I have no idea how fast this thread will die considering majority of the people here are artists rather than writers, but it probably won't hurt trying!
The idea of this game are very simple: Post a line (or a few) from your writing project, whether it's a novel, short story or OC bio / background detailing!
It can be something you're really proud of or something you simply like, or just want to share with other people! Feel free to also tell others a bit about the context if you feel like it
Rules & guidelines:
[walter voice] stop praying for my great aunt she's getting too strong
Walter: I visited my great aunt for her birthday, she turned 95.
Rick: Wow, that’s really old
Walter: Every year my parents think she’s going to kick the bucket, but I swear she just keeps getting stronger each year
Walter: I like her, she always tells outrageous stories of her past
This is from my little oneshot (Warm Nights ) between two of my characters Sylvester(IC) and Vincent, because i'm a sap. (and so is Vincent)
As their laughs puttered out into soft chuckling and intermittent wheezing, Vincent found his eyes on Sylvester.
His cheeks were flushed, eyes still crinkled as he smiled. Brown tangled locks obscured parts of his face and fell wildly over his shoulders as they shook with laughter. His tooth gap was just barely visible.
He normally looked so hard. Back straight and muscles taught, standing with his hands behind his back, expression professionally-neutral. His ponytail high and without a single strand misplaced, the ribbon tying it a neat, black bow. His pale blue eyes piercing and calculating as he analyzed everything in front of him. The slight twitch in his brow giving away how fast his mind was working, like a machine reading code.
It was easy to forget that Sylvester was just a kid, not any older than himself. Actually, younger than himself.
Rarely though, did Sylvester allow himself to be a kid. He’d beat out all of his soft attributes, shoved them into the farthest reaches of his mind, and hid them behind a cold, metal sheet. But sometimes they still resurfaced. Sylvester saw them as weeds, refusing to be stamped out, but to Vincent, they were clearly something else. They were bright and blooming. Tiny flowers that could lose their petals to the slightest breeze.
Vincent’s heart pounded. His throat clenched as blood rushed through his veins. He realized with frightening clarity that he would do anything to see those flowers.
I’ll probably post some more on this thread another time, but here’s a line from this most recent Camp NaNoWriMo that I really enjoyed :)
—
Then, the sobbing starts. Quiet at first, but soon enough, a crescendo of tearful confessions on the gods’ legacy, and their faults.
“How unbelievably stubborn we all are,” and with the swiftness of a young bird, shot and falling from the sky, Fre’sa catches tears within their wavering hand. “I confess my faults. Mine, thine, all of our shared beliefs, so remarkably close-minded and terrible. Our world is built around you, what we call our parasite, eating away at what we have taken for our own- but we are your sustenance. Destiny planned our fate, and she created you accordingly.”
—
We 👏 need 👏 more 👏 writing 👏 threads
I apologize in advance if this makes you cringe I’m still learning oof
These are my BNHA OCs uwu. I haven’t put them on here yet because they don’t have a good reference.
“Alright.”
Something brushed repeatedly against his claw and he jerked away.
“OH MY GOD LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE NOW.” Something that was probably a tissue rubbed against his finger. “STOP MOVING.”
“What are you doing?” He asked again.
“Hush. You’ll see. And relax, this might take a while.”
Unsatisfied but knowing better than to argue with Frankie when she had a plan, he tried to relax.
About ten minutes later, Frankie called, “All done. I think most of them are dry.”
He opened his eyes and found all ten of his claws covered in electric blue nail polish.
amers-nd I seriously need to do Camp Nanowrimo this summer lmao. I did it once and then forgot for like two summers in a row.
My boy has my fave writing excerpts thus far.. I think I'm better at one-liners than entire paragraphs because it takes me like. forever to actually write x_x;; I don't think I do stand-alone stories at all unless I'm roleplaying or typing out profiles. But anyway, favorite quote I thought of which would be another character saying to him:
"Look at you, the demon calling itself an angel."
& a lil more 'humorous' bit from his profile/backstory:
"A lowly locust exalted into angelic status following the plagues. Abaddon seemed to have no reason to have been exalted in the first place. It seemed utterly by chance was his original personage chosen, though one could argue maybe he did a better job of eating crops versus his compatriots. "
I said I'd be coming back didn't I? ~
This one's a bit longer, so I'm putting it in spoiler. This is from all the way back last November, but I still really like it.
“Well, Calvin McKinley-Soleil…” Paloma smirks like the pompous asshole that he is, turning his head dramatically in my direction. “The meeting is almost at its end. And you’re the only one left!”
I lock eye contact with him. If I were telepathic, I would be telling him to f*ck off. He smiles ever wider in response to my attempt.
“Well…” I clear my throat. Lee looks at me, intrigued.
“... My current project isn’t… great. I don’t think I would like to share.”
“Boo,” Paloma calls out. I stare daggers at him.
“HOWEVER, Paloma, I’m not THAT lame.” I slip a tiny yellow paper out of my pocket. “I wrote this during the meeting.”
“Oh. Boo,” he laughs even louder, but everyone else stays silent.
“... What’s it about?” Nicholas’ voice chimes in. I look over to them. They look scared, hoping I didn’t write about our encounter in the storage closet.
I give them a reassuring look. “It’s about a bird I saw today. Up on the cliff between Pennan and Crovie.”
“A… bird?” Hera speaks up, invested. She sets down her stack of papers and leans over the table. “That’s… not like you, Calvin.”
“I know. It’s just…”
I scan the room at everyone’s faces. They’re all interested in what I have to say, as always… but this time, it’s not out of interest. It’s intrigue… curious, concerned intrigue, that is.
“... Recently, I’ve realized that there are so many things about myself that I just… don’t really know. Like, I’ve never considered how I felt about the things that secretly made me angry. Deep down, the… things that I never knew made me upset.” Lee turns his head out the window. “I don’t know about this poem yet, really. It needs to change. I need to change. Not only myself, but the way I see things. The way I think about things.” I follow Lee’s gaze, and there it is again. The red bird. “Everyone has an enlightenment sometime in their life, an event or process that makes them realize… something. Something that sharpens their senses. Reminds them what it’s like to be truly human. Or, if not human, reminds them that they’re not. None of us are really human. At least, I feel like that’s the case.
“Because… what IS human, anyways? A species, a creature? Or is it a way? A way of thinking more or less than a way of being? Maybe I’m not human. My mind extends beyond the boundaries of what… human is. Human is simple. Human is carefree. I live with no physically manifested worries. All of them lie within me. Human can’t decipher those ruins. Some people can, but human they are not.”
After a few moments of silence, Lee speaks up.
“You’re right, Calvin. You’re a smart guy, just like your father.” He looks up at me, eyes red. “I know what human is. I experienced it firsthand. I’ve always struggled with the concept of being ‘human’. Used to get angry. Said that I felt ‘So f*cking useless as a human’.” He holds his composition book closer to his face. “But you’re right, you really are. The reason I felt so useless as a human… is because I was never really ‘human’ at all.”
Nobody talks in response. No one smiles, not even Paloma, who sips his cider solemnly and inquisitively.
Finally, Hera knocks her hand lightly against the table.
“... Alright. Meeting adjourned.”
Went through some fics I never got round to tidying up and/or finishing and found a few bits I liked.
WW2 segment from Hendrix's POV. The idea was for this scene to be a big WokeTM moment that brings up a lot of moral conflict in Hendrix but I never wrote enough to explore it further because I never got past those 4 paragraphs due to lack of research. I think it was one of the earliest WW2 bits I wrote from when I only had Geoffery Wellum's biography to fall back to for research, now I have a book shop's worth of books and magazines on the subject I'd like to go back to this one and finish it at some point. Under spoiler because it's one of the longer bits of text.
Hendrix finds himself close enough to a German fighter to make eye contact with the pilot. Being air force has allowed him to stay detached from the war. He’s still an active part of it and has seen the devastation on the ground but it’s hard to make a human connection when you’re so high above it. He’s been able to compartmentalize enemy planes as machines to be destroyed rather than being piloted by humans with lives, aspirations, hopes and fears. Humans that maybe were simply doing what they felt was right, no different to him.
Seeing this human pilot was like a blow to the gut. It stuns him, winds him and suddenly it’s very hard to press on the trigger. They flew level for a moment, Hendrix’s mind still reeling. It wasn’t until another fighter dropped out from the glare of the sun and a burst of machine gun fire skimming over his wing that Hendrix realizes his mistake.
Fuck.
He’s been flying straight and level for too long, too lost in his own thoughts to realize he was making himself an easy target. He glances out to his starboard wing, from what he can see the damage isn’t serious, barely taking the top layer of paint of. He mentally kicks himself anyway as he climbs into a spiral, trying to shake the enemy fighter off his tail. He holds the Spitfire on the edge of the stall hoping the enemy fighter stalls first.
William's very passive and goes out of his way to avoid conflict but every so often you can provoke a response out of him. I'm fond of this line dealing with that.
"Why should I?" William hisses through gritted teeth. He's getting defensive. Good. That's when William finally starts to act instead of being a passive doormat and letting things slip by accepting the moment as what it is, a moment he can act on later. Or never as is often the case.
There's also this section from later on in the same fic I particularly like. It's post Jasper, William and Friedrich getting stuck in my sci-fi plot with Jasper as the POV character. Again under spoiler for length.
He doesn’t know how long he can maintain his peacekeeping duties for before he breaks himself, he already feels like he’s desperately clinging to the edges of his frayed nerves trying to keep things together. He wants this bullshit to be done with and resolved yesterday so maybe, maybe he can have a few quiet moments to himself to get his thoughts and feelings together.
He lets William reach for his cigarette and notices how deflated he seems. William takes a drag but doesn't pull the smoke in properly.
"You've got to suck on it-" William tries again and chokes on the warm smoke filling his lungs, "there you go," Jasper says taking the cigarette back, ashing it and taking a drag himself. He offers it back to William who waves it off.
In Zidane's arms, my vision transitioned into a blur, slowly fading black out.
"Robi...! Oh gawd, please! We just managed to defeat Crystal!"
Zidane...I left something...in your pocket...open it..." I coughed.
I watched as he reached for the note and read it out loud.
"Zidane.
I wanted to write how I feel about you.
For years, I have slept in the stars. Years gone by, it wasn't by far. When I finally rose from my slumber, I began to question my true demeanour.
I realised that I was sitting in a gravestone of metal and steel. Cold and emotionless was how I feel.
Then I came across living machinery, a woman who too had lived a time of misery.
When I finally saw you, those sapphire eyes, reminded me that you were a hero.
A young thief with the desire to save those from a terrible foe.
However, we discovered something in our spiritual flow.
A heart so bold, it gave us more than just a duo.
Zidane Tribal, my beloved twin.
Even if I am gone, don't make this a sin.
Live on as single kin.
but remember as your other yin.
To your yang
may your soul and heart become forever in my past."
I liked my introduction to Phayne within my novels.
Zerek (main character) is walking down a hallway and encounters this creature emerging from a blasted hole in the wall.
Zerek froze in place, an ominous feeling washed over him as his body refused to move, the terror was too great. He felt something coming...
His eyes were fixated up ahead as a large, hunched figure emerged from a hole in the wall, trudging across his path to enter the other side of the hallway.
The stranger hadn't noticed him yet, so there he stood in stunned silence, watching this grotesque looking beast of a ‘man’ cross his path.
Despite the tall height, he was sickly thin and wore a black fur cape. Long horns ran down to the top of raven hair, towards a hooked nose that rest on a putrid, hideous face. A face that was littered with pustules, boils and other unsightly blemishes, enough to make skin crawl; and yet this was nothing compared to the spiked teeth that jet out of his bottom jaw, far too long, yellowed and jagged to stay in a permanently open maw, as if they were exploding out of his face.
This ‘man’ wore a constant scowl, and honestly, Zerek couldn't blame him.