So, this was a painful write for me. I was distracted and not really in the mood for it today. I was switching between windows, watching things on YT and all that usual procrastinate-y stuff.
And then something happened. About the time the owner pulled the desk out of the mess of the room, I got a feel for what I was actually writing. When I started, this piece was supposed to be one of those pieces where the point of view starts restricted and focused on one thing in particular and with each section, the POV would “zoom out” and give the reader context while also moving the plot forward by making you ask “ok, so what happened to get to here?” like how Memento worked: You start at the climax, and you work your way back to get to the point where you can fit it all together. This plan immediately failed. While the image I used as a prompt has a ton of things1 that could work with the plan that I had, I pretty much immediately focused on two or three things from it which makes it hard to do that thing where you continuously add detail to a given scene.
At the start, the owner was not supposed to be a character, per se. They were supposed to just be another piece of furniture in the room, something that was placed in a particular way that just keeps the curiosity ticking over. But I cannot help myself sometimes and they become some kind of magic person and I reverted to the mean and a scenery description became a character study.
BUT! That was the best thing I could have done because do you see what I got out of it? I got a story about the fae. Not explicitly, of course, but near enough to. With a decent enough twist of the narrative to make this something that could be expanded into something beyond SFF.2
The “vacation destinations” give me a lot to work with as well. What did they have to do with what happened? Both with the caged creatures antics and whatever the owner is doing right now.
Now, there is something that I should address. Immediately before writing this, I finished watching the 60th Anniversary episodes of Doctor Who. While the owner isnt a character like The Doctor, the way that the world around them reacted to their actions is reminiscent of how certain beings treat The Doctor. I recognise that I can only see as far as I can because I stand on the shoulders of a TARDIS.
You will definitely see this character again. Just as soon as I find a real plot for them.
1h25 and I got 1857 words. If I can consistently get the 1800 minimum below 70 minutes, then Ill up my count to 2000.
An image is worth a thousand words, after all
Using they and them is a pretty standard thing for me. I will use those pronouns as a stand in for a definitive character and change it all once I know who is going to be that person. Today, though, does mark two days in a row where my protag has been referred to by those pronouns; in yesterdays piece its because as I wrote the character of Jamie, they just became nb as I wrote them. Today its because whoever the owner is has had all of their identity taken from them. They genuinely do not know who they were and the only way to re-learn that is to look at the caged creature. If they do that, the horrible things they, themselves, unleashed would return. Not the best tradeoff.
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