Monday, June 29, 2015

Writing Excuses Master Class - Build an Entire World? Are You Crazy? (Part 1)

Time to get back in the saddle, and figure out what the next thing to write is.  I think I'm ready to poke at Paranormal Investigations again, and I think this week's writing prompt will help:

Pick your gee-whiz, whatever it may be, and describe it in 150 words from ten different perspectives. Yes, that's 1500 words.

Something tells me this is going to be a long post that I'll need to come back to a few times before it's finished.

Alison (main POV character):  I was certain that I had to be imagining things when I was attacked by a ghost at the coffee house where I work.  I couldn't even be sure it was a ghost, until a group of people told me that that's what she'd been, and that they wanted me to help them protect the world from ghosties and ghoulies and long-legged beasties, et cetera.  I still don't know who exactly they work for, or how, but they seem pretty desperate - obviously, if they're recruiting me. It's not like I see ghosts everywhere, or anything, but now that I know what to look for, it's kind of surprising that not everyone can see them.  It's pretty obvious that something sticks around, if you know what the signs are.  I just need to figure out what I'm- we're- supposed to do about all of it.

Holy crud, 150 words is longer than I thought.  Moving on!

Mattherw: The idea of life after death has been a popular one for people for generations, obviously, and folk tales about the remenants of a person's being, or soul, have engaged people's imaginations for years. Still, even with the kind of preparation fairy tales gives you, it's still jarring to think that the ghost stories are real, and people can stay on this plane (in one way or another) after death. It's even miore disconcerting to realize that ghosts aren't the only creatures out of the story books that are real, much less finding out that you number among them. Being able to create a group that can help protect the living from the undead has been one of the few things that makes all of this make some sort of sense. However, it still doesn't make telling people much easier.

Gramps (Alison's grandfather): Yes, the stories are true. You didn't think that adults told kids those ghost stories just to scare them, did you? Well, we did tell them to scare kids a little - after all, that's part of the fun of being an adult - but we also needed to make sure that kids were warned. Not every kid is going to see a ghost, or a vampire, or whatever. They hide themselves pretty well, and people go through their lives every day without realizing what's truly around them. But maybe one kid in a hundred will see them for what they truly are, and that kid? That's the one we tell the stories for. That kid needs to know what to do when they are face to face with the werewolf. Stories, after all, are just ways to tell you how to defeat the monsters.

That's a good break for this one, I think. I'm still contemplating what exactly my plan for Camp Nanowrimo will be, but I'm pretty sure that at least part of it will be spent back in the land of Paranormal Investigations.


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