Today, I shifted to a different generator after failing to find inspiration yesterday: WritingExercises.co.uk's Random Quick Plot Generator. It's not my usuals, but one that I'll be adding to the list of generators I rely on for that small spark.
I generated a few plots and wrote some scenes just off the cuff. All I did was generate names from Fantasy Generator's African-American Name Generator. Otherwise, it's just me doing my thing.
Enjoy!
Prompt: Â Your main character is a young man in his late teens, who is very dishonest. The story begins in a nightclub. Someone is haunted by a traumatic experience at sea. It's a story about loss. Your character sets out on a rescue mission.
Age was just a number, but Sehvon had chosen 19 as his preferred appearance.
Preferred because beneath his tawny skin, peppered with whirling blotches of deep, umber freckles, beneath blood that was more black than red, tucked between a heart that beat a bit too fast and bones that moaned the ages gone past, was a man -an entity, really- who had lived for thousands of years.
But one didn't come into Pam's Place on a Friday night looking like ancient horror: you came as a boy on the cusp of full-fledged adulthood who was content to sip on virgin cocktails until two a.m. when you got kicked back to campus.
Sehvon had come here because high tide had crept up the shores, and tonight, under the full moon, it bothered him more than it otherwise would. It shouldn't because he'd chosen Blackwood College because it had a beachfront on the eastern side, just past the junior and senior strip where the townhouse sat, bloated and pale.
Even now, his skin itched for that sea, and if he closed his eyes, he could imagine his legs merging together, scales bubbling up from beneath. Tonight would be a perfect night to hunt: Lemura would give her blessing from above, pale light illuminating fish and perhaps, a human who'd gotten too much liquid courage. He could slid in, let Beneath slid out, and feast: finally.
His needleteeth poked through his gums, filling his mouth with the sudden taste of pennies and gum wrappers, and he coughed, shaking himself from memories that were better gone than not.
He quickly guzzled down his cocktail, and Pam herself passed him another, red lips quirking up in a somewhat sad smile. "You okay?â
"Always,â Sehvon replied. âJust in my head.â
"You're a kid," Pam replied coolly. She raised her thick, blonde eyebrows, offered up one of her sly smiles now. âEnough bad in there to be stuck while here?â Pam waved a hand over the bar: the ruckus was kicked up tonight.
"Kids can go through a lot more than adults may realize," Sehvon shot back coolly.
Pam snorted, and her smile changed to looking a tad bit nonplussed. "True enough kid. Another?"
"Yeah, this time, I'd like something sour please."
"I'll get it right up."
Sehvon had expected the night to be a series of three and four dollar drinks, small talk, and toying around on his phone until someone was huffing behind him, her normally neat, ash brown hair pulled up into a messy pineapple on top of her head, glasses askew and jacket flipped inside out.Â
"Corecia? Hey," Sehvon started cautiously, twisting to look up at her. Corcecia had been crying, was still crying in stutters and sniffs: sobbing, based on her heavy breathing and bright, red-rimmed eyes. "What's...up?"
"It's Karis," Corecia whispered and she grabbed at the barstool, plopping down hard and twisting to invade Sehvon's space without question. That made sense then, the tears and all: Corecia was as close to Karis as thieves: they'd run around campus together, close as sisters could be, ever since Karis had entered two years before alongside Sehvon.
"She's not a dumb girl, you know," Corecia stated. Pam had placed a rum and coke before her, and she took it, cupping it like she needed something to weight her down to the old barstool. She took a quick sip, then sighed. "But she's gone."
"What's wrong?" Sehvon asked. He took Corecia's hands, squeezed her dark, midnight hands -so much warmer and larger than his own- together.
"She's just gone," Corecia replied. "Missing." That happened sometimes here, on the full moon. Sehvon knew exactly why: wonders no one put two and two together with him and those missign students either.
"Have you called the police?" Sehvon asked.
Corecia shot him a look: like you'd call small town police for Black folks. She snorted -as did Pam with her blonde can curls and knowing green eyes- and shook her head, tears still streaming from her brown eyes. "She went into the water tonight, down on the beach. Probably out with her housemates being stupid. I don't know why, or how, but⌠I know they got her."
They. Sehvon sucked in a shaky breath, and looked down at his lap. He could imagine moss green and tea scales rippling up from his toes, the brilliant fan of his fins. Then he blinked and it went away: well and good. "How do you know it was⌠them?" he asked.
"Dammit, Sev, I didn't come here for questions!" Corecia shot up from her seat and the drink fell to the floor. The music and crowd hiccuped for a moment, then grew louder: people here gave privacy when folk needed to fight like this.
"I'm sorry," Sehvon whispered. He wasn't good at this: you didn't have as many emotions down in the depth of the sea sometimes, and when they did come -in great, swallowing waves- you moved through them with tail flicks and more hunting, swallowed blood until you felt full of something else.
"Don't be: just go," Corecia begged. She folded in on herself and sat back down on the stool. Pam passed her a fresh rum and coke, this time with a straw jutting out of it, and a cherry bobbing on top.
"You know I can't, Cori," Sehvon replied automatically. He could feel the wetness of the sand now, beneath his toes: right before he let himself Return.
"You're a fucking coward, dude," Corecia countered just as quickly. Â Sehvon didn't deny it.
"Just...look at this," she said, passing him her phone. "And you'll know you're the only one who can save her."
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Song While Writing: Keeper of the Heart from W.I.T.C.H.
Our third -possibly last, weâll see what comes- prompt was âElfpunk And Science-fictionâ. I wasnât sure what to think of for this at first, but then...
...well, why not solarpunk?
Elves who have been forced out of their realms by clear-cutting planting more trees in a world thatâs trying to turn around. A Planter, perhaps: a role, and perhaps a relgion amongst the new faction of Green Elves, dedicated Dedicates to hearing the worldâs voice and the green things. That sounds good.
Our Planerâs name will come from the same donjon Sci-Fi Generator, though Iâll tweak her name to sound a bit more Elvish. Letâs see... so I chose the name Vi Sabinne which... I donât need to change really.. That sounds fairly fantastical already.
Well, that makes it all the easier to jump into writing!
You know the drill by now: three...two...one... write!
Planting a tree was similar to doing the wash: there were methods to ensuring a good, clean action, and Vi Sabinne liked good, clean actions.
Sheâd come to the grove early because she liked to see the middlest humans, with slightly wise eyes and tanned skin browned from long days of replanting alongside the Green Folk, fresh-smelling off woods.Â
She liked it because after eight hundred years of Fae and the occasional Firstborn from this Reality, sheâd never really seen a human face: sheâd seen only books stolen by Nemorra or self-portraits done in secret by the Firstborns in their little rooms. Up close, with dirt on their brown cheeks and hands, they looked exactly like her: brown and happy, tending to a new world.
They were still to shy to greet her, too shaken by a world that had almost Ended in a mess of grey and a flash of fire: too shaken by other existences right under their human noses that had ended up being salvation.
But honestly, Vi rather liked this world: magic was still here, in its drips and drabs, but there were new trees, and those made fine friends.
Song While Writing: Ken Ashcorpâs 20 Percept Cooler
The next prompt Seventh Sanctumâs â-Punkâ Generator spat out at me wasÂ
Futurepunk Take On The Giant Monster Story Genre. A bit of a mouthful, isnât that? Well...
Okay, so the instant image is that of a trio of scientific magical girls facing off against a giant, chimeric beast: legs of an octopus, head of a wolf, wings of a bat body of a gizzly bear, and a hundred tails made up of snakes., all in shades of poisonous purple: you know the color! (I tried to go all out, as you can see.)
Our beast is going to be called The Snapdragon. The magic in this world, which will be scientific, will be called The Snarl and is a fully accessible program run by the actual planet and world itself.
And our magical girls facing off against the beast: code weave and exeorcist Sarai âSarâ Armiger, alchemedic Tenesha âTennâ Beyett, and mind mixer Alaine âLainyâ Reade. The first reprograms existence, the second heals through slapdash patch codes that tangle up in your bios, and the final mixes sounds and words into visible text that attacks you.Â
(Ah, and names are from donjonâs Sci-Fi Name Generator using the Cyberpunk setting for female names.)
Letâs get the time on the clock, and three...two...one...go!
Sarâs arm burned with the ongoing, always too long sting of acid because of course The Snapdragon would have an acid attack that paralyzed limbs because... of course.
Tenn was too far away to patch her a heal, and Lainy was trying her best to spit every Old Terran swear she knew from her brainload earlier that day, mixing âfuckâ with every othe word as if that would make the code more steady, more cirsp and less buggy: but that was what all mind mixers did when it got desperate and you couldnât neat-tweak a patch through.
âI need back-up!â That was Tenn right there, trying to slap-patch a heal on her own body as a caustic tentacle reached out, The Snapdragon rearing up on actual dragon wings -that was the only thing dragon about it; the reast being an amalgamaion of snappishi things, tentacles included- to pull her back.Â
Sar reached out to The Snarl an tried to find a tangle of energy to draw on, but she was wearing thin: mods could only do so much after all. âFuck,â Sar hissed, right as The Snapdragon let out that owlish cry.
