Welcome to Morning Pages — it’s time for a monthly roundup. I hope you’ve got your pencils sharpened and ready to write. Wanna join in on the fun? Pick a prompt, set your timer* and get ready to let the words flow. Feel free to post the results of your work in the comments below where we chat about writing and (if the mood strikes us) get a craft discussion going.
If you want critique from other commenters, use #YESTHANKS in your comment. Otherwise, you can tell us about the flash fic and the process you went through to write it. And of course, I’m always open to hear what you think about my excerpts!
*you can write for as long as you want, but most folks choose 15-30 minutes.
What I learned this month: The gay pronoun problem defeats me even at the best of times.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the GPP, it’s when you’re trying to choreograph a scene between two characters who share a pronoun. It hit me harder than usual this month (though to be fair, most of the characters in this month’s roundup shared a scene with their same-gender partner, so I did this to myself). The choreography in “Who He Is” proved particularly difficult to sort out, especially in the beginning when Mel attempted to carry Nev into a tent. Two sets of limbs, and all of them belong to a “he” — a predicament, indeed!
This month, I also wrote a short blog post about epithets in fiction (and defeating the GPP), so I made a particular point of watching how I navigated the GPP during edits. It turns out, my natural response is to delete as many pronouns as possible for the sake of increased clarity. Thus, instead of writing, “Nev had fisted [his/Nev’s] hands in the front of [his/Mel’s] coat, I deleted pronoun #1 and wrote “Nev had a fistful of his coat” — the subject of the second ‘his’ mostly implied by the prior sentence.
Interested in reading more about the GPP (and finding tips on how to avoid resorting to epithets like *the Potionmaster fisted hands in the Prince’s coat*? Say no more. Here’s the blog post on epithets.
The Prompts:
“Show a funerary service in a world that isn’t ours.”
“Last Farewell:” Oceana ‘verse. It’s never easy to lose a parent.
“There’s a woman working in the lighthouse on the old point. She sings to the fishermen every time it’s rainy or foggy and it’s hard to see the light. Write a story from the POV of one of these fishermen.”
Miss Eliza might be borderline tone-deaf, but that doesn’t bother the local fishermen.
“That’s not who he is.”
Mel from The Dark Arm of the Maker sees Neveshir perform dangerous magic for the first time.
“Snowed In.”
Oceana ‘verse. Men who’ve lived their whole lives in the tropics dream of snow.
“Oh, I’ve seen plenty.”
Siath from the Oceana ‘verse is a good brother, even if a nosy one.
Picture Prompts
“Connect the dots:” Oceana ‘verse. Some games are more fun when your partner has freckles.
Get Involved!
Answer the prompts or dive straight in and respond to others’ comments — let’s share our knowledge, our experience, and have a discussion we can all learn from! Don’t want to miss a post? Subscribe to the blog in the sidebar to get notified about new posts.
Today’s questions:
- Do you have any tried and true tricks for getting around the GPP?
- What are they?
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