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Fred Thread 2
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Fred Thread 2
Fred Thread 2
For me, fantasy writing is closely connected to the natural world. Although a fantasy may involve imaginary creatures, magical objects, and unusual landscapes, yet certain aspects of good stories come straight from real life. I suspect you know what I mean. When you're outdoors on a summer evening, doesn't the world seem enchanted, as if anything might happen? Do you sometimes see a story idea in the way sunlight strikes a tree, making the leaves glow green and golden, and casting deep, cool, purple shade beneath? In fact, it's these details that help the story come alive for the reader. If we can hear the whisper of the leaves or feel the sunlight baking us through our scratchy shirts, then it's easier to believe that the whole forest is on an island floating in the air, or that a unicorn is standing beside us.
I was thinking today about how the interaction of nature and human structures—like the abandoned road in the previous thread—can lead us into fantasy stories. I remember the old barn I used to play in when I was a kid. One wall of it was covered by leafy Virginia creeper vines, so from that side it looked more like a hill than a barn. Some of the old, weathered trapdoors were crisscrossed and sealed shut by the vines. Nature seemed to want them shut; to us kids, they seemed too sacred to open. Yet there were hatchways among the leaves, doorways into an inner world of wooden beams, passageways leading, perhaps, into the world of Faery.
On this thread, I invite you to write a sentence or two about something very real—a detail you've actually seen—where nature is interacting with something people have built. This is an important aspect of fantasy story writing, because believe me, these images provide just as much of the story's "fire" and "zing" as the three-headed giants and flowers that shine like lanterns. Tell us about snow on a fence post, about tree roots that squeeze a brick foundation, about water trickling from the crack in a stone wall. . . .
Here's my example: Forty or fifty years ago, someone had carried a broken gate from the fence and leaned it here against the young maples. As the trees grew, they absorbed it, and now its planks and rusted bars were half-buried in the trunks, forming a strong, enchanted wall behind the garden.
submitted by Fred Durbin, Ukraine
(May 9, 2014 - 2:21 pm)
(May 9, 2014 - 2:21 pm)
The wall was crumbling, rotting, weatherworn. It was originally metal, slowly curving and rusting. Stones were then piled around it, but eroded and mossy as the wall was, wood was added. A roof was made, but after termites ate the posts that held it up, it ended up leaned againest the wall. A bush growing close by wriggled it's way in. Roses grew up it. When a very special stone was dropped their, the wall hide it.
The wall gave so much. Eventually, the stone gave it's magic too the wall. The wall was the wall between worlds after that.
(July 5, 2014 - 7:52 pm)
(This is kind of like a continuation from my post on Fred Thread #1)
Fable walked slowly back to the man's castle, making sure not to be seen. The weight of what she had discovered behind the old door at the weed pasture threatened to make her collapse, right then and there, on the cobble street. Just as Fable was about to climb the tree outside the window to the room she was stuck in, something shiny caught her eye and made her stop straight in her path. It was not far from the tree--only about 2 yards or so--and seemed to be partially obscured by the entwining ivy that covered so much of that wall of the castle.
Moving closer, Fable found that the shiny object that had caught her eye was none other than a door knob; and not any door knob, at that. This door knob perfectly matched the door knob of the door that she had found, once again, hidden by plant overgrowth. In fact, this door matched the door at the "Weed Pasture" almost perfectly. And what she had found behind that door was nothing she wanted to think about, let alone encounter again.
Running her hand along the door, Fable again felt the same feeling of being pulled toward the door. And once again she had one thought that crowded out all of the others: Oh no. The prophecy.
Against her will, her hand slunk down the side of her dirtied dress, to make contact with the quill that was stowed away in her pocket--unseen to the outside world. And what the world didn't know was very dangerous. If they were to find out, Fable knew, all was lost. But if they didn't things could still go wrong--very, very wrong.
***
A hand, grasping a quill as if a soul was about to run away, was brought up to a door. Soon, that same quill would make contact with that same door, scratching something horrible into the cold, forboding stone. This all happened seconds before Fable Thatcher blacked out...just before her fate made a terrible twist for the worst.
(July 6, 2014 - 8:26 pm)
I must say, along with a few others, I think that this must be my favorite Fred Thread yet.
(July 6, 2014 - 8:27 pm)
These descriptions are all lots of fun and full of vivid details that help to carry the reader's imagination into fantasy worlds. Three cheers, everyone!
(July 6, 2014 - 11:06 pm)
Wait, Fred, I thought you were from Ukraine?
Fred was in Ukraine for several weeks. Now he's back home in Pennsylvania. He grew up in Illinois.
Admin
(July 7, 2014 - 8:22 am)
The sunshine shone on the leaves, and those leaves cast shadows on the leaves below. Inside the trunk a small heart is scratched. Knows about it except . . .
(July 7, 2014 - 1:18 pm)
Through a crack in the dark gray stone emerged a flower. Horses clip-clopped around it, wagon wheels narrowly crushing it into the pavement.
(July 13, 2014 - 9:34 am)
An old, huge metal idol, left there for thousands of years, was covered in stone. Other rocks fell against it, forming a cave for the followers of Mael-Koth, the pagan god of death.
(July 13, 2014 - 7:02 pm)
The horse's bones rested in the vines, which curled around a sapling. Many years passed, and the tree turned into a beautiful elm, and many, many years, one thousand and fourty two years and three months to be exact, passed, until the horse's bones were one with the tree, and the bones sucked the nutrients out of the tree, until the bones were almost gleaming with health.
They were ready to be alive again.
(July 27, 2014 - 6:13 pm)
The poison ivy grew around the entrance to Khaos's cave like an archway. All other plants attempting to grow by had been killed and left to dry up for their pains.
(July 28, 2014 - 4:34 pm)
These are awesome! Does anyone mind if I pick three or four to use in my own story? I really like to write, and one thing I like to do is choosing a couple random ideas that are completely different, then find ways to connect them in my writing. Often I have trouble coming up with ideas, and this is like a jackpot!
(September 3, 2014 - 5:49 pm)
There were bats, not big bats but little bats. All on the underside of the palm tree.
(September 6, 2014 - 5:50 pm)
"Get the boy, before he reaches the Stone!" Reddihevis shouted. Noran's heart raced as he sped towards the very object that Reddihevis wanted. Finally, salt in his eyes, his body full of cuts, his left arm steaming, Noran grabbed the Stone. A swirl of darkness engulfed him, then the only hope of Reddihevis succeeding in living vanished before all eyes.
(September 7, 2014 - 12:52 pm)
The leather hide of the book had been covered in musty bits of dirt. It was worn and weathered from the many hands of children seeking a new adventure slowly seeking into the mud of years gone by, it sat and sank untill it had dissapeared, as it seemed, from the world forever, It's spell supposedly long gone. The Earth covering it was bare, for a Spelled book cannot be destroyed, but a single flower of midnight blue. The single flower in the barren earth marked the book's earthen grave, a single patch of brown in the sea of green medow enhancing it's simplicity.
(September 8, 2014 - 9:14 pm)
100 years ago, a young girl had laid down broken pieces of her late mother's pottery. Her tears, enchanted with deep sadness, fell on one shard, the smallest. In a few years, it would have expanded to be as large as a shack. The shard was making a protective wall around the other pottery. It would be protected until kin of the child smiled down on them, while crying enchanted tears.
Sorry, I need to write chapters for my writing to any good.
(September 21, 2014 - 4:51 pm)