forum Share an excerpt where...

Started September 17, 2022 by @Starfast group

tune

Self explanatory thread. Share an excerpt that fits the criteria, and then leave your own criteria for the next person. Pretty simple and straightforward.

First one: Share an excerpt where an important character is introduced.

Oooooh this is a fun idea! Pretty tame intro for one of my characters, but here we go:

The inn was humming with activity, as it often was during the daylight hours.

Kalliope was seated near the hearth of the commons space, strumming her lyre and singing something lilting that hid just under the sounds of daily activity rather than joining in. Baruch was faithfully at the bar, bandying jokes with a few guests without once pausing from pounding dough into shape. Soshana could be glimpsed in the kitchen behind him, hurrying to stir something over a fire.

Mikhos closed his eyes for a moment and rested his head on the wooden wall behind him.
“You look tired.” Solon’s voice came unexpectedly from behind him. Mikhos smiled.
“Perhaps a little,” he responded, not bothering to open his eyes. “It is rather early.”
“It is decidedly not.” his friend said, and Mikhos knew Solon was rolling his eyes. “It is practically mid-morning. Some of us enjoy being present and actually working at this hour rather than wasting half the day in bed, you know.”
“I think,” Mikhos returned mildly, “that I am but a humble old man enjoying my retirement. Surely no one would hold such against me?”
“I am not even sure where to begin with that,” his friend replied, and then stopped for a moment, actually considering. “Retirement? Let us start there.”
“Retirement, yes.”
“…Retirement means that the person in question has stopped working, you know.”
“Mmm.”
“And yet here you are. At your work. Odd.”
“What can I say, I delegate,” Mikhos said, finally opening his eyes and facing his friend. Unsurprisingly, Solon’s face was set in the expression he most often wore whenever Mikhos was around – one eyebrow slightly raised, eyes flat, but with a hint of humor around the mouth. “And besides,” Mihkos added on an afterthought, “I have met very few people who ever really stop actually working. Not while they are still alive.”
“No one worth knowing, maybe,” Solon conceded. He descended another stair to peek around the corner of the empty door frame Mikhos was leaning against to view the bustling residents of the inn.

Share an excerpt of your story where a character is interacting with someone they absolutely despise.

Tori had been having a nice day.

It really was beautiful outside. The air had a lovely crisp chill to it, and the wind was light and playful. Ruffling hair and clothes and gently kissing your face before moving on. From the balcony, Tori could see the entirety of the Elder Forest, the leaves in their perpetual cycle of growth and decay, in their waning phases, giving the impression of an eternal sea of crimson and gold.

The young woman had her hands planted firmly on the railing of the balcony, the wizards tower was incredibly tall, cresting over even the Elder trees by a few feet, and the wind was playing with her skirts, unable to get a firm grasp on her pinned back hair. Her day had gone well. She'd been doing so well! Her morning was peaceful, she'd made a fresh batch of these delicious pine cone shaped, chocolate and orange muffins, and had received her order from the post on time for once. The birds had sung as she read through some old favorites of her books, the well worn pages still welcoming to their old friend.

Mid-Day had been nice as well. After strengthening her wards around the tower, and communing with one of the friendlier Elder trees, Tori had done her duty to her people for the day. She had headed home and had this exquisite salad for lunch! With real goats cheese and fresh sliced tomatoes from her garden around back. It almost felt normal again. Everything had been going well!

So that was why, standing on her beautiful balcony, when she heard the sing-song voice of the person behind her, Tori's blood froze. The wind hadn't gotten colder, but it suddenly seemed less playful, less friendly. It bit at her ankles and tore at her eyes trying to rip out her raven colored hair, and the young witch wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and disappear.
But she couldn't. Not here. Not in the tower.
A safety protocol she'd been regretting more and more recently.

Turning slowly, Tori stared at the object of her hate. A man no older than early thirties, with hair as golden as the sun and a smile twice as bright. His grin was sickeningly sweet and his entire face lit up as he noticed her attention on him. The man wore ostentatious clothes, a cape that billowed out behind him in a wave of forest green, black gloves, and a bowler hat. The hat was laid aside on her table. So casually, as if he owned the building! The man was beautiful. His name was Atlas.

"Tori! There you are! I have been looking absolutely everywhere for you my dear!" Atlas rushed forwards, making a grab for the woman's hand. Tori jerked away so quickly, she could hear a muscle in her shoulder rip, and she pressed herself against the railing, her skin crawling. She needed to get away, away, away, away- The wards should have held. They should have.

"How did you get in here?" Tori's voice was a low harsh whisper, her eyes looking everywhere but at Atlas's eyes, the monsters eyes. The blonde man frowned just a bit, then his grin returned, more feral this time.

"Through the door silly! You really should stop hiding from me. I'm getting almost annoyed with out little game of tag, don't you love me anymore?" He tipped his head to the side, and those eyes that enjoyed watching the young witch squirm.
Tori couldn't look at the creature. It had her husbands voice, it had his face, even his body. But it did not have his eyes. Her blood, once so cold, began to thaw, then melt, then began to boil.

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"No! You.. You are not my husband. You're a demon. A monster that devoured his soul and ripped him apart. I held his body in my arms! I saw the life leave his eyes!" Tori was trembling now, her voice beginning to raise to a shout, the wind responding to her anger, increasing its urgency and whipping about violently.

Atlas' grin vanished, blown away by the wind like smoke. "You say such hurtful things my dear. Come inside, you're not well." Its voice was angry, not soft like the one she knew as a little girl, not kind like the man she'd married. Its voice was dark and harsh and wrong.

"I will see you dead, demon. I will find your soul in the web and I will unleash every ounce of hatred I have upon it. You will feel my wrath and you will beg for mercy, and find none in my heart. You offered terms when I declared war, and we will not have quarter." Tori was screaming now and she hated how pathetic her voice sounded, how tears fell down her face and made her voice crack with grief, rather than the raw rage she felt eating her alive. Clawing at her throat and twisting her limbs into painful contortions of themselves. The petite woman clambered onto the railing, she wanted this monster to understand, to fear her! Not to look upon her with amusement and pity.

The thing that had Atlas' body came forwards, wrapping its slender arms around her, burying Tori's head in its chest. Every part of her wanted to push it away, to drive a dagger through its heart, to force it to give her back her husband- Her tears fell faster, and she couldn't keep from releasing choked sobs. It stroked her hair with cold hands, murmuring soft words into her ears. She hated how much it felt like him. She had years to recover and then this thing ripped open her scabbed wounds, making the scarred flesh bleed as freshly as the day they'd been opened. She hated how its comfort soothed her. Hated herself for feeling it.

Her body instinctively leaned into the familiar touch, and Tori continued to cry into its shirt. "Come inside, love. You need to rest." And again, the voice was.. The voice was wrong. The witch slowly looked up, making eye contact with the creature, wrenching herself from its arms. Her husbands eyes were dark brown, as muddy as a puddle of water. She could remember being in the forest with him, watching the light hit his eyes in a way that made them seem as pure as honey or as clear as amber, could remember their softness. The way they'd half close when he'd laugh at something she'd say or widen whenever he saw something cute. The creature had blue eyes, like the sky and just as empty.

The despair and anger in her heart battled each other, and Tori's hands slowly clenched as she stood on the railing. Speaking as quickly as she could, the young witch shouted something and.. Threw her arms out, falling backwards off the tower, into the forest below. The demon hissed, peering over the ledge… Where it could see no trace of the raven haired woman.

The wind continued to howl, it screamed for all the vengeance the woman could not. Again and again, overlapping screams of "I hate you! I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU". The wind was a chorus, and the howling joined in enthusiastically.

Share an excerpt where two important characters meet for the first time.

Ooh an opportunity to share what has to be the best character interaction I've ever written.

Across the room, there’s two doctors standing next to each other quietly discussing something. They both look pretty young, and it crosses my mind that maybe they’re not quite doctors yet. Maybe they’re just interns or residents or something.
But there’s two of them– a Chinese woman with her thin black hair tied back into a tight ponytail, and next to her is a man with olive skin and tousled black hair. The woman is talking, but the man looks right at me with intense brown eyes.
I can’t quite read the expression on his face, but he looks away almost as soon as we lock eye contact. His coworker says something and he turns to her, and they get back to their conversation, like nothing happened.
And then I hear a voice in my head again.
‘Sorry,’ It’s the French guy again. ‘I just wasn’t expecting to see you here that’s all.’
I look up at the doctor across the room. He’s talking to his coworker still, but I can see him looking at me out of the corner of his eye. Almost like he’s reluctantly trying to get a better look at me.
‘What are you doing here?’ He asks me before I get a chance to question him any further. And for the third time that night, I’m asked, ‘are you hurt?’
Which is funny, I think, because if he could really read my mind then he would know what was going on. ‘I’m fine,’ I tell him. About as fine as one can be after performing first aid for a stab wound for your classmate before suffering a mild asthma attack.
‘Well, it could be worse,’ is his dry response.
I keep my eye on him. He’s literally right in my direct line of vision. ‘Ok seriously,’ I ask him, ‘What do you want with me? Why were you helping me?’
‘Would you have rather that I didn’t?’
I sigh. Or try to anyway. When I look back on the events that had unfolded, it really was good that I had someone coaching me through everything. Especially since Andor was no help at all. And I guess what I’m getting at is that maybe I would have been a little less rude to this French guy if I’d known that he was an actual doctor of sorts.
‘No,’ I say to him finally, ‘But seriously, who are you?’
‘Sorry,’ the doctor says, ‘Andor said he told you about me. I’m–’ He cuts himself off as another older doctor approaches the pair and says something to the French guy and his coworker. But even though he hasn’t finished his sentence I think I know what he was about to say, because Andor did mention a name.
I think I know, but I wait for the doctor to tell me himself because I know I’m going to look like the biggest idiot if I’m wrong about this.
The older doctor finally walks away leaving the French guy and his younger coworker. The French doctor looks up, making eye contact with me once again. ‘Sorry about that,’ he says, ‘My name is Ara.’
So I was right then. But I still feel like the biggest idiot, because I may or may not have thought that Ara was a girl. It’s not like Andor ever mentioned it, so how was I supposed to know? I mean, come on. What kind of a name is Ara for a guy?
‘Awfully bold of you to ask, considering your name is Dallas.’

Share an excerpt where a character fails at something