The Dragon's Talon

I try to be a writer, good or bad, and I even manage it from time to time. The trouble is that I procrastinate and fail to finish, or else I get something out that I am almost embarrassed to show people.

I think this needs to change, so I need a deadline and a nudge.  I get these enough at work, but let’s not get into that; I like having an income…

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This is something I wrote about a month ago as an example of an interactive script.  It is not great, but it was done in one night and I am quite happy with the female protagonist.  The prompt was “realistic, maybe slightly gritty” and I think I am quite happy, considering this is outside my normal style.

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This week, I think I will not have a writing exercise up .  As an apology, I offer you an older story; this is actually a prologue of sorts to a D&D campaign that was originally started in second edition and later played for a time in fourth edition.  I confess that it is fantasy, my default ‘go to’ genre, but I hope it serves as an example of my style which is not so formal as A Prince of Shadows, nor trying to be self-contained when it clearly is not.

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The fourth in a series of articles chronicling my output from writing exercises, this is less about ‘good writing’ and more about working to constraints without over-thinking them.

The aim this time was to finish a 750-word exercise with the words “…and I realised how lucky I was” by any means necessary.  The opening was actually taken from a notebook of mine.  (like any good writer / designer, I always keep one handy)  It was a line that came to me three or four years ago while waiting outside a library for my wife to finish work, but I never found a story to go with it.

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The third in a series of articles chronicling my output from writing exercises, this is less about ‘good writing’ and more about working to constraints without over-thinking them.

The aim this time was to finish a 750-word exercise with the words “…and he watched.  What else could he do?” to help get these words (paraphrased from a children’s book my daughter loves) out of my wife’s head.  I am not sure how much help I was, but it also gave me the chance to get Jack Flint down on the page before he finished driving me crazy.  I managed to restrict myself to only 49 words over the target, but I am treating these targets as being more like guidelines than rules or limits.

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The second in a series of articles chronicling my output from writing exercises, this is less about ‘good writing’ and more about working to constraints without over-thinking them.

This exercise was a repeat of the earlier brief to write 750 words or more in under an hour starting with the words “The book fell to the floor…” and ending with “…and then he saw the light in the window.”  This time, I have had a couple of days to think about the challenge.  Where the first went over the 750 word target by about 50 words, this one steams on ahead to surpass 1000 words before finally coming to a close.

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The first on what might become a series of articles chronicling my output from writing exercises, this is less about ‘good writing’ and more about working to constraints without over-thinking them.

This exercise was simply to write 750 words or more in under an hour starting with the words “The book fell to the floor…” and ending with “…and then he saw the light in the window.”

WARNING: contains poor attempts at an unintentional Lovecraftian style.

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