What do you guys do to convince yourself to write?? I just always end up feeling like it's a burden, besides the sudden lack of inspiration, or synonyms and descriptive words for 'say' or 'said'.
daybreak. wrote: Anyone have any tips for coming up with short story ideas?
Also! Here's a little thing I wrote not long ago. If anyone has a chance to check it out, I have a point of curiosity quoted below in transparent color to avoid spoilers. Appreciate anyone who takes the time!Tilly took a deep breath, expanding her throat into a green-tinted bubble and closing her nostrils. She raised a pearl-topped silver wand, steadily, in her left hand and swept her right foot out in a practiced motion. Her webbed toes traced an invisible circumference before her, her gold-trimmed magenta robe glinting in a ripple as it caught the edge of a beam of sunlight dappling through the trees.
Every creature within earshot held its breath in concert with Tilly; the clearing surrounding the lily pond stood still and silent, called to attention. Tilly’s left hand began to move softly, punctuated by a slow compression of her throat that produced a first long, croaking note. The pearl atop her wand caught a pocket of sunlight then, and her croak transmuted into a melody, joined by birdsong in a harmony, now as a gust moved the reeds into chorus, and punctuated by the glittering percussions of a cicada.
In the quickening motions of that silver wand, Tilly spun a magic charm—she wove a song.Highlight after reading wrote:So, what did you imagine Tilly like? I wanted to see if I could get a reader to picture a frog without writing the word “frog” ^^ Did it work?
OMGGG HECK YES IT WORKED. though at first I thought that Tilly was a strange magical creature because of 'expanding her throat into a green-tinted bubble' but then thought "duh. Amphibian" when I read she has webbed feet.. Low-key unrelated, but... Who else always thinks of spiderwebs when they read 'webbed feet?' Just me?
And my tip for short story ideas is opening your childhood diaries (if you kept any, lord knows I literally only wrote like 50 logs.) And then trying to relive it or reinterpret it if you can't remember, changing things (or not) to weave a story. It's more of a description practice, but TBF 50-75% of writing is description anyways. No diary? Check your old drawings until you can create a story. Sometimes I stare at the doodles on a page and try to come up with a comicbook type story for them. Or think of how they would interact with each other, who's the protagonist, antagonist, or are they all just existing and something otherworldly is watching them? (Aka you lol)