flockofflamingos -> inquiriesofart

I changed the handle of my main blog to streamline my socials! If you’re looking for me, follow me on inquiriesofart. This side blog is now just a placeholder for my precious flockofflamingos username ;w;

Weekly Tales, 4 April 2014

I had to take a week off to prep for an upcoming convention, but now that the bulk of the work is done for that I can get back to weekly writing!

For this week, I decided to come up with a story idea that I call “Directionless.”

Greagor’s parents have worked hard to open every path for their son. Their son has worked hard to meet every expectation set before him. Every morning of his life is enriched with instruction from mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers. Every afternoon is a juggle of lute lessons, manners classes, poetry readings, and dance tutors. His evenings are filled with apprenticeships with the town blacksmith, the palace seamstress, and the stable horsemaster.

Now Greagor is sixteen, and unable to answer a single question placed before him: “What path would you like to pursue in life?” For sixteen years Greagor has walked every direction, and gone nowhere.

Until one day a strange old witch arrives in town, and shows Greagor a world of magic and mystery that he has never explored.

With the disapproval of his parents on his shoulders, Greagor must now decide and pursue his own path… all the while wondering if sixteen years of studies, apprenticeships, and the arts has prepared him for everything but the one life he wants to live.

Weekly Tales, 21 March 2016

This week’s scene started off with a single line: “They’re like rats in a maze.” Once I thought of combining the detective characters I brainstormed a few weeks back, this little bit practically wrote itself! I don’t know if I’ll write more with these characters, but their natural banter and dynamic is really fun (and I’m a total sucker for mystery/detective stories), so who knows? :)

“They’re like rats in a maze.”

Detective Burns glanced over at his companion. “Excuse me?”

The young man flicked open his lighter and lit the cigarette dangling precariously from his lips. His cupped hands caused the exhalation of smoke to billow at the edge of his face, momentarily obscuring his eyes. He peered sideways at Burns as the smoke dissipated. “These little jades we got runnin’. Like rats in a maze, old timer. Lookin’ desperately for the way out, but keep hitting dead ends. And one of these days—we’ll corner ‘em.”

I’m pretty sure he did all that on purpose, Burns thought. Everything this new private eye did seemed like something straight out of the movies that new cinema down the street had playing every day. “Considering they’ve given us the slip again, it feels like we’re the ones hitting dead ends,” he grumbled. Taking out a slip of cardstock from his pocket, he crossed out the words Lower West Borough scrawled across the back. Another neighborhood, another no-show.

“That one of my business cards?” his companion demanded.

Burns flipped over the card. Lawrence MacMillan, Private Investigator, Recipient of the Good Citizen Award from Mayor Ogden van Graaf was stamped in gold lettering across the textured front.

“Guess so,” he said.

“Stop ruining my cards, my dear man, those cost a pretty penny!” Investigator Lawrence cried. Digging into his breast pocket, he retrieved another and pressed it into Burns’s hand. “Give it to a pretty lady or something this time, all right?” he suggested with a wink.

Burns mumbled a short reply as he slipped the card into his back pocket—alongside the twenty others he had accumulated over the last several days. One of these days this kid’s gonna stop giving me these fool things, Burns thought. He exhaled and wished desperately for a cigarette. Not quite desperate enough to ask him for one, though.

He still had some dignity left.

The Attic

Violet wasn’t scared of the attic.

If it wasn’t for her venturing up there every few months—every few weeks—every few days—the dust would have long accumulated into a several-inch-thick layer along the wooden flooring. Her visits instead dispersed the dust into corner piles as it brushed away from her feet, the floor creaking beneath her with each step.

Her family cited good enough reasons for avoiding the attic. The dusty air set off her mother’s asthma. Her father had wrung out his back trying to pull the ladder down. Her brother was simply uninterested.

Violet knew the truth. She knew they were scared.

The first time Violet visited the attic, she meandered her way through the piles of boxes, directionless. The dust had hovered like mist, parting before her and closing into the space behind her as she moved about. She did not open the boxes during that first visit, and when she left the dust blanketed the floor once again.

But the unexpected disturbance had changed the dust. Had changed the air.

Violet felt the vibrations the second time she ascended the attic ladder. This time she started riffling through the boxes. Many contained nothing more than tax papers, stacks of magazines, old Christmas ornaments, clothing intended for the Goodwill but never made the trip. The dust swirled behind her as if peeking over her shoulder, curling fingers along her neck and spine.

The third visit was in the winter. Despite the frost crackling outside the attic window, the attic was warm. The dust seemed to part even before Violet moved, pooling at her feet when she stopped by a box, an impatient child pulling at its mother’s hand. Eventually she moved directly to the back of the attic, where the cool light from the window struggled and sputtered against the darkness.

A single box, unmarked and pristine, sat in the shadows. She ran a finger along its edge and came up clean. The box flaps were stiff as she opened them, and kept fighting her to close.

The box was empty. Lonely, Violet thought.

She closed the box gently. The dust parted for her as she left.

Violet’s family was scared of the attic. But Violet knows the attic is nothing to fear.

The steps to the attic are always open now. The dust no longer slumbers in the attic; it has settled on the couch in the living room, the counter in the kitchen, the photos in the hallway.

And the box in the shadows, where the light can’t quite reach, is no longer lonely.

Weekly Tales, 8 February 2016

Still keepin’ on, even if not right on schedule! \ o /

This week, I brainstormed a character/story idea.

Charles T. Burns knows the shtick. People expect their detectives to be cool, slick. Leaning back in a chair in a dark room, face lit only by a dull cigarette. Well, he never much cared for cigarettes, and those fancy chairs are expensive. But the fact is, Charles T. Burns doesn’t get much business–whether because he doesn’t fit that shtick or because he’s got a rather prickly personality to boot, he’s not quite sure. But the salt from his microwaveable ramen doesn’t help his own bitterness, and ever since that new detective moved in just across the hallway. Excuse me. “Private Investigator,” according to the new guy’s pristine golden letters on his door window. Back in Burns’s day, everyone just called them detectives.

Private investigator.

Do the dames really go for that?

Seems like his ramen’s tasting even saltier these days. Burns blames it on the city water. At least he’s good enough to solve that mystery.

Weekly Tales, 28 February 2016

Since this last week was crazy, I knew I wouldn’t have much time for a weekly story or scene. So I used this week’s images to come up with a theme!

“No matter how far you travel, you can never outrun your past.”

Weekly Tales, 17 February 2016

For this week’s tales, I wrote out a short comic! The way I structured the dialogue and scenes made it a fun challenge, and I think I would like to actually draw it out someday.

At first I admit I hesitated to post this, because I might draw it someday, but then I figured what’s the point of having a dang writing blog if I don’t post my weekly writing exercises? SO ENJOY. <3 Full outline is after the break!

Family Portrait

Structure: An 11-comic panel, seen through a camera lens counting down ten seconds, with one second per panel.
Characters: Grandma and grandpa, husband and wife, a 10-year-old boy, and his 5-year-old sister.

Panel 1
Scene: Everyone but the husband is arranged nicely in front of the camera.
Husband, from off-screen. All right, everyone!

Panel 2
Scene: The husband is starting to move in to sit beside his wife.
Husband. Now everyone look straight ahead and smile!

Panel 3
Girl. Wait what about Floppy?!
Husband. oh not again…

Keep reading

Weekly Tales, 8 February 2016

This week I wrote a one-page story titled Eve.

Read the rest after the break!

—

Once upon a time there was a girl.

Except she wasn’t a girl. She was an animal.

What animal, you may ask? Why, every animal you can imagine. She could transform from a scuttering ant to a gentle elephant in the space of a second.

But the only creature she could not turn into was a human girl.

At first, this did not bother the child overmuch. She had the entire animal kingdom at her disposal, after all, each one as fun as the last, delighting in the beauty of bustling life. People pointed and laughed delightedly at the field mouse riding on the bike of the town florist as he delivered an arrangement of daisies and roses and pearls to a wedding.  Children heading to the school’s field for their baseball tournament stopped to play with the friendly dog on the corner. Farmers, exhausted from a hard day’s work, watched in amazement as a sleek lioness scared wolves away from their sheep.

But the girl could not shield herself from the darker side of man, for she saw it all. The school’s worst bully wouldn’t sleep for a week after a spider in his sheets tickled his feet. A thief attempting escape from the old librarian’s house tripped over a black cat. Men caught in fisticuffs at the local tavern were stung by a yellow jacket until pain and swollen faces made them cease.

Both good and bad, the girl eventually tired of her animals. The florist delivered his flowers and returned to his workshop. The children left the dog on the corner, running to make their game on time. The farmers had never seen a lioness, and stayed inside their houses.

Keep reading

Weekly Tales, 1 Feb 2016

For this week’s cubes, I brainstormed a character background!

—

Once there was a young boy whose family had made their living as merchant sailors for generations. Seafaring ran in his blood. But the boy wasn’t content on top of the water. He would always pester his parents with questions about what it was like under the ocean they sailed across. They were simple sailors, uninterested in the scholarly and technological advances outside of their mercantile lives. The boy must find a way to escape the confines of his everyday life in order to pursue his dream.

#WeeklyTales–revitalized!

This week, I am reviving my writing exercise blog in conjunction with my studies at the Oatley Academy!

Each Monday, I will roll three Story Cubes and will write something inspired from them that week. It may be a short story, or it might be a short dialogue or scene, a character, a logline, etc. It will vary week to week!

If anyone else would like to participate, I highly encourage you to! Just use the tag #WeeklyTales, and flex your writing muscles!