Insert Scene Here

Originally, I was planning on putting this exercise off for a bit, but I'm realizing that I need help in this area.  I actually went back to the Church of Book story I was working on for NaNoWriMo, and I decided that while the setting and idea were good, the plot I was putting together wasn't.  I'm trying to come up with a new outline, and what do you know - March's theme for the master class was outlining!  So, the  writing prompt : Take a favorite piece of of media (but not something YOU created,) and reverse engineer an outline from it. Inspired by last night's Wrestlemania, I thought I'd take a stab at outlining one of the running storylines that was bumped up yesterday.  This could be a little bit tricky, as wrestling storylines are pretty ad-hoc, depending on who's hurt in a given day.  But let's try it anyway!  Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar for the World Heavyweight Championship (spoilers ahead): Roman Reigns starts as a member of the Shie

Let's try to finish up February's prompts, now that it's halfway through March. The  prompt : Sketch out the events before and after your dead-drop scene from last week and three weeks ago. I'm going to go back to Alison and Matthew (from  Take three ), starting with the before. "I think it's time to get Alison out in the field."  The statement from Veronica seemed to come out of nowhere, and neither Alison nor Matthew was expecting it.  Luthor, working away on his multi-screened computer, swiveled around in his chair to face the rest of the group. Alison blinked bemusedly, trying to focus on the older member of the squad after staring at pages of handwritten notes for hours.  "In the field?  I...didn't know there was a field to be in."  She turned to Matthew, whom she had presumed to be the leader of their motley crew.  "Why didn't anyone say there was a field?" Veronica stood up and began riffling through a shelf o

This morning, I was fighting panic (still left over from yesterday, in fact), and so I decided it would be best if I worked from home.  I have never been so grateful for that option before.  My husband called me around 8:30am to let me know that Sir Terry Pratchett  had passed . I had the honor of meeting Sir Terry once, in 2003.  He was perfectly lovely, and signed my two favorite books of his -  Small Gods  and  Hogfather .  He also gave me verbal permission to translate a section of Hogfather into Spanish, to use as a writing sample for a literary translation program I was investigating. I didn't discover the Discworld books until I was in college, and for that I do feel some regret.  Once I realized the glory of the Discworld books, I devoured as many of them as I could, wishing I had found them earlier.  They gave me a sense of comfort while making me reevaluate tropes I thought I knew. When my husband and I moved in together, we took the step of combining our libraries.

As I'm sure some of you may have noticed, I haven't been around all that much lately.  I didn't intentionally abandon the internet, but every time I started to write about what was going on, I kept hearing that voice telling me that no one would really care.  My life is pretty good, it kept saying.  My "problems" aren't nearly as bad as some of the other people's problems.  Do you want to be that person who does nothing but complain? I really hate that voice.  Long story short, my depression decided to tighten its grip on me for the last couple of months, and it made getting words on a page very difficult.  Depression, for me, doesn't just tell me that no one cares about what I write - it tells me that people will actively be angry or annoyed if I put my problems out into the world, or try to make them read the crap I put together (because of course it's crap, it's coming from me).  It also keeps me from telling the people around me, the peop

Time to try to catch up on Writing Excuses' Master Class.  This  prompt  is going to interesting, I think: Pick one of the dead-drop characters from the exercise two weeks ago, and turn them into a secondary character. Now take one of the characters with whom they interacted, and write the same scene again, but from this new character's POV. We're going to go with Alison and Matthew, the last try on my  previous post  for the Master Class. Matthew was certain that Alison was going to get herself killed.  If he'd had his way, he would never have pushed this kind of job on such a green recruit, but he didn't have a choice.  He sat back in the shade of a tree, trying to keep an eye on the girl without being completely conspicuous.  "Keep going," he muttered under his breath when he saw her linger at a jewelry stand.  "You can shop later!"  He nodded to a couple of women walking by, but realized that they hadn't even looked twice at him.  T