did strike me as odd somehow. There was a perfectly round dot in the middle of the big fat state of the Soviet Union. I stared for a moment at the dot next to the printed word “Siberia.” I frowned at it for a moment and then went back to tracing the Himalayan mountains. I knew even by then that my father’s old globe wasn’t to be trusted- it was missing half of New Zealand after all.

So I ignored the dot the first time.

—————

We were doing a unit on the countries of the world in fifth grade. It became impossible to ignore it at that point as our teacher put huge yawning maps on the projector and pointed out different cities and landmarks.

We were placed into groups to do projects on the wildlife and food of different regions. I was assigned to Australia with a group of three boys I didn’t even like. It was the second day of the unit and my eyes were hot-glued to the corner of the map, like an itch you can’t reach or a smell you can’t place.

I raised my hand high in the air and sat up perfectly straight. Mrs. Stevenson paused in her usual spiel on how exciting the pyramids were and the benefits of the Nile river and then pointed at me. I rarely raised my hand in class so she looked excited to call on me. “Yes, Astrid?”

I frowned delicately and shifted in place. I had already practiced the question in my head several times. “Excuse me,” my cheeks were already heating up from the sound of my own voice. “But what’s that spot on the map?” I pointed to the dark, perfectly round smudge on the world map that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

It was small, but very dark and it had started to bother me the second she put it up the day earlier.

My teachers brow folded in, “that’s Russia.” She said as she followed my pointer finger.

“No,” I said stubbornly and the jabbed the finger, “inside of it.” “Oh,” My teacher clapped her hands together, “that’s Siberia. Siberia is an enormous swath of land in the north with a wide range of natural beauties, including the tundra and a lake made of mostly-” “No.” My voice pierced the air and many students whipped their heads around to look at me as I took a hard tone. “What’s that dot in Siberia? The big black mark.” My teacher’s mouth twitched and she stared back at me for a long moment. She smoothed her skirt down, “We have to get back to Africa now, Astrid.” She said coolly, “If you have any more questions like that you can ask me after class.”

I folded in on myself as she said those frosty words and I glanced around. Why were they all staring at me? It was only after I overhead a harsh whisper that realized something was very wrong. “What is she talking about?” Someone hissed to their neighbor and I bit down on my cheek.

I would ask my only other friend in class, Kelsey, about the smudge later. She said there was no such smudge on the map to begin with.

That was somehow the worst possible answer.

—————-

I became briefly obsessed.

I stopped and stared at maps on advertisements and paintings of the world in hipster coffee shop walls. I bought a world map at the local mall. I snuck onto my family computer and googled it over and over again: Siberia. Siberia. Siberia.

They were all the same. There was a hole directly in the middle of nowhere as far as I could tell. I would have dismissed it, maybe my globe in my dad’s study was misprinted, maybe I was just seeing things that day in class, maybe I had an eye problem.

But every single map I looked at was the same, it wasn’t a city, it wasn’t a mountain, it wasn’t any kind of landmark according to any databases. It was just an empty spot.

I wrote my projects on Siberia after that. I looked up what tundras looked like and conifer forests and how much snowfall the region got and what kind of animals and people lived there. Most of it was average information such as fun facts (there is a diamond mine so large in Siberia that helicopters are not allowed to fly over for fear of being sucked in!) and the type of currency used (rubles) and languages spoken (a lot).

I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was sure I was sane, at least at that age I was sure, but there was no explanation I could find.

“You don’t see it?” I asked my mom one day over breakfast as I pointed to a map in my textbook. I pointed right at the dot.

My mom looked over her shoulder, “Oh this again.” She tutted, “you want us to take you on a trip, is that it? You’re just like your dad. We can’t afford anything like that right now.” I knew by then that mom wasn’t seeing anything. I didn’t know what everyone else saw, but somehow they either didn’t care about the blank spot on the map, or couldn’t see it.

————–

My obsession with the black spot flared up and down for years until it became concerning. I was in the 8th grade by then and the idea of the spot sometimes still gnawed at me, bothered me somewhere in the back of my mind.

I was on one of the school computers during my lunch and was trying to finish up an essay for LA, but two girls next to me were chatting.

“You have to try the airport game.” Miranda Green was saying to her best friend Haley. “You drop yourself off anywhere on google maps and then try and find your way to an airport.”

I glanced at the two of them. I was half-way through a sentence about Shakespeare’s use of metaphors when my hands danced across the keyboard. I wasn’t allowed that much computer time at home– especially after my mom found me looking up mass hallucinations and collective delusions of a populace.

I had heard about google maps though. It came out a few years ago.

I went onto the website and waited as it slowly loaded. My eyebrows rose as colors and shapes took form on the screen and modern technology really was something. I spun the little map around with my mouse and zeroed in on my favorite location.

Just like on the physical maps and other online maps and maps printed on the back of cereal boxes: there was a hole there. I started zooming in. I got closer and closer and it seemed to drag on as I slowly took my time blowing the image up.

The closest town to the spot was “Yakutsk” and there was nothing but green around it and a distant blue splash representing a lake.

I zoomed until the colors of the map disappeared and the words disappeared and the whole screen went cool and black. It wasn’t like it turned off. It was more like it was splashed with a total darkness that was blacker than black- smooth and shiny and strange.

It was depthless, feelingless, empty black.

“Astrid!” I jumped at the sound of my name. “Are you just sitting there? The library is closing.”

I turned left and right and the lights in the library were dimmed and the two students sitting next to me were gone. In fact, everyone was gone except one librarian with hands on her hips. “How long have you been here?” I glanced out the closest window and realized the sun was setting. I jerked to my feet, “what time is it?!” She shook her head. “It’s almost 5pm, were you playing one of those online fighting games? The boys always manage to crash the computer with those. Do you know how long reboots take?” I looked down and the computer had a large blue screen over it. It had crashed. It seemed to have crashed hours ago.

“I have to go.” I reached for my backpack, cheeks burning and thoughts spiraling. My mom would have been trying to pick up two hours ago.

I had missed my afternoon classes. I had been sitting at that chair staring at that screen for apparently five hours.

I stopped actively searching for the spot after that.

———–

I avoided looking at maps too closely in high school. I purposefully placed myself in the lowest social studies classes and disengaged with most world history classes.

I just didn’t have the time or energy to look anymore. I kept my head down and I tried to do what I had always tried to: not stand out. Make sure no one could tell I didn’t know how to answer them. Make sure no one could tell I didn’t know how to start conversations. Make sure no one can tell you’ve never held a hand or kissed someone.

I think I lied more often than I told the truth in those painfully slow years of high school. “I’ve course, I’ve been on dates,” I’d laugh as someone casually asks me by our lockers. “Of course, I’ve had friends sleep over at my house.”

I knew people casually and didn’t know them at all.

My mom was always worried about me: when are you going to bring a friend home? When are you going to bring a boy home? When are you going to try a little harder, Astrid?

I was trying as hard as I could, but there were two opposite forces at work inside me: I could reveal myself and unveil that lack inside me. Or hide myself and have them never really know me. Never really connect to me.

Walking across that graduation stage at 18 was the largest relief I ever experienced.

——————–

It was just my luck that I had a roommate in college with an enormous map on her wall. I had almost forgotten about it by then, willfully so. She was an international studies student and had a map with golden and red stars on it. The red stars represented places she had been, and the golden stars represented places she wanted to go. The map was absolutely covered in stars.

As far as I could tell the dark dot in Siberia was also just there to specifically annoy me. I was on my bed staring at it one day while Wendy Jackson lay on her stomach and typed away at some homework.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away and my heart squeezed in my chest. “Hey,” I said softly and Wendy’s eyes floated up toward me. We hadn’t talked much in that first month and I could see her polite attention being focused on me for what felt like the first time. I toyed with the next words out of my mouth for a full minute before they spilled out. “Do you think everything in the world has been mapped?” She sat up in bed and shot me a funny look. “What’s that?” I looked away. “Nothing. I was just looking at your map. Thinking… stuff. About mapping.” I finished lamely. She gave a lopsided grin, “Cool, right?” She sniffed, “I mean, like, only like twenty percent of the ocean’s been mapped.” She said and stretched toward the ceiling. “We know more about the moon than we do our own oceans, which is crazy, right? Especially since the ocean’s like, most of our planet.” I nodded and shifted on my own bed. “Right… But do you think some of the land… can’t be mapped though? Even with the satellites and stuff. Like, places that no one’s seen before. That we’re not supposed to see.” “What are you talking about?” She was definitely giving me another funny look again.

“Nothing.” I pulled back. “Just thinking out loud. A little philosophy.” “Uh, right,” she flopped down on her stomach again. “Hey, what’s your major again?” I leaned back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. I closed my eyes, “architecture.” She must have something like “cool” or “nice” after that but I was still thinking about holes and gaps and empty places of the world.

—————–

It was easy to forget. It was easy to get lost in my life: the classes and passing faces and trying to play the conversation game where I never really felt like I was winning.

I did meet someone. His name was Josh and he was in law school, he wore brown button-ups and had long shaggy brown hair and played two instruments (poorly). I think I liked him because he put up with me and the long silences between us.

I think I liked him because he was the sad type of man and sometimes we could just sit and be sad about the world and quiet together. I liked the way he held me. I liked the way he looked at me. I liked the way he liked me. For a long time, I thought that was enough.

We moved in together after college and I couldn’t help but start to ask myself– is this what I wanted? Is this what I was supposed to want? Was there a road map to the “after” part of my life that would make sense? After high school and after college and after finding someone to date.

My mom was pleased nonetheless. She loved Josh and pet his hair and cooed over him every time he went over to the house. She was getting divorced from my dad and it was hard for me to be in the house with them at all without Josh there with me. It felt too much like being an unmoored buoy in the ocean when I saw how they didn’t even look at each other in the face anymore.

I started dreaming that second year I lived with Josh. I was working at a high-end grocery store because I couldn’t find any jobs in my field and we were planning on getting a cat soon. I loved cats. A cat would make things better.

It was in the middle of summer, right around 3 am, when I sat bolt-up in bed, panting like I just been running a marathon and my entire world spinning. “Oh God,” I tore at my face. “Oh God.”

Josh turned over and sleepily reached for me, “what’s up?” I batted his hand away as if on instinct. “Something.” I grasped for the dream but it slipped between my fingertips like receding storm clouds. “I was dreaming about it.” “About what?” He sat up and seemed to be fully awake as my chest heaved.

I blinked a couple times and bowed my head low. “Something.”

—————

It was my third year with Josh and second year after my parents divorce. I was getting sick of having the same dark dreams I couldn’t remember. I was sick of packing food for rich snobs and I was sick of living in a one bed-room apartment with shitty air conditioning. We never did get that cat.

I was sitting on the couch one day and I pulled up a map on my phone. Google maps had been getting better and better and I went onto street view near the city of Yakutsk and started going in any direction.

The roads went on and on through faceless thick forests and narrow empty spaces, yellow hills and dark little houses. I scrolled until my thumb ached and I didn’t know what I was seeing anymore. I kept scrolling. My head snapped up hours later when the sun was wispy yellow on the horizon and keys jangled in the door.

“I’m home.” Josh gave an attempt at a smile when he saw me on the couch. “Having fun on your day off?” I looked down at my phone and realized the battery had died and the screen was blank. It might have been dead hours before then.

I curled up into myself. “It wasn’t my day off.” I shook my head, “I just called in sick again.” Josh frowned and made his way over to me, “Having another shitty day?” I just shook my head and he took a seat next to me, but not that near me. “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Like, actually wrong.” Me, I wanted to say, it’s always been me.

He put his arm around my shoulders and kissed my temple and then seemed to wait for me to answer. I tried.

“Do you ever,” I attempted to articulate, dipping into some deep crevice inside myself and dig it out, scoop it out, force it out and leave it bleeding and open on his doorstep. “Do ever feel like you’re missing something?” A moment of misgiving flashed across his expression before he kissed my temple again. “Of course.” He chuckled. “I was missing you before I met you.” I should have felt warm in my chest for him saying that. I should have felt like I could put down that gnawing feeling in my gut.

I turned toward him and tried to smile. “Very cute.” “You’re cute.” Feel it, I ordered myself as he helped me stand back up after I had been cramped on the couch for hours. Feel it, I growled to myself, Love him, already dammit.

If I had been paying attention those thoughts were the beginning of the end. He never really did understand me.

But truthfully I didn’t know if anyone could.

——————————-

It was Thursday. It was raining. My bank account was exactly zero and my answering machine was stuffed full with messages from my mom.

She had just found out about me breaking up with Josh, which I didn’t want to discuss with her because it had happened months ago. I sat in the terminal of an airport with my back completely straight and my only luggage a baby blue backpack with a broken zipper.

A little girl the size of a large melon was playing peekaboo with her father a seat over. A businessman in a full-suit was on the phone demanding answers. A woman was whispering in Russian to what I assumed was her grandmother and patting her hand softly.

Kids passed. Security passed. Little old men in wheelchairs passed. They kept making announcements over the loudspeakers and I kept drinking more water despite not being thirsty anymore. I tossed my phone into the trash. I tossed my keys into the trash.

I boarded the plane without really looking at anything and put earphones in the second I sat down.

I don’t remember the plane ride very well. Or the train ride where I got yelled at in Russian several times, or the taxi ride that I barely managed to snag.

“You sure?” The taxi man said as he dropped me off in the middle of a random dirt road with no houses around. “Nothing out here.” I waved my hand absently and handed him the rest of my rubles I had on me. “Alright, lady.” He drove off.

I turned toward big hauntingly dark evergreen trees with fall coolness trapped under their branches and small animals scuttling underneath. The sky was narrow and bleached blue overhead. It was quiet except for the pine needles crunching under my boots as I walked. Early October chill bled through the wind and flushed my cheeks. I walked with a touch of fever to my movements.

The world became very small: my steps and my breath and a distant dizziness in my body that I ignored. I barely ate for those long hours it took to trek through the dark and the mud and past the lakes and streams and calm looking dear.

It was early when I finally slowed down. The sun ghosted over the treetops and my body ached in every possible way. I shouldn’t have been able to hike through the night and I shouldn’t have been able to keep my eyes open or feet moving all that time. But I did.

There was a clearing ahead, a place where the trees opened up and the grass was turned blue in the early morning light. A handful of people were standing in it: a round woman wearing a large-brimmed red hat, the type you might see at the beach. A teen boy with a ripped-up black t-shirt and strikingly blonde hair. A woman with elaborately twisted black hair, purple crocs, and thick glasses. A white-whiskered man who was staring at the sky blankly.

A final woman in a thick parka coat turned to me as I entered the clearing and I shivered from head to foot. We nodded at each other, “you’ve seen it too?” She asked in a dusty voice and there was nothing else to do but nod.

There were trees ahead, just like there were trees behind me. But the pit of my stomach said there was something more too. The soreness in my muscles told me I could stop. The prickle behind my neck told me I could start walking again soon.

My whole body was singing with it, frozen with it, burning with it. The empty spot on the map was just beyond those trees.

“Sunrise,” the old man muttered. “Sunrise.” We all gathered toward him and the portly woman in the red hat tisked at me. “You almost missed it.” I gave a soft smile. “I wasn’t sure… before.” “You will be.” The teenage boy said and turned toward the gap in the trees. “We’ve gotta be.” The group of odd people and strangers and the only people I ever felt would truly ever understand surrounded me. I apologized to my mom in my head at that moment. I told my dad I really had cared for him even if I never showed it. I told Josh that it hadn’t been him– it was really me.

Someone took my hand. Another person put an arm around my shoulder, everyone huddled close together. We walked as one, forward, outward. Something shivered ahead- like the air itself was dancing and I heard metallic ringing and tasted something bitter in my mouth.

My heart beat rapidly in my throat and my feet crunched on the ground.

And together, we walked off the map.

————-

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flo-but-as-a-writer · 5 years

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My Lover is a Chosen One

My lover is a chosen one. I can’t really describe it outside of the obvious: something big and Beyond us, capital B, decided that she needs to save the world. There’s no telling exactly what that means, but there are a lot of problems with the world after all. Perhaps she would take all of the plastic out of the oceans or cure cancer in a permanent sense or resurrect the giant three-toed sloth from extinction.

We don’t know.

She didn’t tell me right away. She was such a dazzling kind of person, someone who wore their pain on the outside in a way you didn’t have to guess at. She resented her dad for being a bastard, had problems with her mom for never teaching her to speak up, she hated oysters and the very ideal of golf and the way people stood in front of doors in public spaces.

She told me this all on the first date and I was dazzled. She was so sure of herself and who she was. We went to bed together that first night, which wasn’t something I normally do, but I felt like if I let go she’d flit away like a streak of sunlight. Gone in the night.

She kissed me fierce and hard on the mouth and I kissed her back in all the places I hoped other women hadn’t. I didn’t know about her being chosen then.

However, I woke up the next day and she was floating. I was naked and aching and the person next to me was two inches off the bed. I pinched myself to stop the process of dreaming or hallucinating or losing it. Nothing happened and I poked the space under her to make sure it was real.

She turned over in bed and blinked, “Am smoking? On fire?” She asked in a casual manner, Amanda, floating off the bed.

I just gaped.

She told me over breakfast, not touching her seat as she said it: something wanted her to help. It kept giving her different powers that were there one day and gone the next. She had received a flaming sword on her 13th birthday and a cloak of night on her 16th. She had a car that ate people and rings that could read people’s minds.

She usually lost the powers quickly, but they kept being given.

“Where do your powers go?” I asked and didn’t even taste my coffee as it burned my mouth on the way down.

“Dunno,” She shrugged and didn’t meet my eye. “I think maybe I could keep one of them if I actually used them.”

I hummed deeply and tried to read her expression, but it was guarded for once, closed as a dam across a river. “Have you,” I stammered because I wasn’t a loud person, but always needed to fill silences all the same. “Have you tried using them?” Have you tried saving the world lately? It felt absurd to ask.

She sighed over her full coffee cup and looked toward the door. “I’ve tried.” She tapped her nails on the table, “The world needs saving,” she finally looked up. “And I’ve tried.”

She left that morning with a quick “see you around” and my heart ached for it. I kept seeing pictures of her in my mind: Amanda Morrison, a chosen one. And I spent one night with her and she didn’t even leave her phone number after.

For awhile I thought that was it and I got back on my dating apps and went on more unimpressive outings for coffee or dinner or walks outside.

I saw her again though, we ran into each other at the grocery store and it was so easy. It was easy to joke and chat and spend thirty minutes in the parking lot catching up.

We agreed to drinks and found myself drawn into her arms again. I tried to hold in her way I hoped no other woman could.

I woke up the next morning and her eyes were completely black and she spoke in tongues that sounded like volcanoes exploding and forest fires. She couldn’t tell me what was going on, but she brushed up against my houseplant and the brown thing came back to life.

She just frowned at the green leaves unfurling and left without another word.

She called me a week later though and a pattern appeared: long periods of silence and then sudden and thrilling meetings where I tried to crawl underneath her skin and be the only thing there.

One morning I woke up to two of her. A direct copy that sat next to the window and looked out of it motionlessly. Amanda shooed the double out the door with a firm “I never want to see you again.” It was hard to explain the feeling I had watching the clone put my clothes on and flash me a hard look before disappearing into the streets.

“Should we, should we have given her some money? A map?” I was still reeling.

She turned to me and clicked your tongue, “No.” She said and her lips peeled back, “if you want to be with me you’re going to have to let that sort of thing go.”

I let her go that day and felt emptier for it.

One morning she could melt into the background and disappear. Another morning she froze her eggs into a solid block and laughed herself blue in the face sliding it back and forth across the table. She woke up with a wand, she woke up with a horn, she woke up, and at least I was there.

She started keeping a toothbrush at my place and that felt like a victory. Her clothes started appearing in my closet and sometimes I would stop and stare at them in aw during laundry days.

The space between our dates became shorter and soon I was thinking of words bigger than “lover” for us.

There was another morning a monk came to the door in red robes and a deeply wrinkled face. He begged for our help: an old god was dying and they needed Amanda’s help. She slammed the door in his face while I stared at the hole in the table she accidentally made with her laser eyes earlier. The monk wept outside, but Amanda just plugged her ears and walked away.

My lover is a chosen one and I want so badly to understand it.

We kissed on my balcony one night with the stars burning in the backdrop and I whispered in her ear, “Where’s your place?” I kissed her ear, “We could… move more of your stuff.”

She gave a wry stuff, “You want my things here?” She snorted, “you still want me around?”

“Of course,” I drew back.

Amanda shook her array of curls, “You want my things here. You want me to date only you.”

“Of course.” I said with much more steel behind my words.

“You want to own me,” She kissed me on the nose and she said it so tenderly that I couldn’t protest it for a moment. She gave me a sad smile, “You can’t own a chosen one.”

“What does that mean?” I snapped.

She shrugged, “One day I’ll belong to the world.”

I snarled, “but you’re not going. You’re not chosen.”

She kissed me again. “Destiny is a bitch.”

I tried to joke, “I could be more of a bitch.”

She chuckled and pushed my hair back. “One more night.” But it wasn’t just a night.

Her car was parked in front of the apartment for a week after that, and she spent the days lounging in my apartment and fixing my toaster and eating my food. That was the last time I saw her, or at least, the last time I saw her human.

One night I came home from my job at the insurance company and the couch was empty and so was the bed. Her phone was one the table and there was nothing but gaping silence. It took me hours to put the pieces together when I found scorch marks on the balcony. They were big angry black burn marks that smudged a whole chunk of the tiles and railing.

My landlord would be furious. And Amanda was gone.

I turned on the television and collapsed. It played out in a terrible, almost comical way.

The news anchor explained: a meteor had been headed for earth. It was a huge piece of space junk bent for us, but a flaming humanoid had pushed it back away. She streaked across the heavens and forced the danger into the depths of space.

And maybe it could have been anyone, any flaming person-shaped thing.

But there were scorch marks on my balcony.

I don’t remember ever crying so much. The emptiness in my tight chest was a hunger, it was starving, and there was nothing left to do but sit and shake with it. ——– I went to a memorial a week later. They had figured out that Amanda Morrison had burst into flames bestowed by some god or magician or some great Beyond force and saved us all. I don’t remember much of the ceremony.

Just ache.

But when I went to the grave they erected with flowers and gifts and little girls kissing the headstone there was another woman there. She had bright red hair and a beautiful swan-neck. She looked at the grave with a mournful smile on her face and something different about the way she looked at Amanda’s picture.

Her eyes flashed up when she saw me looking, “hell of a girl, right?”

I turned around and my insides burned and I didn’t know whether to keep crying or scream. You never could own a chosen one.

————-

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flo-but-as-a-writer · 5 years

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When Person A was born without a soulmate, they weren’t sure what to make of it. Now, decades later, they find themselves with more than one partner, happier than they could have ever imagined being, and believe that the universe gave them no soulmate because there’s no one single person who could complete them like their partners could together.

How did they get to this point? Did they suffer discrimination due to having no soulmate? Did they hide that fact from others for that reason or any other reason? Is their believe on why they have no soulmate a common one held by those without soulmates, or are they one of only a few that believe this way?

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flo-but-as-a-writer · 5 years

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Me: no more new ideas, I have too many as it is

New Idea: hey

Me: *furiously scribbling notes* FUCK you

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flo-but-as-a-writer · 5 years

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Thinkin’ of posting a new story to Wattpad but I have it written from two perspectives. One part of me is like, ‘just post the most interesting one!’ and another part of me is like ‘they’re both about the same level of interest.’ so i’m torn...

But also....

POST BOTH.?!??!? YES!?!??!????!

The biggest thing is that it will be the ONLY part told from two perspectives.

but then again....

POST IT ANYWAY?.!?.!??

#Flowritesstuff

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flo-but-as-a-writer · 5 years

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A *screaming into a spoon*: "I'd jump in front of a train for ya~"

B: You would jump in front of a train for fun. Quit yelling. It's 2 a.m.

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flo-but-as-a-writer · 5 years

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Writeblr Glossary

A list of words commonly used in the Writeblr community and their meaning!

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about what some things mean, so I thought it was time to compile a list of meanings.

This list gets updated every so often. Please click here to see the most up-to-date version of this post!

Writeblr — A community of writers on tumblr; A blog that posts primarily about writing. See here for a more in-depth explanation. (Also written as Writblr on occasion)

WIP — Stands for Work in Progress. Primarily, it’s a piece of fictional work that is still in the writing process and is unfinished. (Also see: WIP page)

OC — Stands for Original Character. This is a character entirely of your own creation.

Tag list — A tag list is a list of users who will be tagged in every post that a Writeblr makes about a certain WIP. It is often included at the bottom of a post, and people are free to ask to be included, or removed from it.

WIP Page — A page or a post on a Writeblr that describes a WIP. Commonly includes a synopsis, setting, characters, etc. See here for what goes in a WIP page and how to make one.

Tag games — Tumblr games where people will do something (often answer questions, a snippet of their WIP, etc) and ask other users to participate by using the @ function in that post.

Ask games — A tumblr game where a user will request people to send them things with the ask function. Often times will include a list of questions they wish to be asked.

Writing Sprints — An activity done by writers, where they write as much as they possibly can for a set amount of time (often 10-15 minutes). Can be done with multiple people, and is a common activity for a group of writeblrs to partake in.

Fanfiction — Fiction written by a fan about an existing TV show, movie, book, etc. Often features the characters, the setting, etc. of that piece of media.

AU — Stands for Alternate Universe. AUs typically feature the same cast of characters of a WIP or an existing piece of fiction with a major change or two. (For example, a Fantasy AU would involve placing the characters in a fantasy setting. There also may be an AU of what might happen if a certain character didn’t die in their story).

Canon — Material or information that is accepted as an official part of a story. (i.e., the creator confirms it and includes it in their story).

Headcanons — Ideas and interpretations of a fictional work that is accepted by a fan, but isn’t necessarily supported by canon.

Moodboard — A collection of images meant to evoke a certain feeling or emotion. Often used by Writeblrs for their WIPs and OCs.

Ships — The concept of a fictional couple. Can be either canonical or not. If you ‘ship’ someone with another character, you like the idea of them being involved with each other, often romantically.

OTP — Stands for One True Pairing. This is often used to describe someone’s all time favorite ship.

BrOTP — Someone’s favorite platonic ship. A portmanteau of ‘bro’ and ‘OTP’.

Beta Reader — A person who reads through a draft before publication to give suggestions and feedback to the author to improve it. Can be paid or unpaid, depends on the author.

Sensitivity Reader — A person who reads through a draft to check for issues of representation, cultural inaccuracy, insensitive language, etc. For example, if you are a white author who has black characters in your story, you should have a sensitivity reader who is black, so they can let you know if you are accidentally being offensive, or misrepresenting them in any way. Many writers will have multiple sensitivity readers to give them feedback, so they can make the proper changes to be more inclusive and culturally sensitive. Can be paid or unpaid, depends on the author.

TW — Stands for trigger warning. Often followed up with the trigger (i.e., tw: self-harm). This is to warn people that there is sensitive content in a post or a WIP, and that if they do not want to see it, they should not proceed any further. Used in tags and the top of the actual post for visibility, and often accompanied by a “Read more” cutoff.

OP — Stands for Original Poster. It refers to the person who originally made the post. If someone says ‘thanks op’ on a post, they are addressing the person who created the post in the first place, not the people who have reblogged or added things to it.

Planner — A person who plans out their story before they write it, often with an outline. (Also see: Pantser and Plantser)

Pantser — A person who does not plan out their story, or plans very little before they write it. Comes from the term ‘flies by the seat of their pants’. (Also see: Planner and Plantser)

Plantser — A person who does both planning and improvisation in their writing. A portmanteau of planner and pantser. (Also see: Planner and Pantser)

Have a word you’d like to see included? Let me know and I’ll add it!

Have a question on what a writeblr term means? Feel free to ask me!

If you’d like to ask me for advice on writing or running a writeblr, please check out my Ask Guidelines and FAQ first.

Ask Guidelines | FAQ | Advice Masterlist

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