Colombina's Grotto

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The player scrapbooks forum is literally a place for writers to warm-up, brainstorm, keep little scraps of notes, or just post things to encourage themselves and each other. Each player can feel free to create their own thread - one per account - and use them accordingly.

Colombina's Grotto

Postby Siiri on January 11th, 2013, 2:47 pm

Just something random...

I was browsing through FB earlier and I saw this:
Rawr :
Image

And I remembered I still haven't finished the Hai quest.

And I just wondered, you know, if you could make this brain-dog-thing into a Hai monster.

Because it's something I totally want to step on in the dark.

That is all.

P.S.
+1 on the grading template. I'll finally get an ST's face on one of my threads! Just what I've always wanted!
Apologies to everyone I'm threading with, but it's like the Danaides for me right now.
==/==
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Colombina's Grotto

Postby Colombina on January 12th, 2013, 4:32 am

Image

Bits of Inspiration

Hemingway's shortest story was only six words long:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."


Six words and you can imagine all the heartbreak and pain of a longer story. There's a power in letting a reader fill in the blanks, but that's a different scrap. While I'm not a Hemingway fan in general, something can be learned from this exercise. I think this would be a good starting point for threads or NPC building. Often, I need a little jumpstart. My brain can't push itself into overdrive and fashion a complex structure or narrative. (Sometimes it can't even muster a "ppbbbbbtttt" sound.) In moments like that it helps to pluck an image or bit of dialogue that has a stand-alone quality. From there the story can gather. Forget about the huge tangle, find a searing bit that sticks with you.

Try it with me! Pull a single image or line together. It doesn't have to be padded in anything else. Just begin with that, and then ask yourself how you got there. Many people have brilliant ideas arise from just a single gleam. Maybe try this with a PC in a scrap. Write a story about them in under twenty words. Perhaps it can be the beginning line of a great thread. I would love to see what other writers will and can do with only twenty little words.

Here are some powerful examples from fiction & poetry where a line implies a whole story. They're not quite the minute story of Hemingway, but they have that arresting quality all the same:

“She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink...”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."
-- T.S. Eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

"This Is Just To Say"
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

***
Getting to Know Me

[Insert awesome picture of scantily clad woman and something with wings here]
Feeling very poorly lately, have mercy on your absentee merbadger. (2/20/13)
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Colombina's Grotto

Postby Colombina on January 12th, 2013, 4:51 am

My Mini-Story!


"For Miriam," she whispered, pushing her Symenestra into the ravine.
As his beloved faded, he wondered, "Which one was Miriam?"

Getting to Know Me

[Insert awesome picture of scantily clad woman and something with wings here]
Feeling very poorly lately, have mercy on your absentee merbadger. (2/20/13)
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Colombina's Grotto

Postby Johanne on January 12th, 2013, 5:04 am

Just a note: that poem by William Carlos Williams is one of my absolute favourites by him. It's so languishing and lovely. I get this image of a falling apart relationship where he's begun to take all these destructive actions because he knows she'll leave him soon anyway. That's just me, though.
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”
Vincent Van Gogh
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Colombina's Grotto

Postby Laszlo on January 12th, 2013, 5:53 am

Hmm... This is hard. I'll give it a shot. It took me a while to think of this one. Sorry it's not Miz related!

He fed the fish at midnight,
wearing shoes made of cement.
Last edited by Laszlo on January 12th, 2013, 6:21 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Colombina's Grotto

Postby Vaspira on January 12th, 2013, 6:04 am

That one sentence about the baby shoes, brought tears to my eyes, could be lack of sleep or maybe I am a super emotional person. Either way.. It got to me.
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Colombina's Grotto

Postby Subira on January 13th, 2013, 4:19 am

I sort of did this with one of my threads already:

"Whenever Subira found herself in the midst of disaster, like now, her mind reached back to that joyous moment when she first laid eyes on her ship."


Here are two others I came up with, though it says something about my writing style that neither of them are twenty words or less:

"I never appreciated how lovely the lilies of my homeland were," whispered the pale woman wistfully, "until the day they told me I could never go home."

When his enemy gasped through blackened, diseased lips, "What did I do to deserve this?", he intoned dispassionately, "So die all who oppose my god."


Edit: Aaah, forgot to include a mermaid pic! Here's a cool one with what might possibly be a pirate ship in the distance.

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Last edited by Subira on January 13th, 2013, 6:57 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Colombina's Grotto

Postby Hadrian on January 13th, 2013, 12:09 pm

I parodied that poem regarding Katie's Halloween candy, but you know that. :D
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Colombina's Grotto

Postby Siiri on January 14th, 2013, 4:19 am

Possibly a summary of most of my threads:

"Appetites sated, the warrioress wiped her lips with one bloodied hand as she walked away."

Edit: This is a fun exercise, btw.
Apologies to everyone I'm threading with, but it's like the Danaides for me right now.
==/==
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