#adventure writing

[dearestaeneas]

Pappappappappap.

Turn left. Up three slats. Forward for a bit. Hang a right.

Ancient drywall dust speckled the ground at his paws, the wood old and dry and at risk for splintering. It was an absolute playground.

The rat did not know this, but the house had been abandoned for years. On the other side of the wall sat dusty furniture and heavily graffitied wallpaper, empty glass bottles, and general litter. The town had debated knocking it over, putting up a parking lot, but decided against it.

There wasn’t even a shopping mall. What would we need the lot for?

So there the house remained. Abandoned and unloved by humans. The teens who hid in the leaf-filled kitchen to smoke after school did not love the house, with its 3 floors and creaky stairs. The college students who appeared each Thanksgiving night to drink and reminisce, pretending they were anything other than babies in the world did not love the house’s study, home to an elderly desk that no one cared enough to look in. The rats and birds and insects and squirrels did not see the need for the money, or the books, or the gold watch that still, despite it all, ticked.

Pappappappappap.

His little feet pounded ever forward, his little round body squeezing effortlessly upwards between wooden planks.

The little rat, with his round body and busy feet, loved the house. He did not care about the once-expensive looking rugs, or the elegant, but stained, crown molding, and he did not care about the ornate door knobs. The little rat, in no particular order, loved these things about the house:

He loved the still-somewhat-silver silverware that sat in a kitchen drawer for the noise it made when he scurried over them (knives make for a particularly pleasant noise, with their flat edges that slide off of one another).

He loved the bookshelves that lined the walls of most of the rooms, because they made for excellent perches to sit on to survey the floor (not to mention that if one of the books could be knocked over, a page could be taken for a nest with incredible ease).

He loved the plushies left behind in one of the smaller upstairs rooms. There was one that looked like him! Although this was not his favorite (that honor belonged to a little brown bear, who lay on his back, leaving his stomach open for the most wonderful of naps), it pleased him. A mirror had been knocked off the bathroom cabinet and shattered, its shards sparkling on the floor. The little rat tended to avoid that room, knowing simply that the little silver points were bad news, and not needing more information than that. However, he had not come to this conclusion without first exploring the room, for the initial shattering had mimicked the pleasant sounds of the silverware, but times a thousand. He was intrigued by the other little round-bodied rat who looked back at him from one of the shards. He hoped he was not lonely in there.

But the little rat did not love the house for what it contained. Its contents were beneficial and made life interesting and wonderful, but he would have loved the house if it were vacant and cold and bare and boring. The little rat loved the house because it was his home, and because his home loved him.

His home protected him from the rain and the snow and the cold and the heat, his home kept him entertained and safe and happy. He needed nothing and wanted for less.

Pappappappappappap.

He wanted to do something nice for his home. But what did he have to offer? He couldn’t fix the leaky roof, or replace a cracked tile, couldn’t put a chair back upright or even change a lightbulb.

Ultimately, he decided the best way he could show his love would simply be to live in his home. His home would understand his limitations, while still seeing that the little rat stayed because he wanted to, and because staying was important to him.

He climbed higher and higher, ascending more and more wooden slats and boards, scurrying from opening to opening, until finally: a break in the wall.

Drywall parted, and the little rat felt himself becoming giddy. He inched forward, his little nose twitching furiously, his little black eyes boggling.

He panted slightly, having climbed all the way up to the second floor. A journey that would take a human seconds had taken him several minutes. He looked out from his little hole in the drywall to see the ancient chandelier at eye level. If he wanted, he could climb all the way to the very top, and look down onto the chandelier. He’d done this several times, and would, inevitably, do it again.

But there was something magical to being eye level with the sparkly glass. He would say nature played a cruel joke on him, leading him to his home and cursing him with his blurred vision, stopping him from admiring the intricate details of the crystal before him, but the simple problem with this is that he didn’t know any better, didn’t know there was a world outside of the outlines and colors he saw. He loved his home for its outlines and colors, for the way that the chandelier caught the light at certain hours of the day. He loved the sparkle of the rainbow that was cast about the entryway.

Nature was not cruel, nature did not punish him or play jokes. It loved him. It loved him the way he loved his home, it protected him and marveled at him and delighted in his joy.

He sat there, squeaking with great contentment as the sun went down and its rays caught the glass, bathing him and the home he loved in color.

[scribblesbyb]

WIP Intro Alert!

B is excited to share her WIP intro finally!

Spill the deets, Sis!

Title: The White Pearl: Book I: The Origin

Genre: Fantasy, Action, Drama, Adventure, (dash of) Romance

No. of chapters: 28 (approx. 22-23 pages/chapter)

POV: 1st pov

Setting: Earth, 21st Century

MC(s): Ivory (Eve), Theodore II (E.T.), Ulysses (Baldie), Spike (Spikey, Old Man)

Secondary MCs: Ludo (Lu, Rapunzel), Vada (Bitch-face), Gabrielle (Gabbie, Gab)

Supportive MCs: Orson (Sonnie), Raven (Vee), Adelyn (Lyn), Carl (Boss), Kevin (Kev, Saggy Ass), Castro (Cass)

P.S. This isn't the actual book cover! I'm working on a much better one with a close artist friend 😉

Cool! What's the WIP about?

Here's what I'm putting on the back of the book when I publish it hehe

Ivory has fought to be normal her entire life. After humanity shunned her and labeled her abnormality as the work of the devil, Eve's purpose became to hide behind fallacies that'd protect her from another world of hurt.

But what happens when the facade falls apart? When her fate comes to strike her in the face, yet again, forcing her to face a reality she's run from for too long?

And this time….she's doing it all alone.

Love it already?

I mean, duh, it's a pretty awesome book. There's a whole new fantasy language to learn too. But, hey, I'm tooting my own horn 🙊

The good news is I'm publishing it soon. Looking into a few online options first (Wattpad, Amazon Kindle...etc.) but trust, the second I do, I'm boasting all about it on here!

In the meantime, expect the following:

Character Intros: I can't wait for those! I get to spill the tea on my beloved creations and have fun while at it. So look forward to that 😄

Book Cover Drafts: Will have to ask my friend permission to share those first, though 🙈

Sneak Peeks: Provided I come across fun Tumblr tag games, I will use them to share more of my book 💃🏼

Chapter Title List: Particularly proud of it and think it's kinda funny + intriguing so yes, I might share it soon 📃

Thank you for reading this far!

Author's Note

Honestly, TWP (The White Pearl) has taken much of my creative energy these past few years - both the first and the second book (Spoilers: it's three books! #why did i do this to myself lol) but I honestly love the characters and the world I created so much that I wouldn't have it any other way!

[turtle-babe83]

✍🏻Write what you like, chances are, someone else out there likes it too.

✍🏻Write from the deepest part of your heart, then edit like a savage. Be authentic.

✍🏻The incredible thing about writers is that we can become anything or anyone. We become the characters we write in order to express them more vividly. When we write about a thunderstorm: we see the flash of lightning, we hear the crack of thunder, we feel the sharp cold sting of a hard rain on our skin, then we describe it in detail so our reader experiences it as well.

✍🏻 We aren’t normal and we shouldn’t be. We live many different lives in one body and one lifetime. Writing takes a certain amount of insanity if you do it right.

[thepedanticbohemian]

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

More Survival Whump

Whumpee eats an unknown mushroom out of desperation and gets very, very sick and may or may not see shadow people

Along the same lines: Whumpee has been on the open sea for two days, with no water, and drinks saltwater out of desperation

Whumpee falls into an underground hole trap intended for a large animal, and has to wait with a broken leg for the hunter who set it to come back

Someone who’s afraid of heights having to rappel down a one-hundred-foot sheer drop to get to safety I think I’d pass out if I had to do this LOL

Whumpee swims over a deep dropoff and gets dragged down by…. something

Fishing hook in the eyelid

Accidentally getting too close to a buck in rut season and getting gored

Wilderness photographer gets caught in a stampede

[just-anka]

I didn't post about it because tumblr keeps eating my posts on mobile and I kept forgetting to do it on my laptop but Day 5 of my colorado trail hike went up on the blog last Thursday! This was a hard one to write and the next two are going to be even harder I think - it's fun reliving all the awesome moments but there were lots of tough moments in these days too, and writing about them feels a lot like being back in them. I think I will take a break this week and the next post will be up next week :)

[mebssann]

imagine you're living in the post apocalypse and your adopted dad still makes you do homework

[humunanunga]

Enough of the trope where memory loss undoes the damage or the corruption or whatever. More content where removing memories just removes the context.

The tragedy of needing to grieve and not knowing what or who you lost or why. The angst of having trauma and being denied the awareness that it's trauma. The suspense of being different somehow and left to wonder how and when. The tension of knowing that something is off and you can't find where it hurts. The Adventure Zone gets it. Kingdom Hearts gets it.

There is an aching inside you and you don't know how it got there.

[oblongburrbank]

Just did up a quick worksheet, mostly for myself, figured I'd post it up.

The idea is to cross over a few things:

get the small local vibe from hex flower

get the exploration aspect from a proper hex crawl

get the efficient use of detail from a point crawl

heavily encourage the use of landmarks

Anyway might fill out a couple myself if I have time!

[time-woods]

whatevr he writes starts off as the most sickeningly sad and twisted tragedy that becomes a comfort piece somewhere along the way and he refuses to accept that

[bahamaat]

What's happening: Inspiration for current adventure (only light spoilers)

Now that the new adventure is really getting into gear - the PCs entered the valley that is Kaspar the necromancer's home, to deal with the long-standing dying of the land: shrinking crop yields, sickness and loss of their herds, the exceptionally small birthrate (Kaspar being the youngest of the populace at late teens/early 20s) and recently the whole valley has been vanishing under a perpetual fog or mist.

Here are the inspirations I took for the tone and setting of the story, the plot being created by Kaspar's player and his homeland being a mix of a general idea I had for the region and then a lot of input from the player.

Stephen King's The Mist (the story and both dramatic adaptations)

Silent Hill - specifically the movies but I've done a lot of deep dives into lore explanations on Youtube and the Silent Hill fanwiki. I focused on how the movie and games treat the use of the fog as a transitional world between the living world and the otherworlds.

SCP-1936: Daleport - an entry in the crowd-created SCP foundation meta-universe involving after-the-fact investigation of a town that vanished for the period of a week during which several cosmic supernatural entities summoned by a cult fought a battle for supremacy in an attempt to limit the damage of their inevitable conflict to a single town instead the whole of the universe

A lot of the 3e, 4e, and 5e products involving the undead and the Shadowfel plane

Anthropological looks at ancient Mesopotamian and Chthonic Greek concepts of the transition between life, death and the afterlife.

I also bit the bullet and bought the most recent guide to Ravenloft purely for a few pages on advice for horror in 5e.

So expect a few pieces from me in the future about how the planes interact, especially the Material and its echoes, what that fog is and other elements.

I'm particularly happy with how this adventure idea came together, since it has a lot of layers to it and I set it up in a way that the PCs have unlimited freedom to figure out a solution here.

[dearestaeneas]

Epilogue.

For a moment, the world burned with the deepest orange before fading to blue. The little rat loved the dark, although his already blurred vision became all the more useless. His whiskers and nose did well to steer him in the right direction as he made sure to take the appropriate time to mourn the loss of the burning light’s rainbow. It did not matter that it would be back tomorrow: The specific moments he savored could never truly be repeated, simply recreated in a similar likeness.

The little rat squeaked with delight just thinking about it.

He did not wonder at just how many of those bright and colorful moments he had left, because such a thought served no purpose. There was no answer that could change the wonder he was so blessed to marvel at, leaving no reason to ask the question in the first place.

Despite its age, the rain and the wet hadn’t fully infiltrated his home. The beams he scurried across remained dry, the older ones occasionally creaking quietly, but respectfully, under his weight. He appeared to be in a great rush, finding himself back on the ground floor in far less time than it took him to leave it.

He exited the wall, running toward the study.

Pappappappappap!

The little rat heard the squeaking before he could make out his fellow little round shapes. Before him lay a carnival: several smaller rats fought playfully as those around them fed or curled themselves into one another as they slept. Although the little rat’s home was now dark, pale moonlight shone into the room through the tall, arched windows. As the moon rose, more and more of the sleeping little bodies began to stir.

Before long, the little rat found himself in the middle of the colony, squeaking enthusiastically. He fed on beetles that crawled their way across the walls of his home, as well as seeds that fell through broken windows from trees. Some of his meal even consisted of raspberries that had begun to grow across the house’s front stoop. As he ate with his friends in the home he loved, the little rat forgot the grief he’d felt thinking about his fleeting glance at the sun.

He did not hold still for long- none of them did. The little rat scurried about, pouncing on his companions and swishing his tail back and forth excitedly. He didn’t like to be alone and only did so at sunset. Although, as he played and squeaked and ran, he wished he could share all of his life with those around him.

If only they knew! If only they knew the wonders the house had for them, just waiting to be found! To be loved!

But wouldn’t it be cruel to disturb their sleep? No, maybe it was okay to keep such a treasure to himself. He would not force his choice on those he loved, and instead began to wonder what treasures he could possibly be missing out on.

His home did not love him less for not knowing all the marvels it had to offer, did not love his friends less for not knowing the beauty of the chandelier at sunset.

The little rat’s little feet pattered against the wooden floor, smooth and worn after years of those who came before him.In a sea of identical little noises, his own little pappappappappap! added to that legacy. Those who were to come after him would not know his unique squeaks or the way his specific feet sounded, but they would know their own, acting as a similar enough likeness.

[bakchodwriter]

Hey there, Bakchod Writer here. Ting Tong, fellow writers! Today, I want you to delve into the fascinating world of writing prompts and how they can ignite your imagination and inspire your next novel. As budding authors, we all face those moments of writer’s block when the ideas seem to elude us. That’s where writing prompts come to the rescue! They serve as creative sparks that jumpstart our creativity and get the words flowing. So, let’s explore the power of writing prompts and how they can fuel your writing journey.

[stoopidstapler]

SO IVE BEEN GOIN INSANE SINCE THIS TRAILER DROPPED. JUST. SIMON. SIMON. SIMON.

[astearisms]

fionna and cake drawings before and after watching the episodes so far. it’s nostalgic and somehow cathartic and poignant and relatable and—it just started

[just-anka]

Day 2 of my hike is up on the blog! :)