Writing Exercise #21

Exercise 2-20 disappeared from the site, so I guess 21 and onward will do. 


Dream exercise: Write the recurring dreams of your four most significant characters.


    Jax sleeps, and he dreams of falling. He never gets used to it. He falls through the clouds, hurtling towards the ground so far below him. He screams for a while, terrified but unable to wake up. Birds and clouds flash past him, and eventually he stops screaming. He keeps falling, but he never reaches the ground. Eventually he gets bored of falling, and he realizes the absurdity of the situation. Then he wakes up.


    Jonathan Phrase sleeps, and he dreams of travelling. He travels, but his every step is harried by an enemy he can't fight: fate. Horses trip and break legs. Cars run out of gas in the middle of nowhere. Trains arrive at the wrong station. Whenever he makes progress, he's is sent back to his starting point. He never knows his destination. 


    Rook sleeps, and he dreams of ghosts. Ghosts of friends and enemies. Some slain by his hand, some by others. He misses them all, even those who would kill him if they had the chance, and he can't explain why. He often wakes up with an arm outstretched as if reaching for something.


    Doctor Blitzmann sleeps, but dreams are inefficient, so he disposed of them years ago. Don't ask.

Writing Exercise #1

I've decided to start doing some writing exercises I found at meredithsuewillis.com. Here's the first one.

Exercise #1

Describe what you see in this photo. Describe what you don't see -- the interior. Describe the person who comes out of the place. What does the person do? 


    In the midst of a far-away forest lies a would-be house. A massive iron-plated cube disguised as an old wooden shack. A facade of rotting wood and cracked windows gives the place an air of neglect and abandonment. But inside the walls, its true nature is revealed. A metal floor, plain and smooth except for a hatch in the corner, fills the single, empty room. Beneath the latch lies a maze of ladders, corridors, dead ends and unspeakable things best left in the darkness. A maze much bigger than the cube that contains it. 
    There's a gap around the cube - about a stride across - that is perhaps the most disturbing part of the whole thing. Anything - or anyone - that falls into gap is subject to an uncertain and uncomfortable fate. One moment they are there. The next, they aren't. The lucky find their way out of the maze and emerge from the hatch in the floor, wide-eyed and trembling. The unlucky ones never find their way out, stumbling around blindly until they join the other ones best left in the darkness.

Skyrim, Chapter 1: Seven Thousand Steps

   Howling winds tore at Dovahkiin, threatening to rip him off the mountainside and send him plunging into the darkness below. His blonde hair and braided beard - what could be seen of it from beneath his steel helmet - was encrusted with ice and snow. The cold burned every inch of exposed skin, and even the thick bear pelt draped over his shoulders gave little protection against the vicious temperatures that threatened to freeze the blood in his veins.
   He forced himself to keep moving through the knee-deep snow on cold-numbed feet. He was not the first to brave the Seven Thousand Steps in order to reach High Hrothgar, and he would not be the last, but many never made it back alive.
    He had to watch his step. Night and flurries of snow took turns blinding him, and one false step would send him to join his ancestors.
   Yet despite the weariness of his body, his eyes shone bright and alive with purpose behind the dark steel of his helmet. He was a Nord, a true son of Skyrim. No mountain would best him.
   A brief flash of color in the white curtain of snow was all the warning he had before a grey mountain wolf came hurtling out of the darkness, fangs bared in a vicious snarl.
   It went for his throat, as he knew it would, and he brought his shield around in a vicious arc to catch the creature mid jump. The metal rim of the shield cracked against the side of the wolf's head with a sharp crack, and it fell to the snow in a bloody heap. He spun around in time to dodge the second wolf that had come up from behind him. It snapped at his legs as it leaped past, but there was no real spirit behind the attack. The wolf was wary now.
    He knew there were more of them out there, hidden by the darkness, but they stayed back. They had recognized a predator. He looked into eyes of the wolf standing only a few feet away from him. Bright yellow eyes seeming to regard him as one might regard a bull.
    The wolf disappeared back into the snowy night, leaving behind only one of its dead, blood already frozen on its fur.