Short-Story Academy

This are two one shots I wrote in the past. I call them historical AU do to the fact that somethings in the story may not fit or may not be historically accurate.

They are both Christmas stories so I appologize they are a bit out of season.

Not for Christmas-

Sometimes things don't always turn out as we had hoped.
In which there is a disappointing phone call, the high King is kept from doing something rash and Edmund and Lucy encourage each other. http://sonprincess.livejournal.com/7636.html#cutid1

Christmas Miracle, A Historical AU

This probably the more unrealistic of the two. In fact it's probably so highly unrealistic that I don't know if it should be shared. But as I put my heart into it, it's dear to me even if not based on any "real world" experience.

In a Christmas type of miracle, Mr Pevensie manages to share Christmas with his family.
http://sonprincess.livejournal.com/1598.html#cutid1
 
I enjoyed both stories, and there is NO rule that it has to be December for you to post something Christmas-related.

I notice that you follow the movie in bestowing the first name of Helen on the mother of the Pevensie siblings. It is not your fault that the film writers decided to be STUPID on this point. Helen was the name of the wife of Frank the cabbie, in "The Magician's Nephew." (Lewis himself was woefully neglectful, in that he never gave that couple a LAST name.) Having TWO prominent Helens in the Narnian universe invites confusion. It is my opinion that the Walden people went ahead and willfully created that confusion because, from the VERY beginning, they ALREADY purposely intended NEVER to film "The Magician's Nephew."
 
Copperfox, I thought I recalled from the commentary, that Georgie's mother name was Helen.
----
I tried to piece together a tale I could write about the friends I've made here on TDL. Unfortunately, this is all that has come so far. For EveningStar and Copperfox

A badger, a fox and a unibunny sat discussing writing under a shady tree in the Dancing Lawn. It was a bright, spring, day and the weather was very pleasant. It was a good day for the author indeed as ideas and thoughts were shared. She felt sure that sure she with such great wisdom shared, it could be a possibility to hope to be a great writer some day.
 
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Is a Unibunny a rabbit with a horn on its forehead? If so, it would be a cousin of the Jackalope in American folklore, a jackrabbit with antlers. :)

As you build on this beginning, you might think about what would be the _physical_ resources these creatures would have for writing. For instance, I don't think Mr. Lewis ever stated whether _paper_ existed in Narnia; it would be for you to decide that here.
 
Unibunny for me is a bit nebulous right now. Some have pictured it as a smaller size horse with a horn with large ears. And some a fluffy bunny with a unicorn horn. Generally, I tend to go with the later....
 
Here's the beginning of my newest project.


Her name was Elizabeth, and he loved her. He spent every moment he could sitting with her, and she sang for him, sometimes late into the night, her voice reverberating through the walls of the house until his mother, wrapped in her pink bathrobe, appeared at the door.

“It’s four in the morning, John. You’ll wake your brother with that racket.”

Her voice shattered the spell and his fingers halted on their keys, and Elizabeth’s voice stopped abruptly.

“It isn’t a racket, Mummy,” he said, “It’s my new piece. Liz and I were trying it out.”

She shook her head, her greying curls bouncing around her face.

“You and that piano. You ought to get a real girl, John.”

He pulled the lid down over the keys and stood up, his back aching from sitting so long, his fingers numb from playing for hours. He swung around to face his mother.

“What do I need a girl for? I haven’t got time.”

“You haven’t got time for anything, it seems. When was the last time you bathed, dear?”

“Well-”

“Or ate?”

“I ate just,” he paused to think, “just about two days ago.”

She shook her head again, clutching the thin bathrobe around her.

“You’ve got school tomorrow, love,” she said, “You’ve got to be awake in two hours.”

School. It was one of the many things he forgot in the music.

“Oh, bother school,” he cried, “And what good is it? You don’t learn anything real there, Mum. It’s all useless books and wars and facts.”

“And what do you suppose is real? That racket you make all hours of the night? You’re good, John. You truly are. But you needn’t let it overtake you. You’ve got your school to worry about. And how about getting a job sometime? Why, you could probably play piano down at Miller’s pub. ”

“I couldn’t play my own work there, and besides-”

“Besides, nothing. John, you’re fifteen. Your father worked at your age. Couldn’t even go to school. You ought to consider yourself lucky.”

He said nothing, and felt angry that she didn’t understand and guilty because he knew she was at least half-right.

“John,” she said, shuffling across the carpet to take his hands, “You’ve got a gift, dear. Why, I’d say there are men twice your age who’d wish they played half as well. But John,” she looked into his eyes, and he wished he’d grow more, so she’d look up rather than down, “John, you’ve got to live in the real world, too.”

She dropped his hands.

“If you won’t go to bed, wash up at least. You look like a tramp.”
 
A good thing to do with a short story is write an opening sentence or paragraph that makes the reader say "Hmmm!" I wouldn't so much call this a "gimmick" as a "technique", but still....

Here's an example that occurred to me this morning:

A million people had passed through the turnstile at Grand Central Station. A million jostling bodies had dropped in a coin and pressed against the bar to make it ratchet and pivot and let them pass. Frank did not drop in a coin and there was no sound but the tap of his shoes, and even that was swallowed in the cacophony. He had grown used to that in the last three years since the experiment.

Think of just how much information...visual, auditory, plot...in so little space, yet it does not seem crowded.
 
Oh yes, Evening Star. It's so important to have a great openning. I think that goes with longer fiction. When it comes to online writing, I decide very quickly whether I am going to continue a story to the end (usually I don't, I'm afraid to say).

I think a lot of writers don't understand that you have to sell a story to readers. They assume that if it is well structured and has an exciting narrative one will see it to the end. Not every reader is going to do that.
 
That's actually called "Putting a Hook In It". The story goes that Mac Davis had made several trips to a music publisher with perfectly good songs but the agent said no deal. "You need to put a hook in it!" was the drummed in advice. Mac in his frustration wrote, "Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me" and the rest is history.
 
Good Morning, Gabe

((This is an old short-story I wrote up in about 30 minutes about a year ago when I was having some writer's block.))

'Lexie... Lexie... Lexie.'

'What?'

'Your alarm is going to go off.'

Not a second later, the familiar buzzing from the speaker was instantly followed by a loud, female voice whining about a cheating lover who had betrayed her. It was also followed by another well-known set of sounds: the usual groan and the squeaking of the bed springs as she lifted her head from the pillow and glanced at the clock. It was 6 AM, just like it was every time she woke up on a weekday. A well-placed fist ended the crackling croon of the woman so desperate for attention on the radio.

"God," Lexie mutters, falling back into the pillow to let out a muffled sigh. 'It can't be morning,' she tells her constant companion.

'I believe it is,' the deep, masculine voice responds as it attempts to ease her into the day by pushing back the fog of sleep. It was a long process, made shorter by the gradual increase of brain function facilitated by Gabriel. Gabriel was what she called him. And he was like her own special brand of caffeinated beverage; at least in the mornings. 'There is daylight on the distant eastern horizon.'

'You can't see the sun rising from here,' she reminds him as she relays her feelings deep into the pillow, cursing the person who decided people should be up anytime before noon.

He was there: an incessant, perceptible entity within the confines of her mind. He was her invisible companion; a friend she lived with every day; a person she could trust never to tell her secrets; and he was the one man she could trust never to leave her, because he was her. She had shared a joint consciousness with him since she was young and yet somehow still passed off as normal.

With much pressing and urging, Gabriel got her out of bed, onto her feet and on her way across the hall to the bathroom. Her footsteps were slow at first as she made her rounds through the house and eventually to the kitchen. A warning from Gabriel prevented her from stepping on the cat who had found his resting spot in the center of the kitchen's tiled floor.

"Jack," she scolds the cat who is already purring up a storm at her presence. Hooking her foot, she scoots the cat along the floor toward the table at the end of the cabinets, cleanly sending him under it, but just short of hitting the table leg on the far side. The feline doesn't even protest, lounging in the new location as though it had never been moved.

Two boys and one girl living in a house. It had been Gabriel's idea that she take the creature in, in the first place. He was trying to outnumber her, she was sure of it. "Lazy beast."

'Coffee,' Gabriel reminds her.

'Coffee,' she repeats, leaning over to ready the coffee maker as she did every morning. Just a day like any other.
 
Sometimes we find the extraordinary in the ordinary.

CLEANING UP

It had been days since the crowd had withdrawn though the deep hoofprints and tracks were still sharp after a light rain. Argus the Faun bent to pick up the tip of a burned out torch and place it in his bag. It would not do to have litter left on the ground in such an otherwise lovely place. Trash was everywhere...discarded trays, a few links of a broken chain, torn bits of cloth and twine. There was even an abandoned tent which had to be broken down for packing out. It would not do...

Marcius, Argus' brother, was sitting on the edge of a large stone block. "It's going to take a lot of water to wash all this off."

"Don't touch the blood," Argus said with an edge to his voice. "Remember what the Magi said. Just gather up the bits of mane in your bag and leave the blood alone."

"And the ropes?"

"They are trash, though I suspect it won't hurt if we cut a short length to keep by the hearth. It might bring good luck. After all, it touched Him."

THE END
 
Huzzah! I've never seen any other fanfiction author speculating that some Narnian might have thought of collecting those things from the Stone Table site as holy relics (not made any less holy by Aslan coming back to life).
 
Azsharanomics

A World of Warcraft fanfic I wrote the other day.

I have written a lot of stories about Queen Azshara.



Azsharanomics


Azshara was bored. She wished she was watching her dancers perform, enjoying a snooze, riding her saber cat, or pretty much anything except sitting in the council chamber listening to these highborne duffers lecture her about money.

The young queen drummed her bare feet on the marble floor impatiently, as Vilkadan, her treasurer, went through the palace accounts.

"The fact is, Your Radiance, that our financial situation at present is perilous. Do I need to tell you that the statue you had commissioned for the grand hallway could have paid for a small palace? Or that the cost of the tapestries you put up in your throne room last week could have clothed an entire army? And speaking of clothes, Light of Lights, I rather wonder if you have any idea how much that outfit you purchased yesterday cost?" said Vilkadan.

Why were these idiots wasting her time with such matters?

"Yes, yes, dear Vilkadan. I'm sure it was a lot of money. Why don't you put up the taxes a bit? I'm sure the good people of our realm would be delighted to make a greater contribution to their beloved queen," suggested Azshara.

Vilkadan frowned.

"The people love you dearly, Light of Lights, but the taxes are already high. If we put them up any further, they will make a greater effort to hide the profits of their commerce and engage in black market activity. I really don't think that raising more taxes is an option at present," Vilkadan replied.

"I'm the queen, am I not?" said Azshara. "I'm in charge of all the money. I don't see why I can't just issue lots of paper money and then we can pay for everything with that."

Vilkadan sighed. Did his queen know nothing of economics?

It was Xavius who explained the queen's error.

"Light of Lights, you might well issue paper money and force a value of exchange upon it. However, creating more money would not increase the amount of gold, wine, honey or any other goods in the kingdom. In the long term such a strategy would backfire on us and your paper money would become worthless."

Azshara nodded. This was like magic. As a mage she understood that you could not just create gold from magic. There was always a cost that had to come from somewhere.

"Besides," added Vilkadan. "Paper money would not satisfy our creditors. They are hounding us for repayment of the palace's debts."

Creditors were hounding her for money? The outrage of it! Azshara would not suffer this.

"Why don't you throw these creditors in jail then? Punish them unless they give us more time to pay," demanded Azshara.

Vilkadan sighed again.

"If we did that, then they would not lend us any more money. We would be burning our bridges."

"Perhaps I should use my magic on these creditors, whoever they are," said Azshara. "I could make them into my obedient puppets. They would have no choice but to lend us money."

"A very interesting suggestion, Your Radiance," said Xavius.

Vilkadan was not convinced.

"No, no, that would not do at all. You could make some of them your puppets and they would lend us money. But what would we do when they ran out? We could not go to anybody else to borrow money because they would be terrified of being turned into puppets."

Azshara began drumming her foot again. Why did Vilkadan have to make life so difficult? After all this tiring talk, she was going to have to retire to bed early.

A young highborne councillor had a suggestion.

"The dwarfs have plenty of gold. Why should they have it and not the Kaldorei? I say we go to war with the dwarfs and take their gold for ourselves!"

A few of the younger highborne present nodded in agreement. At last, thought Azshara, somebody had something constructive to offer.

Lord Ravencrest stood up.

"I strongly advise Your Radiance to reject that course. The dwarf cities are heavily fortified against attack. We might win such a campaign, but it would be long and very difficult. I fear that it would cost more than the gold you would win."

Azshara sighed. She supposed that Lord Ravencrest probably knew what he was talking about.

"There is simply no alternative," said Vilkadan solemnly. "You are going to have to cut back on spending."

Azshara stood up.

"Very well then. We shall cut back on spending," she said.

"A wise course, Light of Lights," said a satisfied Vilkadan.

"For the next two weeks, no more food will be served at the palace. Of course, the servants will need to eat to keep up their strength, but we highborne shall fast," declared Azshara.

Vilkadan looked horrified.

"Well, that would certainly save a lot of money, but.."

"But nothing, dear Vilkadan," said Azshara. "I think most of you need to lose weight anyway. A two week fast will do you all a lot of good and save our coffers. Of course, if anybody does not wish to participate in the fast, you all have homes to go to. I am sure you can live without my presence."

Azshara knew that every highborne present would stay. None of them would wish to lose face by departing from the presence of the Light of Lights.

With that, Azshara left the council chamber, her silk gown trailing behind her and her jewelry tinkling as she moved daintily on her bare feet.
 
That was in case anyone _doesn't_ realize why so many real-world monarchs got overthrown and put to death during the last three centuries. ;)
 
Not as many as you might think though. Only a handful of monarchs have ever been executed. Assasination of monarchs is more common, but a difficult feat to pull off.

Generally the courtiers and cronies of dictators prefer to put up with endless humiliations than risk a coup in which they might not necessarily end up on top. That's why Hitler, Stalin, Sadame Hussein and so many other tyrants were never overthrown by their people.
 
(This is something that I wrote last year for my creative writing class. Enjoy)


First Class, Second Chance​

Abby Jackson, former Olympic hopeful, pulled her boots on; she had made it through security. Now to find her gate and pretend she didn‘t notice everyone staring at her. She had anticipated people giving her odd looks as she limped by but she hadn’t prepared herself for this. She could almost feel the disappointment radiating from people as she passed them, but they did not know what it was like, having all your hopes and dreams stolen from you in an instant and being left with nothing. Less than nothing.

Abby looked up from her tattered copy of Alice in Wonderland, boarding was starting. She stood up and took a deep breath; this was it, the next chapter of her life started now. She grabbed her backpack and got in the growing line.

Ian Ashby, aspiring lawyer and only son of one of the richest men in England, strode through the airport, his custom briefcase swinging casually as he walked. He was used to the stares everyone gave him, he had been blessed genetically and he knew it, so did everyone else.

He walked into the gate area looking around, guessing how many people would be joining him in first class for the seven hour flight. No more than ten people were properly dressed. He walked up to the counter. He scanned the crowed one more time while he waited for the airline agent, his eyes came to rest on a brown haired girl reading a worn out book. He stared at her for a moment, taking in the crunches at her side and her swollen knee. A jolt surged through him as he realized who she was, Abby Jackson, the one who got away.

Abby stepped up to the gate, handed the agent her ticket, and headed to the plane. She maneuvered through the passengers and found her seat; it was in the first class section. There must be some mistake; she knew she didn’t belong in first class. She sank into her overstuffed blue seat; no one was staring at her like she didn’t belong.

He looked over at her from his seat in the third row almost an hour into the flight; she still had the same confused yet adorable expression on her face. He could tell she was trying to figure out why she had been upgraded to first class. He had been tempted countless times to tell her it was him, to tell her that he was sorry for the way he had treated her in school. For putting dirt in her locker, paint in her desk, and dumping red fruit punch on her at their eighth grade school dance. But he didn’t say anything to her, what could he say? He didn’t deserve to have her look at him, let alone talk to him.

Abby looked around the first class cabin for the hundredth time, who had changed her ticket? Had someone recognized her from the news? It wasn’t everyday that someone who could have won a gold medal at the Olympics was hit by a car, but it happened over six months ago. She was sure that by now everyone had forgotten about the girl who’s lifelong dream of being a runner had been stolen from her by a drunk driver.

Ian had watched her the whole flight, memorizing every detail of her face and try to think of something to say to her but nothing seemed right. He kept replaying their last conversation over and over in his mind, it had been almost twelve years ago but he never forgot a word she said and he doubted he ever would.

Abby stretched and shoved her book back into her purse as the plane pulled into its gate in Paris. She was finally here; she could start the next chapter of her life now. She looked around the cabin one last time as people started to stand and collect their luggage.

Ian looked up as her eyes meet his. This was his last chance, he had to take it.

He smiled, she smiled back.
 
This was a superb exercise in economy of narrative! The very first sentence managed both to set the scene and to provide expository information about the heroine. The last lines gave us the promise of a happy outcome ahead. As for the content, it's always refreshing to see a character wanting to make amends for past wrongdoing, instead of preferring to brazen it out. Thank you for posting this, and we'll all be glad to see more from you!
 
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