r/creativewriting

These words don’t count towards the story!

The seams of time are bursting; the hours no longer move forward, they only expand toward me. As the distance between myself and the ceiling shrinks, I realize how mechanical and humiliating a dependency breathing truly is. With every swelling of my lungs, I feel the shameless claws of the survival instinct.

Sleep is not surrender, but a rehearsal for annihilation. And I refuse the rehearsal. In this war I wage against myself to keep my eyelids open, I know exhaustion will be the only victor. Still, I would rather stare into the monsters created by my own mind than fall into that dark void. Because to sleep is to become a defenseless heap of flesh; to abandon yourself to the mercy of a killer or the cruelty of a dream.

Somewhere inside me, an old clock is ticking — rusty and furious. I no longer dare to look into the mirror, because I know the thing staring back at me is no longer “me,” but merely a silhouette gnawed away by sleeplessness. That sour taste gathering in my stomach is not the residue of disgust toward the world, but toward myself directly.

In this emptiness where I have been thrown like a dog, there is no gravity, yet there is a crushing sorrow. I am as distant from everything as that stray animal drifting through space. Sounds grow muffled, images bleed into one another. Every ache that reminds me I am human is proof of the pathetic biological prison I have been locked inside.

Now, I wait for the light to seep through. But the sunrise will not be salvation — only a lie draped over the darkness. Amid the smoke of that great explosion within me, I wait with the restless comfort of finding yet another reason to hate myself.

🍷

I'm thinking of a short story or novella called "The Love of Man Has Grown Cold," which is loosely based on Matthew 24:12, which partially states "because of the increase in lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold." The concept I'm thinking of is illustration the increasing darkness in people's hearts growing like a virus (even in the church) but I want to avoid the whole "pandemic" "contagious disease" or "zombie" theme. Plus, I want to inject hope, a sort of warning that it can be stopped. what are some ways I could write this out without it requiring a lot research. What's a good allegory or metaphor?

By the way, I intend to do LOTS of RESARCH AND PLANNING FOR THIS STORY. I was just being silly and asking this off the top but I apologize for offending anyone on here and looking I was being lazy.

I’m curious how other writers approach their process. Do you fully outline everything first, or do you just start writing and let the story evolve naturally?

I feel like I switch between both and end up getting stuck either way. What’s worked best for you?

The bricks of the walls remains the same

The sheets on the bed, the rooms, the clothes and everything 

The only thing which changes is your presence in these rooms

Your habits, your favourite food, your things they all might have gone...

But your memories of being here, can't be sure will ever go

Hi guys looking for some validation or someone brutally honest about this piece. 😀

I want to be chosen. I’ve felt that my whole life, from friendships, to my mom and dad, to teachers.
I’ve always wanted to be chosen.
But this time, I wasn’t. He didn’t choose me; he wouldn’t choose a single eyelash of mine. Even if we spent another six months together, it wouldn’t happen. I believe he was pretty clear with me from the beginning. It hurts because of how clearly he said it. If I’m not mistaken, he told me, and I quote: “I would never love you. We are not compatible. What part of that doesn’t get into your head?”
And yet, here I am. I truly thought that after finding out what it was like to experience my hugs, my care, my jokes, and my heart, he would realize he couldn’t live without me and just love me. I wanted him to start loving me, like those cartoons where Cupid shoots the guy and suddenly his eyes turn into hearts, like a Jim Carrey comedy.
I wanted him to love me so deeply that jealousy would tear him apart, that he would go crazy and start demanding to know why I was talking to or looking at another man. I wanted that feeling you get when you look at something so cute and little that you just want to grab it, hug it, and put it in your pocket to protect it from everything.
Most of all, I wanted him to love me the way you love when you are little. Like when you are five or six years old, and you start sleeping alone because your mom keeps reminding you that you're old enough now. You cry and cry before going to sleep because you don’t want to be alone, and your mom doesn’t understand. She asks, "Is it the dark?" and shows you there are no monsters under the bed. But you can’t explain to her, because your thoughts are moving too fast. That what you are actually feeling is the terrifying certainty that she and dad could die the moment she walks out the door. You think that the moment they went to bed, their hearts stopped, and you are completely alone.
I wanted his love-hate, his pathetic love, every kind of love there is, every adjective-verb combination of love. I wanted to be his first, second, third, and last love. I wanted to be the person he thought of when he woke up and when he went to sleep. I wanted to be his love for the rain, for the beach, for the sea. And I wanted to be his love for time itself; I wanted him to want to spend every second, millisecond, and every kind of second with me.
But I got nothing.

this is my first ever post to reddit so idk what I'm doing. I just wrote this on a whim.

The irony of drugs

  I think we have lost ourselves in thought, we have lost the value in self, and we have lost our place in who we are. What I mean by this is as you explore your own individuality in your head you either become more or less individual. You either begin to fall into the hole of I need to belong or you fall into the hole of i do not fit in. where drugs come in is how they are able to distort the senses and create a new sense of you. Drugs like marujuana make you feel light free and hungry, while also making you feel so heavy you cannot move. Adderall makes you focused, driven ,and internalized. Yet what the millions of drugs do the most is reset you. I think this reset is due to such a rapid change you lose yourself and all original context. You fail to see the real you thus finding a loss of who you were, are, and am. 

  My personal beginning of this was when I started taking Adderall again at the age of 20. I stopped at the age of 15 and felt as if I had reset. I had lost all sense of direction and I was no longer myself. I lacked all drive and intent. I had started over. I started adderall at the age of 11. And when i had stopped i was reverted all  the way back to 11 again. All of my life experience had distorted its view and I had truly never gained maturity due to the alteration of my mind. Now back to being 20. I had 5 more years of life experience but due to my set back I was internally only 16. Upon making the decision to start again I had put myself on pause again. Freeing myself of true growth and causing a permanent pause I had no idea existed. 

  The pause, it feels like you continue to grow while on Adderall. You develop love, emotions, fears, goals, hope, and disdain. You continue to progress in ways you could not feel before and develop at 5x the rate as before. You learn yourself, others, and the world at an unexplainable rate. You feel power and drive no individual has felt. You feel in control of you. Then you don't take it for a day. Reality sets in; it was all  fake progress. You are still that young, desireless, unstable individual you had left on pause for years. You never learned how to handle your emotions. You never learned how to handle others. You stick out in a way that divides you from all experience you have had. This causes a disconnect.

  Disconnection is one of the greatest fears of the human mind. It creates a distortion of belonging and a fear as to who you are truly. “If I cannot fit in, how am I a person?” this question begins to harmonize in your mind and belonging starts to disappear. As the disconnect builds you begin to sink into yourself, mind, body, and soul. You start to feel like you are watching a tv instead of experiencing life truly. When people talk to you it becomes a video game where you must portray a character that fits in this universe. You just have to pick the right options to try to make the game fun. Eventually the game becomes boring, and you want to change games, or take a break, but reality sets in that this is you. There is no break, time off, or game change. So you are now stuck looking at this tv, and wondering “why am i not there in person?”. Finally you find the culprit and accuse it of the crime. Though it is far too late and you cannot undo the crime you still have the thing to blame.

  The blame you place is not what you would assume. It falls onto the most fragile thing in the whole cycle. It falls onto the individual themselves. You blame the inability to be normal, the lack of development, and the lack of individuality on yourself. You are obviously the one in the wrong if you aren't present. You are obviously the one who is wrong if you aren't socially capable. It all falls into place. You are the flaw. From a third-party perspective this is completely wrong. How are you to blame for wanting normalcy in the first place? Then the final realization hits. There is no third party perspective because you haven't told anyone where, who, or what you are. No one knows. You are now completely alone in all regards

  You are alone. There is no person left to understand. Conversation is empty, Time moves irrefutably, and you no longer exist. You have now created a perfect condition for isolation of everything. You have no place. You have no people to talk to. You have nothing. What do you do from here? Conversation is empty, existence is nonexistent, and you are still on the thing that is causing everything. Adderall, it is still a part of you, so you stop taking it for a month. What does this month feel like for you? You have completely regressed.

  You are now back to being the age you last left off, 16, but now you are 23. With such a deviation you don't belong at all now. All of your peers find you immature, dumb, and cumbersome. They avoid you because you are childish and in society anything that doesn't belong gets thrown away. All of that loneliness does not leave. It worsens to the point of finding a solution. Begging for relief from your loneliness. Then you see it. The drug that helped you fit in externally. The drug that made people think of you as a mature adult. You take it again and the loop repeats. 

  The only thing the loop will ever confirm is that no matter what you will never belong. You do not fit in either internally, or externally. You must choose. Fit in, but not truly exist, or to not fit in, but feel the pain of exclusion. This choice is obviously impossible to make. You will continue to loop back and forth due to the challenges provided. You will stray further and further away from normalcy. You will never find the solace you seek. This is the pain of the loop that no one tells you about. You were 11 when it began, and you had no idea of the duality of its existence. You have not and may not ever find the true answer to your existence. You will spend every devout moment searching to no avail. That is the existence you were blessed with, and that is  your stagnant curse that resides with you until the day you perish. 

  You were told many times drugs are bad, drugs kill, and drugs destroy. This firsthand experience is only able to be told to others, but it cannot be felt. My true hope is for this cycle to end and for a way to seek peace. Both internally and externally. The search will continue and hope will forever reside. The only truth to your life is that this loop will not end. It will continue forever for the simple fact of the insatiable will of the human spirit. I wish the absolute best and truly hope you find comfort in the future.

Imagine I bought you Taylor Swift tickets.
You’re very excited. The day of the concert, I just sell the concert tickets and tell you after. I just didn’t feel like going.

“I’ll make it up to you I’ll get tickets for the next show”. And I do. Get tickets anyway. And promise we will go this time.

Next show rolls around, and we pull up to the concert. I see the long line and the loud noises and our child (let’s call her Jacee) had been stressing me out the whole week before that and I’m exhausted. I say I just can’t do it today; I find someone to buy the tickets, again, because I don’t feel good so I just decide we can’t go, and you’re upset, but you get over it. And I just keep doing that again, and again, and again, and again, buying every single ticket for every single Taylor Swift concert, promising you the tickets. Handing you the ticket and promising. And backing out every. single. Time. until you get so fed up, and don’t even want to believe me anymore. You don’t want to believe any promise I make. This is a cycle that goes on for months, maybe even years.

But I buy the tickets one more time for the next show and I double pinky swear we’re gonna go this time. I even lock it in with a kiss. I look you in the eyes with the most sincere look, and tell you I really mean it this time. “We’re gonna go, and it’s gonna be the best day of our life”

The day of the show, I shower, get dressed for the concert. You’re finally excited. I’m showing some enthusiasm. You get your hopes up for what feels like the final time. We even drive to the stadium. We’re waiting in line. I grab something to eat at the concession stand.

My stomach begins to hurt, and even know you told me it would make that would happen, I got it anyway because I thought it would be fine. I say I need a minute if we can wait in the car, but I say we’ll still go, I just need a bit. We wait and we wait. You’re eager to go. Concert showtime starts. My stomach is still hurting. Concert hits the halfway done mark, and we’re still in the car.

My stomach isn’t hurting enough to ruin my day by itself, but enough for me to decide to stay in the car, because the thought of that long walk doesn’t feel worth it. You look at me hurt. We go home and you don’t even say anything on the ride home. It’s happened so many times you feel like a fool for even believing it. But you remember the look I had in my eyes, and how sincere I was, the double pinky promise, locking it in. Sure it sounds childish replaying it in your head now, but in the moment, I really meant that; or so you thought. You go about your life. Replaying that in your head for a few more days, but after a few it just starts to blend with all the other times I lied. I tell you “I’m just really not interested in Taylor Swift anymore. I used to be, but I just don’t anymore. And you can’t make me.”

You feel depressed, like you did something to make this happen, but you’re doing your best; you feel like I can’t love you even at your best. “If I wasn’t enough then with all the effort I was putting in, then why keep trying”. You’ve given up.

~~~~~~

And then, without telling you, I go to the next concert anyway. Without you. I get good seats, I enjoy myself, and I don’t tell you about any of it, and you wouldn’t have known, but you found the ticket, it had fallen out of my pants on the bed, with the tab already torn off, used. I had gone to the concert. You only wonder how much more fun it would have been if I was with you, and it hurts.

Not like a, “you’re a douchebag get out of my house” kind of hurt; but more like a “do you even love me” kind of hurt. You don’t want to get mad about it just because you didn’t get to go. All of the other promises were for different concerts. I didn’t even tell you about this one, and you told me not to even invite you anymore because you were sick of being lied to.

It’s a twisting feeling. You’re obviously hurt, but you’re at a point you don’t even know how to verbalize your pain. As soon as you say anything, you sound entitled. “It is a concert he wanted to go to by himself, he didn’t have to invite” you think to yourself. Knowing damn well why you’re hurting. You just can’t find a way to say the words without sounding like you just want me for the concerts. So you stay hurting, thinking about all of the promises.

<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>

END- (do not read this until you’re done with the rest)
Flip the script now and make it sex instead of converts. That’s what I’m going through.

The part where she finds the used ticket was me finding her vibrator hidden under her pillow. Obviously I don’t give a damn about her masturbating, but when she has told me she just doesn’t have interest in being sexual or orgasming anymore, it feels like a blatant lie.

And I obviously could have made the story longer mentioning “all the concerts we went to before we had our child” but I think you get the point.

I've read the rules but this may still not be the right place to post this inquiry. I'm writing a new piece and I'm needing some help on word choice, I guess you could say. Without getting into specific detail to hopefully stick with the rules, in my piece I'm trying to describe this sort of in-between place/existence. "Limbo" is the most obvious choice, however upon further researching into the different definitions out there for it I don't think it actually fits. The place/existence isn't like the purgatory sort of limbo. It's not an oblivion or a nothingness but rather like I said before an "in-between". I'm trying to convey a sort of pause, moment of stillness, a moment for a deep breath. It's neutral.

Sorry for the long post. Hopefully some of that makes sense with someone out here. It's definitely more of an abstract idea so any suggestions of any kind would be appreciated.

Chapter one

Cubby and Tyron would pay clients in crack to use their houses as trap-spots. Basically, underground stores they frequently juggled. A code they followed and wouldn’t push, or bend, or challenge. Rule #2: Sell an ounce and bounce. You’d hear them dropping rules with numbers next to them, ripping out a page from the double tap playbook. 

Cubby and Tyron stuck to a pattern and that was an unpredictable pattern. Except for their choice in how’d they’d operate when they’re at work. Mostly though, it was just psychological. A kitchen chair, or plastic chair, basically any kind of single seated chair was where they’d conduct their business from. Inside of an invisible circle, they worked between their sneakers and treated the floor which used to be brown like a desk for their scale.

Moving around in there, became equivalent to a cave diver and silt. The only difference was the house being the water and the furniture being the silt. On a good day, they’d count around twelve or so cockroaches. But underneath the dormant lookin’ furniture, it was very much alive. Hell if they were big enough they’d start seeing the furniture walk.

This one kid would lift something up and then spray the roaches with perfume and leave a trail before striking it with a Bic. The walls at that house bled grease, it looked like someone splashed a cup of coffee on the wall and just left it to dry. There’d be this cross of cheap perfume, stale cigarettes, and the scent of burnt plastic but not as heavy as plastic, it was different. And that was only in that room. Each room had its own signature odor. They came in flavors.

The owner kept scratching at them for more.  He’d pester them for drugs and they’d pester the owner for smoking it near them. You have to see the irony, it’s hilarious and only because they rarely left their circle and the owner hardly left that couch. Sitting there for hours holding in his piss and smoking from a glass stem.

The owner wore red-dotted swells on his hands, it didn’t cover the skin. But it was impossible to count just by staring at them. Almost mirroring a mosquito bites if they were smaller and opened at the top. 

Every so often, Cubby would chip off a piece of crack to the owner. A once powdered rock packed with hydrochloride bubbles, that Cubby converted to a smokeable form of cocaine, he didn’t have a lab or a chemistry set. Only a kitchen. A stove. A jar, preferably Pyrex not glass. Water and a pot. The secrets in the baking soda. When mixed with cocaine and cooked at a temperature at around 130 degrees, the baking soda bonds to the cocaine. 

Once It melts, the hydrochloride salts in the powdered cocaine are eliminated during the conversion and become crack-cocaine. If you used ammonia rather than baking soda you’ll have freebase cocaine. Both smokeable.

A reward system for clients who brought clients usually equaling 2/5 of a gram. Rule #4: never consign any product. All over the city, they stayed collecting prospects like Pokémon characters. They are a currency and each one will sell as low as 50$. Think of them as Pokémon. You could trade them. You could sell them. You literally have a workforce on your phone that operates and functions strictly on a drug paid salary. And cheap.

(Repost since the original post was very vague)
Ive been working on this dark fantasy story for a while but recently I’ve been struggling on how i should go about writing a religious character arc for one of my main characters where the characters gains faith that he previously didn’t have.

I want the character arc and conversion to feel realistic and to actually mean something beyond the character just being religious for the sake of being religious , and I don’t want it to feel like I’m “forcing religions beliefs” on the reader.

The two reasons I want to add a religious character arc
1.The main inspiration for the character is actually a saint called Saint Moises the Ethiopian who was a bandit and band leader before he was a monk

2.I feel like it fits his character well since I wrote the story as just a long redemption story where he goes from being a nihilistic , earnest and rude person to a person who lives a life of regret for all he has done

So I am writing a novel...I expect to work on it long term, as I still need to do more research, write more scenes and smooth out the timeline:

Here is the working blurb for the novel:

An MRI technologist is rebuilding her life in northern California after leaving an abusive relationship with an ex-boyfriend three years ago, all with the help of her faith and a recovery/survivor's support group. But her ex, who was in jail, has been released from prison, and filled with rage, he intends on finding and killing her.....

Based on this blurb I was going to call this novel, "The Quench." (it has both metaphorical and literal meaning: metaphorical (i.e, quench his murderous rage, or quenching her life) and literal (shutting down an MRI in case of emergency requires a "quench" process). But someone said the word sounded "ugly" and it may not be attractive to readers. What are some other poignant titles I could go for that don't elude to much to the entire plotline?

&gt;>It was cold.

My breath misted. Weaving through the dense thicket of sleeping trees and barren brambles labored my breathing. The thick snow reached up to mid-calf, crunching like broken glass beneath my boot. I had to lift my legs high each time to escape it. I was sure I looked like a stilted stringed puppet–the kind travelling entertainers would use to tell their tales at village faires.

I missed those faires. Back when father was alive and food was not so hard to come by.

It was cold and my lungs burned as if ice made little blades that cut at me from within. On occasion, I would cough up phlegm and a prevailing fear, no matter how unreasonable, was that it would be blood instead.

I could not stop myself from cursing and cursing. Over and over again I would curse. I would curse at the cold and chill that ate through to my bones. I would curse the frozen land that refused to bear food and the snow that covered it. I cursed the animals for their winter slumber and the birds for their migrations. I cursed my stomach for it never ceased its growls. I cursed my mother and sisters because they cried for food–cried for me to enter the forest again and again for food that was not here. And I cursed my father for a death outside his control. I cursed him for leaving me as the sole man of the family.

Worst of all I cursed myself for cursing all these things and more.<<

I would especially appreciate your thoughts on my prose. I struggle a lot with purple prose and inactive voice

Hello!
I want to write a book. However life keeps getting me. 🤷‍♀️
But I always wondered if you write a book should you do an outline of the story then start the book. Then get an editor.
Or should you write a few chapters then get an editor.
I know editors are expensive…..

Please be nice! I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit, so let me know if there's a better one to post this to.

I'm a romance/fantasy writer, and also a huge fan of alternative Japanese fashion. I've been thinking of writing a romance novel between a girl with a classic lolita/hime style (think of a playful take on Victorian fashion) and a guy with an ouji/prince style. Instead of an opposites attract thing, it's like two sides of a mirror finally meeting. I personally imagine them having a fairytale romance, even bringing back old courting rituals. Got any ideas? Would you read this? Let me know!

I’ve been writing this dark fantasy story for a while but I’ve been struggling on how i should go about writing a religious character arc for one of my characters for redemption purposes I want the character arc to feel realistic, actually mean something rather than the characters just being religious, and I don’t want it to feel like I’m “forcing religions beliefs” on the reader
So I was hoping someone can give me a few pointers on how I can execute the arc properly and if i can get some examples in media on how to do it

I have ultimately (and unfortunately) decided that my novel will take place in a 16th-century French colony (made up) on a made-up island in the Hudson Bay.

Of course I have created a native group that lives there and has its own history, but I'm not quite sure if this has been done before. Making up a made-up town in the middle of Europe is easy, but creating an entire island and people group with the constraints of the time period is proving to be quite challenging. However, I do have a good idea with the story, and I'm not comfortable with creating multiple different languages and cultures (solely because I'm an amateur, I'm running on a time crunch, and I don't want to create anything as a half-baked product).

Besides, I enjoy the challenge, and I'm loving the 'freedom' that I have with designing characters and backstories without having to worry about different fantasy elements and colonies, people groups, wars, etc. The main problem is the fact that it is meant to be historical fantasy. The genre doesn't usually get picked up all the time, and if it does, it's probably in a fantasy setting with made-up countries & states that look and feel like medieval Europe. The whole reason I am committing to this story is because I rarely see books with a fantasy colonial setting (and if you do, perchance could you recommend some books to me), but that's partially because I live under a rock.

Lately I’ve been struggling a bit with the emotional side of working independently.

Not the work itself, but the lack of feedback around it. When nobody really sees the effort day to day, it becomes strangely hard to tell whether you’re moving forward or just stuck in your own head.

I didn’t expect silence and uncertainty to affect motivation this much.

People who’ve worked creatively or independently for a long time... how do you deal with this without losing momentum or confidence in what you’re doing?

I’ve been struggling to write a good female warrior for a fantasy story I’m writing without making her corny or just the “love interest” so I’m hoping to get some advice to help me or books/comic recommendations to help me get a better grasp on how I should write her

Hey everyone,

I’ve been writing for a while now, but I recently dug up the very first poem I ever wrote when I was just starting out.

It is incredibly simple and relies on some very classic tropes, but I wanted to share it here. It's completely unpolished and raw, just a snapshot of me trying to figure out how to put emotions into words for the first time. I’d love to hear your critiques or if you remember what your own very first pieces looked like compared to how you write now!

: My love :

My love is for you.

Deeper than the sea

Higher than the sky

Bigger than the universe

Longer than the Numbers

Brighter than the Sun

Sweeter than the sugar

Beautiful than the Rose

Safer than the house

Purer than the water of Rain

And precious than my life <3

Thanks for reading :)