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[thewritingarchives]

What I know about an aftermath

Summary: War is over. The rebels won. Lorei finds out that things aren't as easy as she once imagined they would be, and their romantic interest on a slightly questionable man makes things even harder.

Things were supposed to be easier once we won, but apparently shooting a gun is way easier than running a country. Economy was in shambles, and it was up to us to prove that overriding a tyrannical dictatorship was the best scenario for everyone. Food was scarce, civilians were still scared and ready to attack at the first sign of danger. I was stressed, and angry about how hard everything was, how things were supposed to get better yet they seemed reluctant to improve. 

And among all that chaos, I met Kieran.

Kieran, the first person who managed to make me laugh in a way that made me wonder if I had felt such genuine joy before. A man who was so smart, we could have hours-long nuanced conversations about politics, about social issues or more insignificant topics, and still be the most riveting part of my day. 

He wasn’t scared to speak his mind about anything; not the dictatorship, not even about our new president, the president I had helped put on power, and the things that he was not doing correctly. I used to joke that in another life, he would make an excellent reporter.

“I get that the president doesn’t have it easy-” His arguments always started with a phrase like that, with a half-lit cigarette hanging from his mouth and a half-drank can of beer on his hand. “I just don’t get how after everything the Resistance Team has done for him, he can’t even throw them a bone.” 

I would smile then, a stupid grin that looked a lot like a smirk. And then he would see me, and smile too. “What? Don’t you agree?” 

“I just don’t think it’s that easy.” And that would make him laugh, and his laugh was enough for me to want to throw everything away, to try and get the fake passports needed to start a new life somewhere far away from all the shit-show we had been forced to live in since we were born. I wonder if he knew I would never be able to leave it, no matter how much I wanted to. I wonder if he knew that he wouldn’t either. 

“I mean it, though. It’s not like ‘you broke into the congress and shot a dictator for me, here, you get the hundred benches for you to put whoever you’d like there’.” I wasn’t looking at him anymore. I was looking at the dark water sitting in front of us. I was remembering. “Not when they miss, atleast.” Not when we miss. 

“Listen, the process isn’t important. What’s important it’s the end result.” Kieran would shake his head then, finish his beer, throw the can as far away as he could. I knew that he would pick it up later. Back then I wanted to think that he did it to avoid littering. Now I wonder if he did it to not leave signs of us in that recluded lake we used to meet at. “Maybe it should be that easy. Don’t you think politicians over-complicate these kind of things sometimes?” 

His voice was hypnotizing, in the sense that when he spoke, he managed to engulf my entire attention. Kieran spoke in calls of actions, and those kind of words always had a particular effect on me. That’s how I had gotten into politics on the first place. I thought I had grown bored of them already; turns out, I was just bored of always listening to the same thing over and over again.

And Kieran was just what I wanted: a fresh gush of fresh wind after what felt like an eternity of talking about the same topics with the same people, of ignoring things that were clearly not right in the name of a higher good I was no longer sure about. I didn’t realize how sick I had gotten of all of it.

Don’t get it mixed up, though. I knew he was going to betray me from the first moment we talked.

Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit; Maybe It wasn’t right after we first talked, but rather once our weekly meetings had turnt almost daily. Or when It became clear that I would rather be sitting on the grass in front of the lake that I had came to call ‘ours’ instead of the ministry, attending never-ending meetings where we never seemed to arrive to any concrete solution. To think that only three years ago, that would’ve been my dream.

“I really like you.” I said one day, almost without meaning too. 

Kieran didn’t seem too surprised. It was a full moon, almost impossible to see from the city. Laying on the grass of our spot, it shone brighter than ever.

“I really like you too.” 

So I knew it was fake, but I pretended I didn’t. Because his eyes looked at me with the most love I’ve ever seen in my whole life, even if none of what he was saying was true. Everything he had told me might have been lies, but I believed them out of the sheer spite it caused me to know that he was there to bring me down.

I’m going to be honest: I thought I could live forever like that. Knowing that he was a traitor, knowing that he was there just to get intel, but playing boyfriend in the meantime. I thought to myself, ‘how bad can it be?’ A year more and the president would end his term, then it would be my boss’ turn at the presidential chair. I would get some high-paying job in her team, and he would keep me company. Every now and then I would release a small, non-compromising secret to him, enough for him to bring back to base and believe that it was all still worth it. I wanted to believe it would all be just fine. 

I liked him so much, I was ready to induce myself into a delusion big enough for me to pretend that would actually work. 

“Lorei, don’t you wish things were better?” 

It was a nice spring afternoon. The sun glistened over the lake, one of the few that hadn’t been contaminated with the last government. We were laying over the grass, and I had a small flowers in between my fingers.

“Because I know how to do it.”

I wanted to tell him it was useless. That he didn’t want to win, not really; It’s always easier to be the opposition than actually in power. Instead I said, “What are you talking about?”

It was a great plan. Had I not known he was a spy then, it might’ve even worked. The idea was not that complicated: Use the celebrations from the independence of the country as a distraction; get into the main office of the party’s data collector, and release all of it to the press. Make a real revolution. I’m not sure what he thought I would believe he stood for. An anarchy, perhaps? The point is that he needed someone to open the doors, and I was the only person he knew who had the card key.

All those afternoons spent together, all those shared cans of beers and meaningless chat, in exchange for that: a card key he could’ve stolen to the stupidest of our party.

In the end, I wasn’t able to keep a straight face. I almost managed to, though. But it was when we were at the doors, my hand slightly shaking, that I finally broke down.

“Stop, I…” 

Kieran looked over at me, concerned.

“Are you okay?”  Did he actually cared about me, or was he just scared I was having second thoughts?

I wasn’t okay, though. By no meaning was I okay. I wanted to tell him that it was wrong, it was all wrong; us, them, the party, the president, the dictatorship and the government. That any possibility of true change was a fiction, but that if we played the long run, some changes could work. And above all, I wanted to tell him that I loved him. 

“I’m scared.” It was the only thing I was able to conjure in the end.

The way he smiled at me was indescribable. It would be useless to even try to, for no words would be able to paint it in a truthful way, nor would be capable of making you feel the way I felt right then. If I had to try, I would say this: He smiled to me as if there was still hope. Hope for us. Hope for the life we were pretending to have.

“Lorei, don’t you know by now? I won’t ever let anything hurt you.”

He didn’t like me back. I wish he had, though. I really do. Maybe I wish he knew it was a trap, too. 

“Can we stay here for a little bit more?” 

“Yeah, of course.”

It was futile to extend the lie longer than it was needed, but I refused to relinquish it. In a few moments, the men of our Peace Force would storm in, take Kieran down as well as the rest of the traitors waiting for him to deliver them enough information for the ex-dictator son to take over the government. 

Right now, though, we were still a pair of people in love, doing what we thought was better for the world. I liked to pretend as if I was still capable to feel that way. As if the world hadn’t showed me enough, time and time again, that the world I wanted wasn’t one that existed.

Earlier I had been wrong, though; I said no one else had made me feel like I mattered. Not like him, who listened intently to every thought I had, every opinion I voiced. In the beginning, my party made me feel like that, too. I’m not sure when it stopped; perhaps it didn’t, I just couldn’t believe it any more. When I spoke at congresses, in those big important meetings or other events, people heard me, my boss heard me; prisoners were still taken and the justice was still bribed to rule in our favor. Maybe I was bothered by it more than I was willing to admit to anyone, even myself.

So of course the Peace Force came eventually. Kieran was surprised at first, but I saw his body relax after seeing me so in control. It was like the weight of knowing I had set him up released the tension inside of him, a logical conclusion to a logical course of action. 

I wanted to tell him something. ‘You broke my heart’, something like that. It wasn’t true, though; breaking my heart, that had been all on my own. I knew his intention from day one, and I still went behind him blindly. That was on me. 

“Don’t look at me like that!” Despite all, he was still smiling. It wasn’t the same innocent smile as before, but it definitely still looked… full of love. I wondered if he had forgotten to stop acting. “You were the one who sold me out, I should be looking at you like that.”

“You are a spy.”

He didn’t deny it. Why did it still hurt? It shouldn’t have. I knew there was no point in denying the obvious. “It appears to be I’m not a good one, though. I might give journalism a shot, but I heard they are on a tough spot right now too.” 

Had I been less heart-broken, I might’ve asked him how did he manage to joke at a time like that. He didn’t seem scared, much less regretful. The gig was up, yet he still displayed the attitudes that made me fall in love with him in the first place. 

The Peace Force took him out of the room, into the van to take him to a cell. I was tired of everyone telling me what to think, and more importantly to me, how to act. Perhaps It was a sign to start forming some convictions of my own.

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underrated feminist analysis

[thewritingarchives]

“I will be wild. I will be brutal. I will encircle you and conquer you. I will be more powerful than your boats and your swords and your blood lust. I will be inevitable.”

— Iphigenia, from A Memory of Wind by Rachel Swirsky. 

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How to write fanfiction: A practical Guide

Fanfiction is supposed to be fun, both reading and writing it. One of the most fun parts of it is the fact that there are no rules, and that's why this is by no means intended to be a handbook that must be followed in order to write.

There are as many works out there as there are writers, and some of the best books were made breaking the rules of how writing 'is supposed to be'. I wanted to make a list of advice that I found useful to get over the fear of the blank page. It’ll probably not help absolutely everyone, but if you don’t know where to start, these might give you an idea on which way to go. 

1. When is it happening?

Is it a filler episode between two important episodes? Is it the aftermath of a tragedy that the show doesn’t dive on? Is it not even in the original timeline of the series? It doesn’t have to be an exact timestamp, but knowing if you’re writing pre-canon, post or in between can help you organize the characters’ thoughts and ideas, as well as the events that take place. 

2. Decide what is the story that you want to tell

Most of the times, it’s not enough to know which characters you want to use in your story to write a fanfiction; you need to know what you want to happen to them, too. Some people can just sit down and start writing without knowing where to go (and it’s a great exercise to do) but a great way to ensure that you’ll finish the project and won’t leave it as a w.i.p. is thinking about the story that you are trying to tell. It doesn’t need to be a huge story, which leads to the next tip…

3. If you’re just starting, keep it simple

If it’s your first time giving writing fanfiction a go, don’t dive straight in the 100 chapter novella; the chances of you not finishing it are big (it's a hard task, even for super experienced writers!), and it’ll only demotivate you; Instead, try starting with a one shot, and slowly working your way up longer works. This way, you can also practice developing your writing itself without having yet to care about the particular skills and abilities needed to write a longer piece. 

4. What’s the conflict of the story?

Even one-shots need a point of conflict; it’s one of the most important differences between a bulletpoint list of headcanons and a fanfiction. And it doesn’t need to be big, no one needs to be dying; If you’re writing a comfort fic, the conflict might as well be that there isn’t enough sugar to bake a cake. But conflict doesn’t only allow us to develop the story and the characters,it also help us see the story’s basic outline, thus making it easier to know what needs to be written to finish a piece. If we know what the conflict is, we have an easier time knowing what needs to be said in the introduction to set up to the middle of the story, and we know what problem needs to be solved in order to write the ending.

5. Outline the basics of the characters you are going to use

There are no laws that state that if you’re writing fanfiction, characters must be as close to canon as possible; But if you want to write them like this and you aren’t sure how, this tip is for you: think about every character you’re going to use and pick three adjectives that would describe them. Generally, to keep it balanced, I recommend picking one positive, one neutral, and one negative. Now, when your character is faced with a particular situation, ask yourself how would someone with those traits react? Once you write it, read it again. Does it feel like something that would actually happen in the book or the show? 

6. And they lived happily ever after?

So you wrote the whole story, and now you're struggling with giving it an end. Well, the first thing you need to know is that sometimes, no resolution is a resolution. Perhaps your characters don’t beat the bad evil at the end of the story; perhaps the lovers don’t end up together. What’s important is that, whatever happens, it's something that remains logical to the trouble that arose during the middle. 

These tips don’t work just for fanfiction, of course, but I tried focusing my advice on that particular type of writing. If they were helpful and you used them to write something, feel free to tag me! I would love to read it. Also, if you have any questions about writing, or want some general tips, feel free to come to my inbox and I’ll do my best to help. 

Until next time!

[thewritingarchives]

Types of Opening Scenes for Your Novel

Here are a handful of ways to open the very first scene in your book! There are plenty more to explore, but these are a set of very tried and true methods.

Autobiographic - your protagonist starts the book reflecting or talking about a past event. They’re looking back in time and sharing an important piece of information with the reader.

In trouble/conflict - a problem has arisen for the protagonist and a sense of urgency is established. This can be an intense conflict like a chase scene or a puzzling problem.

Mysterious opening - the reader is introduced to something peculiar (a fantasy location, unique magic, a cloaked figure, etc.) that raises questions in their mind. Their curiosity will keep them reading.

Scene-setting - the most common opening where you focus on introducing the setting and the characters in it before anything else.

The questioner - the protagonist is questioning something: “Who invited the guy in the trench coat covered in red?”

Beginning with a thought - the novel is started with a philosophical quote or meaningful thought from the protagonist. “What is living worth if she’s not doing it with me?”

Intriguing dialogue - the book starts with interesting dialogue that captures the attention of the reader.

Mood establisher - the novel opens with a deliberate mood that signifies to the reader what they should expect from the story. Ex. a spooky story may open with eerie words and a dark atmosphere.

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