Shadowflame611

Thunder Breaks

(Sole Survivor/Deacon)

Prompt #64: “Talk to me.”

Prompt #62: “It’s okay to cry…”

He’d always admired the stained glass windows of the church. There was a joke somewhere, in using a place of worship to shelter beings made by people playing God, but he was too tired to think of one right now. He let his head fall against the rotted wood of one of the pews, and let his eyelids lower until the sunlight through the windows, made into a kaleidoscope of colors, looked blurred and distorted. It poured over the upper rafters, and flitted down toward him, bits of dust unsettled by his presence floated through the colorful streams at a pace that defied the impatience of gravity. If he didn’t know better, he’d think it was was a sign. A metaphor. Something. But nihilism plagued the liar like pestilence on the wasteland; heavy, and layered thick, so as to fill all the cracks.

He knew they were there. You couldn’t mistake the creaking of the ancient floor boards for anything else. They stopped, but the wood still complained under their weight. He didn’t speak, perhaps grasping to the hope that they would turn around and go back downstairs, or out the door. Maybe not see him, or decide they weren’t curious enough to find out what had him feeling so sorry for himself. But the foot steps approached, and he knew he’d have to face them one way or another. No excuses. No “Des wants me”. No stealthboys. Just jokes, and lies, and if he’s lucky, they’ll buy his bullshit.

Sole leaned against the pew and looked at the swirling, multicolored streams of light with him. Silence settled like dust on the old wood. He was certain it wasn’t just the dust that was making it hard to breathe. A certain apprehension pressing like a boot on his chest. “Deacon,” They said softly. Strange, he’d never told them, but he almost expected them to say his real name. He could imagine the way their voice would sound if they did. “Talk to me.” He wanted to. He did. But maybe the only thing stopping him was the fact that when he opened his mouth, only lies spilled out. And he’d been bullshitting everyone around him, and himself, for so long, the lines were beginning to blur. He owed them the truth, and he’d give it to them if he knew how. “I, uh,” He began, not sure if he was more worried about his throat closing up as he spoke, or what he was going to say next. “Sole, I…”

They were patient, that’s for damn sure. Patients of a saint. Ha. There’s your church pun.

“This… this life. All the lying, and running, and hiding. I don’t know. You deserve better.” And that was the truth. The whole, honest truth. “I want better for you. You deserve someone who’s gonna tell you the truth every time they talk to you. Somewhere safer than a broken down church that could turn into another switchboard incident at…” He trailed off, leaving the blood and ghosts of switchboard to hang in the colored light. Preserved in the stillness of the air, and the drifting dust. “Deeks, I don’t want better. I want this place, and this life, and you.” They replied in a soft, low voice, but it still echoed through the acoustic building. He laughed, because now they were the liar. And laughing was all he could do. “Sole, I don’t want you to die. And every second you’re with me, and in this… this fucking decaying organization, you’re one step closer.” Only after his mind sluggishly supplied the word, did he realize its whole truth. He knew the Railroads days were numbered, sinking like a ship and only he could see the springing leaks in the metal. But it had been broken and pulled together so many times before, he figured keeping it alive was something like necromancy. Things destined to die ought to be allowed that.

Sole placed a hand on his shoulder and he didn’t wince at the contact. They gripped the fabric of his white shirt, it wadded in the spaces between their fingers, with a balance of gentleness and fierce determination, and he’d never felt so steady. “And if I die, it’ll be with you. For some synth I barely know, in this fucking decaying organization. That’s what I want. It’s not about deserve.” His breath abandoned him all at once, and he leaned into them. Stubborn. Tough as shit, and always willing to look death in the eye and give him the middle finger. Everything Deacon admired and everything he wasn’t. “It’s okay to cry…” They said. And he did. Because he couldn’t remember the last time he was told it was okay to do anything. To be anything. That he was okay, just how he was. He wept like Judas on the floor of that old church, and didn’t stray from the light of the stained glass windows, because he didn’t need God to forgive him for all the venom he’d ever spit. All he needed was them.

I went AWOL cause I had writer’s block and I had to forego writing about fallout for actually playing it lmao. Hope you can forgive how late this is, and expect more, soon! 

After putting my writing on hold for several weeks, I decided to jump back in. I expected to find all sorts of problems with my story–inconsistencies in the plot, lack of transitions, poor characterization–the works. But what began to stick out to me was something to which I’d given little thought in writing.

Filter words.

What are Filter Words?

Actually, I didn’t even know these insidious creatures had a name until I started combing the internet for info.

Filter words are those that unnecessarily filter the reader’s experience through a character’s point of view. Dark Angel’s Blog says:

“Filtering” is when you place a character between the detail you want to present and the reader. The term was started by Janet Burroway in her book On Writing.

In terms of example, you should watch out for:

To see

To hear

To think

To touch

To wonder

To realize

To watch

To look

To seem

To feel (or feel like)

Can

To decide

To sound (or sound like)

To know

I’m being honest when I say my manuscript is filled with these words, and the majority of them need to be edited out.

What do Filter Words Look Like?

Let’s imagine a character in your novel is walking down a street during peak hour.

You might, for example, write:

Sarah felt a sinking feeling as she realized she’d forgotten her purse back at the cafe across the street. She saw cars filing past, their bumpers end-to-end. She heard the impatient honk of horns and wondered how she could quickly cross the busy road before someone took off with her bag. But the traffic seemed impenetrable, and she decided to run to the intersection at the end of the block.

Eliminating the bolded words removes the filters that distances us, the readers, from this character’s experience:

Sarah’s stomach sank. Her purse—she’d forgotten it back at the cafe across the street. Cars filed past, their bumpers end-to-end. Horns honked impatiently. Could she make it across the road before someone took off with her bag? She ran past the impenetrable stream of traffic, toward the intersection at the end of the block.

Are Filter Words Ever Acceptable?

Of course, there are usually exceptions to every rule.

Just because filter words tend to be weak doesn’t mean they never have a place in our writing. Sometimes they are helpful and even necessary.

Susan Dennard of Let The Words Flow writes that we should use filter words when they are critical to the meaning of the sentence.

If there’s no better way to phrase something than to use a filter word, then it’s probably okay to do so.

Want to know more?

Read these other helpful articles on filter words and more great writing tips:

Filter Words and Distancing Point of View

The Reasons Editors reject Manuscripts

THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL

Make a paragraph every time that any of these things change!

Ti me

P lace

To pic

I’m not writing this as a ‘woe is me, pity me’ because I willingly put myself through this and I enjoy the process enough to take the rough with the smooth…

but there’s a lot of rough.

we have to come up with plots that are interesting and original and creatively-handled and well-paced (this is the easy bit)

we have to learn bob knows how many characters, their talking styles, their attitudes, their histories, sometimes from a bare minimum of information available in the source material

to a certain extent we have to conform to fandom interpretations of those characters or be prepared to defend our interpretation and be accused of who knows what just for not sharing a BNF’s headcanon

if we’re adding original characters they have to be interesting and fit the fandom’s criteria of Good Character or they’ll be sneered at for being edgy/mary-sue/boring/too gay/not gay enough

we have to develop pairings that don’t just appeal to us, but to other people, and are handled in a way that is considered acceptable by fandom

oh and if we’re writing smut we have to decide where we want to fall on the gradient between ‘ew gross smut is the worst thing why do fanfic writers only think about sex’ and 'when are they gonna bone? why is there no boning?’

then we have to write the damn thing, in our spare time, for free (this is the fun bit)

we have to reply to comments to foster relationships with people we don’t know just to keep them coming back, some of whom turn out to be gigantic gaping assholes so we have to decide whether to suck it up and be grateful for the attention or stick to our principles

we have to be ready to defend ourselves against malicious commenters/blogs while knowing that to do so is just as likely to blow up in our faces as ignoring them

we have to do the work to promote ourselves without annoying people by spamming links or begging for reblogs

we have to watch our work disappear down our dashes with no notes and no interaction while one screenshot of the main character in the fic can get a dozen reblogs in an hour

we have to watch art be reblogged time and time again, sometimes months after the original post, while a fic that’s older than a week or two is pretty much gone forever

we have to navigate fandom drama and try not to get involved for fear of slashing our readership even further, and if we’re dragged into it against our will? tough shit

we have to watch pieces be praised to the sky and get that exposure because the author happens to be more popular or catches a wave of fandom interest at the right time

we have to watch rec lists go around without our names on them because we’re not in the Cool Kids Club and we have no idea how to get into one

we have to watch people make great sweeping criticisms of the genre/pairing/whatever we write and smile politely no matter how much we know that we don’t deserve that criticism

writing fanfic is an absolute shitfest tbh. why do we do this? lol

I mean these issues aren’t exclusive to writers, they touch everyone who interacts with fandom to some extent. and creators of different media may have different issues - artists get bugged for free art all the time. screenshotters have their pics stolen because it’s 'just a screenshot’ or reblogged with 'I killed them lol’. but when you’re going through all that and find you might be being punished for not being grateful enough for what positive response you do get… I just. why bother?

(obviously the answer is because 'writing is fun and its own reward and the positive interactions I’ve had with the fandom have been incredibly positive and while I sometimes get salty at the behaviour of a few it is just a few and the majority of people I’ve interacted with on any level have been charming and wonderful people and I love them’)

 Boy do I have the fics for you..

- Shower Thoughts Some high quality platonic Deacon and I enjoyed every minute of it. Deacon/ Fem!Sole

- Pillow Talk This is the Sequel to Shower Thoughts, its really sweet and cute.

- Evermore Some Deacon and Barbara angst for all your angsty needs. Deacon/Barbara

- Litost Some amazing Deacon fics, they are not all together as they are separate stories, overall it was an amazing ride and I wasted some sleep time reading it. Deacon/ Fem!Sole

-Who Lives, Who Dies Some nice additions to Deacon’s backstory.