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Twenty minutes on “a taxi that takes you not where you want to go, but where you need to go.”

Read more... )
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I just realized that I'd been forgetting to post these! A brief explanation: I go to a weekly writing group, where we do simple, 20 minute timed writing prompts for fun.

In this one, each person came up with a title and passed it to the person on their right, who then wrote something to go with it. I got Dawn by Midnight.

Read more... )
brigdh: (Default)
15 minutes on "a stand-up comedy routine". I think this works better if you imagine it being spoken out loud. I mean, as much as it works at all.

Read more... )
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For this week's prompt, we wrote down various emotions on slips of paper, then drew them out of a hat. I got "happy" and "envious".

I'm pretty sure this story ends with someone getting murdered )
brigdh: (Default)
Another one of these writing prompts from my weekly writing group. In brief: one person picks a prompt, then we all have only 15 minutes to write something – anything.

This week's prompt was from >a NYT article about the 36 questions that, supposedly, can make any two people fall in love – by forcing them to feel intimate and close. Specifically, "If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?"

My response )

(Yes, it is totally cheating to cut off right before I actually had to decide what question he would ask. But hey – only 15 minutes!)
brigdh: (Default)
I recently started going to a nearby writers' group – more in the interest of making new local friends than because I really wanted feedback on my writing, honestly. And none of the other MeetUp groups looked that appealing, so my choices were limited. But despite my original disinterest in the actual topic, it has been a lot of fun. We recently decided to add a new game to our meetings: someone picks a prompt, everyone has 15 minutes to write, and then we share whatever we managed to come up with.

Fifteen minutes isn't a very long time, so they're not spectacular pieces of writing, but it is neat to see what you can come up with without preparation. I don't know if anyone has an interest in reading these, but since I don't have anything else to do with the pieces and don't really intend to continue them, I figured I'd go ahead and post them here. For posterity, if nothing else.

This is the first one we did. The prompt was "A detective who is running out of money".

And here's what I wrote )
brigdh: (I need things on a grander scale)
Hello! Thank you so much for offering one of my fandoms. I'm a firm believer of "optional details are optional", so feel free to ignore any part of this letter that doesn't work for you; just use what (if any) you find helpful or inspirational. If you need more information or would like to ask a question, feel free to leave an anonymous comment.

If you're into Yuletide stalking (and who isn't?), here's where to find me:
Email: brigdh at gmail
AO3: Brigdh (You'll probably notice that I've written for some of the fandoms I requested, but that doesn't mean you have to write the same sort of stories that I do! One of my favorite things is to see the way different people have different takes on the same story.)
Tumblr: Brigdh
Livejournal: [livejournal.com profile] wordsofastory (obviously.)
Previous years' letters

Basics:
I'm open to porn, dark-fic, gen, and pretty much anything else you could think of. Happy endings, sad endings, and open/ambiguous endings are all welcome. Want to write death fic or angsty unrequited love? Go for it! Fluffy, teeth-rottingly cute kidfic? I'm into that. Completely filthy, shameless PWP? Yup. Plotty world-building fic? Love it. Missing scenes or character studies where nothing happens? My favorite! Tentative slow-build first times, or fic with an already established relationship? Both are wonderful! Weird stylistic conventions, like second person POV or iambic pentameter or an entirely epistolary fic? Awesome! Feel free to include injury, illness, death, infidelity, racism, homophobia, etc, as needed for your story.
Do not feel obligated to include Christmas (or whatever winter holiday-equivalent is appropriate to the fandom), but if you want to, feel free.
For each of my requests, the characters are very much OR instead of AND. Want to write a story about Rose without Hannibal, TJ without Amal, etc? Go ahead! (You could probably guess this from the prompts I give below, but I wanted to be clear about it.)

Dislikes:
I'm doing these first because it's shorter! I don't have any squicks, triggers, or strong DNWs (there's one exception, but it's fandom-specific, so I've got it down below in that fandom's section). There's very little in fic that I outright refuse to read; a good story will convince me to like almost anything. With that said, here are some of the tropes that I'm less interested in: soulbonding and soul mates; amnesia; bodyswap; mpreg; jealousy or possessiveness as a good, natural, or normal relationship element; overly sappy weddings or marriage proposals; and age regression. That's it! I'm a pretty easy-going reader. :)

Likes:
This section is much more fun! I like A LOT of stuff, as I said above. Action, case-fic, humor, curtain-fic, introspection, pining: all of them are great! I like fun stories, the sort that make you smile to read them. I love nuance and subtlety (hmm, that is probably the worst request ever. I like it when authors complicate things?). I really love stories that dig deep, exploring a world or a character's interior.
Most of the characters I love are pretty fucked up on the inside, but they are also capable of great strength. I like that balance: not a woobie but not a standard hero either. Many of my requests revolve around a relationship (whether you chose to write that as gen or romantic), and I really love reading about how people work (or don't) together. How do they help one another? How do they hurt? How do they understand or misunderstand? Do they share a sense of humor? What is easy between them, and what is complicated; what is spoken and what is not? Etc. In general, I like my couples to succeed together, but I like it to be hard to get there. I tend to like a lot of dysfunction in my fictional relationships, and I much prefer the unspoken to the outright-stated.
I love vivid imagery and rich descriptions (it is hard to be too 'purple prose' for my taste), and all the things that fall under that: clothing-porn, food-porn, elaborately detailed settings and landscapes, etc. I love banter and snark and elusive allusions, all sorts of unusual ways of showing affection, cross-dressing, swordfights, comedies of manners/farces, and found families/chosen families.
I adore all sorts of silly fanfic tropes, but here are some of my favorites: Genderswap (particularly of the "always-a-girl/boy" type rather than "woke up one morning" type), arranged marriage/marriage of convenience, pretend couple/fake dating, H/C of all kinds, sick-fic, roadtrips, huddling for warmth, masquerades/disguises/undercover, trapped together (snowed in cabin, handcuffs, etc), "five things", and platonic bed sharing.
I especially like AUs, both of the "canon-divergent" and the "completely alternative setting" types. I think they're a fantastic way of exploring what is essential to a character's personality, and what is merely surface, and that's what I find most interesting about them. It's so neat to explore how a different setting/upbringing/choice might or might not change a person. Some specific types of AUs I like are: pirates, any historical period, Robin Hood/conmen/criminals, rebels, steampunk, cyberpunk, apocalypses (especially zombies!), daemons, and circuses.

Porn: Again, don't feel obligated to write me a sex scene! But if you want to, here is my Yuleporn comment.
Dark-fic: As I said above, I'm open to this! Here's my Crueltide comment for some specific prompts.

Specific Fandom Requests: Benjamin January, TJ & Amal, Brothers Sinister, and Fallen London )
brigdh: (I need things on a grander scale)
Stealing a meme from tumlbr, because I think I like doing such things better over here. I can't quite decide! Tumblr is more active, but writing thoughts of more than a sentence or two is so much easier on LJ. I dunno.

Anyway! Meme: Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and stick that selection in my ask/fan mail. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic on AO3
My fic on LJ
(It's the same stories at either site, it's just a matter of where one prefers to look.)

Trope Meme

Sep. 9th, 2014 03:45 pm
brigdh: (*bounces*)
I really, really should be working on some editing, but I don't want to. So, a meme instead! Taken from [livejournal.com profile] somebraveapollo:

Give me a trope & I’ll tell you my thoughts on the trope you’ve asked me about and if I’ve written it myself, or if I ever would.

Genderswap
Bodyswap
Drunk!fic
Huddling together for warmth
Shag or die
Undercover in a gay bar
Pretending to be married
First time together
Amnesia
Crossdressing
Forced to share a bed/fake relationship
Mind control
Handcuffed
Wingfic
Mpreg
Mistakenly assumed to be gay
Let’s play truth or dare
Mary Sue fic
Aphrodisiacs
Curtain fic
Hurt/Comfort
Apocalypse fic
Someone has a baby
Telepathic soulbonding
Circus AU
Language barrier
Historical AU.
brigdh: (I need things on a grander scale)
A meme stolen from Tumblr:

1) Something Old: A blurb from one of the first fics you ever wrote.
But she doesn’t mind. A roll and a sway and you fit yourself into the life you’re given. You do what is expected of you, you want what you have, you learn what you know, you love those you see. And every other step down has a pause before your foot hits the floor.
This is the way it is. Life. The ocean. And you are what life makes you. How can you be something you’ve never been? How can you want something you didn’t even know existed?
Tsubaki-hime is expected to be pretty. She is. Being smart was never as important. She wants that now, that power to understand things, to find the hidden truth. She wants to know what to do. Everyone is dead or gone or changed, and Tsubaki-hime thinks that she will have to follow them or be left alone forever. She doesn’t know how to change, she doesn’t know where to go, and she doesn’t want to die.

A Sway and a Roll (Yami no Matsuei). This was posted in January 2003; it's not the first fic I ever wrote, but it's the oldest one that I've kept track of. It's surprisingly not bad, for something over ten years old, though it would be better with more editing.


2) Something New: A snippet from something you're currently working on, or from the last thing you posted.
Hannibal stood, for a moment still and watching her, almost as though he expected her to take back her permission. She fisted her hands in her skirts to prevent herself from reaching out for him, and in one quick movement lifted them, baring most of her legs. His eyes dropped from her face to look, and she saw his shoulders lift as he took a deep breath. He sank to his knees in front of her with a surprising degree of grace, and desire spiked in her, sharp and solid as a actual blade. She was grateful that her petticoat hid him from view when he leaned in; she already was so desperate that she didn't want to know how she would react to watching him do this for her.


3) Something Borrowed: A scene or section of dialogue from another writer's story. Maybe something that inspired you or resonated with you. (Credit the writer and link to it if possible, please.)
January nodded, but when he wrote days later he described Minou's baby, and how Rose was setting up a school once more with the money gained by selling Gambi's treasure, and how the two of them had been married on the twenty-fifth of the month, only five hours after little Charmian Viellard made her entrance into the world. He didn't say, "You and Rose are as different as Bach and Beethoven," or "Your eyes are the same colour Ayasha's were," and he certainly didn't say, "Come back to New Orleans before Rose and I both go mad missing you."
From Dans le Défit de la Coutume by Elspethdixon. Which is actually a Ben/Shaw fic, despite the quote. I've reread this story so many times and I still adore it.


4) Something Blue: C'mon, you know you've written a really gut-wrenching bit of angst at some point. Let's hear the saddest or angstiest thing you've got. Alternatively? Tell us about the last time you described the color blue.
He watched mutely while the pool of his partner's blood soaked into the ground, gradually fading to the brown of ashes and dust. The splashes on his shoes had cracked and peeled like paint. The sun rose up from behind distant hills and burned like a splash of bleach to sleep-deprived eyes. Anger required something to do, someone to lash out at; despair was much more suited to these hours of wasted time. He held the cellphone in his hand, afraid of not hearing it ring if it was tucked away in a pocket. Afraid of it never ringing.
He prayed without meaning to, a repeating litany of
please and not so soon and I won't do this again, but the gods he knew had never had any particular interest in keeping him unscarred.
Thy Faithfulness in Destruction (Yami no Matsuei, warning for non-con). Another old fic, but one I quite like, and probably the angstiest thing I've ever written.
brigdh: (I need things on a grander scale)
A meme stolen from [livejournal.com profile] dhampyresa: The first lines and last lines of my fic. I just did my most recent ten (skipping over the fic requests I did, since they didn't get beta'd or have much time spent on them), mostly because that seemed like a good number.

Writing Meme )

Hmmm, I'm not sure there's much of a pattern. I do have a lot of dialogue in the last lines! I was not doing that on purpose, but I suppose it is often a good way to wrap things up. The first lines seem to often be quite long and convoluted. I usually try to use the first line to make it very clear who's POV the story will be in, but several of these totally fail at that. Especially Recovery, since that's in Rose's POV and she doesn't appear in the sentence at all! For both first and last sentences (and probably just in general) I think I might use way too many semicolons.
brigdh: (I need things on a grander scale)
A meme, stolen from [livejournal.com profile] dhampyresa:

1. of the fic you’ve written, which are you most proud of?
2. favorite tense (past/present/future)
3. favorite POV (first/second/third/etc)
4. what are some themes you love writing about?
5. what inspires you to write?
6. thoughts on critique
7. create a character on the spot..... NOW!
8. is there a character you love writing for the most? the least? why?
9. a passage from a WIP
10. what are your strengths wrt writing?
11. what are your weaknesses wrt writing?
12. what’s your favorite place for writing resources?
13. who are your favorite writers?
14. anything else that you want to know XD
brigdh: (I need things on a grander scale)
Happy Mardi Gras!

Since flinging beads and sharing King Cake is much less satisfying virtually, how about a meme?

1. Comment with any character you know I've written.
2. Receive three bits of trivia about their sexuality: practices, preferences, experiences, fantasies, kinks, etc.
3. Profit!


(Stolen from an old post of [livejournal.com profile] laeria)

Help!

Feb. 26th, 2014 04:42 pm
brigdh: (I need things on a grander scale)
Is anyone available to beta a fic for me? It's about 9k, mostly gen, rated PG/T. No canon knowledge is necessary, and I'm only looking for a very simple typo/SPAG/basic clarity type of beta.

The catch is that I need it back as soon as possible, preferably by sometime tomorrow. I know that's very soon! Which is why I will be very grateful if anyone is willing.
brigdh: (<3)
I have finally finished the first draft of the WIP I've been working on for ages! For some reason it's 6k, which is entirely incomprehensible for what was supposed to be a little PWP. It needs a lot of editing (among other things, I got to the very end and then decided it should be in present tense instead of the past I'd written) but I'm setting it aside for a day or two before I get to that.

So currently I'm doing deeply unnecessary background research for a different piece. Which at least I mean to be short and hopefully done in just a day or two.

(PS, does anyone else play Fallen London? I'm Draupadi! Send me all the non-Fate Rose gifts and I will return the favor; I desperately want a Hollow-Eyed Tragedian of my very own.)
brigdh: (I need things on a grander scale)
Dear Ship Swap Creator,

Thank you for signing up for one of my fandoms! This is my first year doing Ship Swap, and I'm very excited to read what you write or see what you draw. Feel free to ignore any part of this letter that doesn't work for you; just use what (if any) you find helpful. I'm much less experienced with giving art prompts, but please don't think that means I want art less! If you need more information or would like to ask a question, feel free to leave an anon comment or email me. My AO3 name is Brigdh, and so is my email (at gmail).

I'm completely fine with a G-rated and mostly gen story/art; something with a few kisses and fade-to-black; or filthy, filthy porn. I like it all!

General things I like: action, angst, anti-heroes, banter, backstory, case fic, character studies, clever dialogue and wordplay, curtainfic and domesticity, endings happy sad or bittersweet, difficult and complex relationships, epistolary stories, established relationships, fairy tales, five things, found families, friendship, geeks, H/C, humor, missing scenes, people with flaws, pining, road trips, unreliable narrators, unspoken feelings, AUs both canon-divergent and entirely off-the-wall (some particular AUs I like are: pirates, any historical period, Robin Hood/conmen/criminals, rebels, steampunk, cyberpunk, apocalypses, daemons, Rule 63, arranged marriages, and circuses).

General dislikes: jealousy, mpreg, overly sappy weddings/marriage proposals. That's... kind of it! I'm a pretty easy-going reader.

Don't feel obligated to write me porn! But if you want to, here are some things I like about sex specifically: rough sex with biting and bruising, sex up against a wall, sex in a place where the participants might be overheard and they have to try very hard to stay quiet, people holding their partner down during sex. I also like sex that is playful and silly and allows for laughter, and where everything doesn't go right. Intimate deep-feelings romantic sex is of course also fantastic! I like crossdressing (both men in women's clothing and women in men's), someone dressing against their normal type (so, someone who normally dresses casually getting all dressed up, or the opposite, someone who normally wears formal clothes wearing something old and worn), all sorts of general elaborate clothing descriptions, people helping one another get dressed or undressed, people wearing their partner's clothes, people having sex while still wearing most of their clothes. Anything with hair: playing with it, pulling on it, washing it, combing it, braiding it for someone else. People helping one another bathe, and sex in bathtubs or showers or swimming pools. I like sex that is non-penetrative: oral sex, frottage, hand jobs, fingering, mutual masturbation, intercrural... basically anything you can come up with! Though penetrative sex is super hot, too, and feel free to write it, I just don't like when people treat that as the only "real" kind of sex. I like writing or painting or drawing on skin, and descriptions of tattoos or scars. I prefer established relationships, but fumbly first-time sex is very good too. Dirty talk is SUPER HOT. I love cheesy sex-pollen/fuck-or-die/heat type situations. Body worship, especially focused on wrists or hips or necks is always hot. I love super dramatic OTT h/c, with a character being captured and tormented physically and emotionally by Bad Guys before being saved and comforted with sex. I like extremes of weather and temperature: sex in the rain, sex on a sticky-hot summer afternoon, preventing-hypothermia-in-the-winter sex.
Some other kinks I like: bondage or honor bondage/silence, blindfolds, pegging, breathplay, knifeplay, bloodplay, D/s, power exchanges, switching, orgasm delay or teasing or edging, threesomes and moresomes.


I don't have any squicks or triggers. There are plenty of kinks that I'm not particularly into, but if you can make a convincing argument that the characters are into it, I will love reading about it.

Repost of my specific requests below the cut, if anyone's interested. Fandoms: Ben January; Les Mis; Game of Thrones; Shakespeare; Crossovers )

Sign-ups for [livejournal.com profile] shipswap continue until Feb 10!
brigdh: (I am hopeless. Yay!)
Whooo, I am bored and unmotivated, so therefore: meme! Stolen from [livejournal.com profile] just_ann_now. Tell me a little about a story I haven't written, and I'll give you several sentences from that story.
brigdh: (Default)
Stolen from [livejournal.com profile] threewalls.
Works in Progress Meme: post a single sentence from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations. No more than one sentence!

Some of these are less 'WIPs' and more 'drawerfic I will never finish' )
brigdh: (I am hopeless. Yay!)
I have finally finished the first draft of my [livejournal.com profile] polybigbang story! I have no idea why this has been so difficult and endless to write; it didn't seem like such a challenging idea! (Honestly, I suspect it's the effect of the season: my SAD revving up and the antidepressants not quite kicked in.)

BUT. It's okay. Because now I have a draft at least! And it's 13.7k words, by far the longest thing I've ever written. Nearly twice as long as the next longest story, in fact. Of course, it's not yet good, but you know. That's the next step.

Yay!

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