Writing is hard. It's a constant battle between your muse, word choice, and plot. It can be extremely frustrating and, at times, downright exhausting. Sometimes we need a reminder of the good times, of when you wrote a sentence, a paragraph and even a whole scene that you love. Here is a place to share those words.

There is only one rule, and that is don't be glum. No saying 'I've written nothing I like', or complaining about your lack of skills. This is a vibing place to share what you think to be some of your best words.

For example, here are some pieces I still love to reread.

A sentence

A paragraph

A small scene

A larger scene

 

I'm not going to pretend that I write with the same high caliber quality of prose many on here do but here's an excerpt from a one-shot I wrote a few months back that I've always been particularly fond of:

 

I suppose we were discussing this in Discord the other day, and I love flogging the old goose as much as the next man, so I ought to copy them across.

The sentence from ABFoD, for its sound and images, and the (to my mind) success in capturing that half-awake travelling in a car mindset:

For a couple of paragraphs, similarly, in Mary and the Madonna, I enjoyed how the culmination of the chapter, when Mary Bennet becomes a magical girl. Particularly, I like the recognition of her, for the first time in the chapter, and I like the image of the flower bending from the weight of dew.

Lastly, for tone. I really enjoyed the content, and trying show my impression of magic between a muggle and a wizard in my Grindelwald!war/Heart of Darkness HP story.

 

That is some seriously fantastic writing there, Halt. Damn.

 

I couldn't find anything that's properly pretty prose, so here's something that I felt turned out reasonably well from an absolute trashfic I've written for the Locked Tomb fandom. The basic premise is... Uh. Science fiction, with necromancers in space... Only this fic is a highschool fic, where the two protagonists (one a scrappy orphan, the other repressed ex-cultist) meet at their old school, both of em now teachers, and reconnect and start to slowly hash out the crash and burn of their friendship and relationship back in the day.

***

“Why do you care?”

Gideon looked around. They weren’t alone in the room but people - and by people, Harrow was excluding Ianthe - seemed to realise they were in the middle of something and gave them space. With the light buzz of dozens of conversations they had some modicum of privacy.

“Who says I care?” Gideon asked. “Why would I care?”

Harrow hadn’t the answer. She wished she hadn’t asked. Her throat felt tight and even if she’d known what to say, she didn’t dare to try, lest she betray weakness. She hated weakness, her own more than anyone else’s, and Gideon had always, always brought out in her the worst kind of weakness. The craving to stretch beyond what she already had, beyond what she deserved, to hope that there might be something more.

Gideon was her doom. She was her salvation.

She…

“Why did you leave?” Harrow finally asked.

Gideon looked at her for a long time before she finally spoke. She didn’t look angry, as she once had. Just sad. “You asked me to.”

She had.

But she hadn’t meant it.

 

What a nice thread! I've done some writing today and am feeling good about myself so I'll post a few bits.

Short descriptive, Grimmauld Place:

Spoiler

He spotted something behind him in the reflection and he tried to turn, but he wasn’t fast enough. The only things behind him were the staircase and the decapitated house elf heads, a full dozen of them, all staring blindly at him from above. There was a low moan from somewhere, perhaps from the dining room, but Sirius decided not to acknowledge it. Instead he moved to the staircase. It would always creak at some point, but which step varied. The house didn’t like to be predictable, much like Sirius himself. Unfortunately, the house didn’t like him much, never had. It liked his parents, he thought, maybe his father in particular. His father was interested in the house, how it was pieced together, how the magic inside of it worked. Orion hadn’t tamed it, indeed Sirius didn’t think it was the type of house that could be tamed anymore, but there was mutual respect there.

Medium duelling scene, or James thinks he's spotted a muggle punk and is very excited:

Spoiler

Armed with a plastic bag, he stepped back into the street and discovered that the sun was coming out. It made the pavement look almost nice, warm and dusty, and with one of those intriguing manholes with a shiny cover right in front of his feet. As if that wasn’t excitement enough, one of the black-clad figures had split off from the group up the street and was coming his way. James came to a halt and turned his smiling face towards the sun, waiting, because he quite liked to see for himself what the fuss was about.

There was a growl, like from a deathly offended manticore, and James opened his eyes.

The man wasn’t a punk at all, he wasn’t even a muggle. He was digging clumsily in both his robe pockets, his spiky hair on end and smelling strongly of alcohol and sweat and motor oil.

James kicked his shin and the wizard fell to his knees, spluttering and swearing. He managed to pull his wand out and James was frantically digging for his own with his free hand. There was outright hatred in the man’s eyes as he aimed for James.

“Avada –”

“What!?” James yelped and swung his shopping bag. It hit the wizard’s shoulder with such force that he dropped his wand. The wizard emitted a groan of pain that quickly morphed into fury.

His wand had fallen straight through a decorative hole in the manhole cover, and even as he roared James heard the splash of water.

“Silencio!” James said, pointing his own wand at the man. It had, of course, been the furthest down underneath everything else he kept in his pocket.

Short, a headache:

Spoiler

Much like if you considered a bowl full of cake mixture, the attempted addition of blood and guts and horribly torn things was not a success, not to mention those electric metal whisks pounding against the insides, boring, hammering, vibrating...

Long humour scene:

Spoiler

He spotted the paddling pool soon enough, but the waterfalls and the rainbows and the crown and the rest of it was nowhere to be seen. The engorgio’d swan honked in greeting as it spotted him, though.

“I come bearing gifts,” Peter assured it, rattling his schoolbag, although of course dead mackerel didn’t make much noise. He hoped it understood all the same and didn’t see him as food or as a threat or as anything but the mackerel carrier, really. Swans were rather big animals, especially if they’d been spelled larger by James Potter.

Before he reached the paddling pool, which was conveniently placed in the corridor between the door to the Arithmancy and Muggle Studies classrooms; last classes of the day due to finish in half an hour, his path was suddenly blocked by Mrs Tattler.

“Hssss!” said Mrs Tattler, back arching, tail crookedly pointing down and all of her fur standing on end.

“Argh!” cried Peter, jumping a whole step backwards before he managed to collect himself. The cat hissed again, her green eyes intense and threatening. The swan made an upset, honking noise.

“Oh dear,” said Peter, looking around fervently, hoping that one of the other Marauders would materialize. He couldn’t understand where they had gotten to; James and Sirius were supposed to be here working their charms and transfigurations. And Remus was to stay nearby, keeping an eye on the map and warning them if someone walked this way. Peter was just supposed to toss mackerels at the swan to keep it happy; dealing with a hissing, territorial and potentially hungry Mrs Tattler had never been part of the deal.

“Here, pretty puss-puss,” he said awkwardly, hauling one of the slimy, dead fish out of his schoolbag. It smelled revolting, and the texture wasn’t very pleasing, either. “No need to go get the big birdie. No need to go get Filch, either, I’m sure you understand… We can come to an agreement, can’t we? I’ve got plenty of fish, you see.”

Mrs Tattler yowled importantly and followed Peter with bright eyes. He was trying to draw her away from the pool, and especially from the swan (who was shaking its massive wings and following the proceedings with its neck stiffly bent forward, whatever that meant).

“There you go!” Peter called while he tossed the fish towards the end of the corridor. Mrs Tattler was off like a shot, white and orange and black fur blending together as she sped past Peter. Peter drew a great sigh of relief, then he turned to the swan.

“Right,” he said awkwardly.

It honked and did something mildly alarming with its neck.

“Calm your hippogriffs,” Peter said, licking his lips and moving up towards the paddling pool. He looked around again but saw no sign of his fellow Marauders. Not for the first time did he curse the fact that he didn’t have one of those little two-way (and why not three-way, he’d like to know?) mirrors James and Sirius had.

Peter dug out a second fish; after all, there was plenty to go around. He tossed it into the air and the swan’s neck snapped upwards, great beak opened eagerly, showing actual tiny sawtooth teeth. Peter quenched down a whimper. The swan caught the fish in its beak, and although it seemed to find it difficult to eat it, eventually it had swallowed the whole thing whole.

“Remus did wonder if you’re vegetarian,” Peter stated politely, “but James told me to ask the elves for fish, specifically. Smellier the better, he said. He thought it would be funnier this way, even if you didn’t eat it. But here we are, that was alright for you, wasn’t it?”

It was at this moment that Peter was attacked. Later, when recounting his thrilling tale to James, he insisted that it was a Slytherin, hiding behind a suit of armour who hexed him. In actual fact, it was just Mrs Tattler.

Splash!

Peter gurgled, hyperventilated, and flailed around as best he could. His mother had told him he wasn’t much of a multi-tasker, but here Peter was, proving her wrong in style. He swallowed some water by mistake, maybe even part of a mackerel, attempted to spit it out, and that was when he realized he was under water and drowning.

 

This is a descriptive fragment from a fic update from several months ago. I thought I managed to paint a picture without completely overwhelming the reader with nonsense.

Spoiler

The bindings of the Unbreakable Vow had left thin burn scars on Harry’s left arm. Sturgis assured him they would fade quickly. Harry had wanted to get on with their travel, but Hermione convinced him to accept Sturgis’ invitation to spend the night at his home. It was just past noon, so they decided to tour the grounds.

There seemed to be no end to them. First, Sturgis showed them a botanic garden hugging the jungle dome and the east wing of the mansion. The garden boasted every kind of exotic flora. Some eccentric species required extreme environments to thrive. There were greenhouses representing every biome, from scorched deserts to arctic tundras. Magi-botanists in Sturgis’s employ grew potion ingredients and decorative plants.

Magical and mundane beasts roamed the grounds at will, not all of them friendly. A pack of wizard-bred wolfdogs came hurtling from the woods, wagging tails and demanding pets. They stayed only briefly before their alpha spotted movement and the pack took off just as suddenly as it had shown up. Hermione observed from afar, slightly green in the face, when Harry and Sturgis stopped to feed some putrid meat to a herd of thestrals. At one point something large and clearly dangerous growled at them from the treeline. Sturgis shooed it away with a spell.

“That’s a shadowbeast. I’ve brought it here recently from Transylvania. It’s still getting used to the place.”

“I’ve heard they’re fiendishly difficult to domesticate,” said Hermione.

Sturgis grinned. “I’ve no intention of doing that.”

There were fountains, creeks, a shallow river they crossed via a bridge grown from two enormous oaks, stone circles, statues of rough granite and basalt, and others sculpted in pink marble with astonishing detail. Fields of magical crops bordered expansive meadows where herds of abraxan and hippogriffs engaged in staring contests and raced each other on the ground and in the air. To the south, the estate bordered the Black Forest. A bowtruckle leaped onto Sturgis’ shoulder and came close to taking his eyes out. Sturgis snatched the critter and broke it in two, tossing the pieces away.

 

This one's a nice short part that I adored when writing it

Spoiler

When Magic hears a wish, an honest wish, a true wish, with good intentions and the best of everyone at heart, She moves, shakes up the earth, does everything in Her power to make wish into reality.

Long after Luna had gone back to the Rook, leaving only her tears behind, the blades of grass where whispering among themselves. “She is so sad,” said one. “We ought to help her,” said another. And on it went, blade for blade, until the news had reached the roots of the strongest oaks collaring the grave. One leaned down to hear the wish that had been hidden in those tears; and, upon listening, shuddered its might branches.

And this one's a longish description that I had a lot of fun with as well.

Spoiler

The tale of Konoha was also the tale of heaven and hell. God wore a red and white robe and had erected the edifice of his paradise on earth through vaunted qualities like benevolence, empathy, integrity, honesty, and passion. The village was his garden. The people his flowers. And by careful cultivation he made sure that the most beautiful smells would emerge eventually. If other gardeners, envious of his green thumb, came to trample on the flowers, it was only just to return the favor and do so vehemently, and for that too he was praised and revered. In the gardens of Konoha, the sun shone eternal.

But a village could not survive on being a garden alone, and so there lay deeper enigmas beneath the green paradise, and to those tended not the gardener but a deity of a more undisclosed type, private and obscure and suspect to everyone who knew him. Konoha, this deity would say, was made not of wood and stone but secrets and lies. The houses peopling the garden had been built from the bricks of mystery and the concrete upon which they stood was unknowable to all but a few. In this byzantine labyrinth beneath the village roads bubbled the secretive sewage of more than a century. And Time, that primordial sewage treatment device, made sure that the classified, the covert, the undisclosed was carried out of Konoha, forgotten, and ultimately lost to the collective consciousness.

Having lived the longest—with the exception of a few unimportant mummies—and therefore possessing a more encompassing view than anyone else of what passed through Konoha’s pipes, Danzō Shimura was the caretaker of this sewage system. A crooked deity of the underground sludge, a prophet who read the future not in the entrails of a chicken but from the muck through which he waded daily. His were the powers of inference and conclusion, as well as a powerful intuition regarding the preferences of the prime movers and shakers inhabiting the world—all of which lent great accuracy to his dirty prophecies. And although any gardener who loved the aesthetics of their garden would readily admit that the savage and ugly contrast between the above and the below was upsetting to them, none ever got rid of him entirely.

Still. The inescapable fact was this: sewage reeked, and someone had to oversee it. Or, in more floral words: the waste of an entire village did not, sadly, emit the mild and fruity aroma of a scented primrose, or the soothing smell of jasmine. Might it not be possible, then, that some empathy should be accorded to someone whose duty made him redolent of such a stench, who had decided not to fight it anymore (why bother anyway?) and became himself a smell that affronted others, a secret among secrets?

Perhaps it was this kinship that made Danzō so preeminently good at what he did.

 

Spoiler

In the dim pub light, Deirdre watched the smoke curl from the end of the Billywig cigarette. "Bonfire Night isn't my favorite holiday," she said.

"Oh?" Todd said. "It's not?"

"You only think it is." She passed the cigarette back to him, and he took another drag.

Their brief relationship had begun one night when he'd climbed to the top of the Astronomy Tower to finish some star chart homework. He'd found Deirdre, a Seventh Year, gazing at the sky. She didn't take Astronomy.

Todd Ollivander and Deirdre Fortescue had known each other all their lives, but they'd known everyone in Diagon Alley all their lives. He'd always noticed her, in a vague way, in the way that he knew she was unattainable.

All his life, the mechanics of conversation had often alluded Todd. It was this mysterious ritual he couldn't wrap his head around — one person said one thing, and you were always meant to say something back, a related comment that the other person would somehow find interesting, and stories and opinions would somehow ping pong back and forth in a rhythm that he could never quite find.

But that night on the Astronomy Tower with Deirdre, Diagon Alley had turned out to be a deep well of conversation that they happily fell into. Everything came naturally — the stories, the gossip, the debates, the questions. They talked about how they always had to miss Guy Fawkes Day, one of the few days that wizards in London could shoot off fireworks without arousing Muggle suspicion.

She'd shrieked as he conjured a firework on the Astronomy Tower, a miniature dragon that swirled around her before soaring up and exploding in the air, and she'd kissed him as silver sparks rained down on them.

"Reminiscing?" Deirdre said, looking across the table at Todd, who was still gazing out across the pub.

He glanced at her and extinguished the cigarette. "Nah."

Deirdre traced the stem of her wine glass with her thumb. Todd wondered if she ever, fleetingly, regretted breaking things off.

There was a sudden, odd movement under Deirdre's cloak, and her wand slipped out at the neck of her robes and flew across the room. She reacted slowly, rising from her seat in confusion, and Todd slammed his hand against his pocket as he felt someone attempt to disarm him too.

"Deirdre, get down." He cast a dome-shaped Shield Charm around the two of them, and something exploded against it. Deirdre screamed.

 

My favorite bits I've ever written:

 

For some reason I quite like the opening of a story I'm currently writing for Blor's exercise thread (*cough, cough*).

Objectively speaking however, I think the best piece I've ever written is a short story called Eve, the first passages of which I leave below:

Spoiler

She was called Eve, though the name did not do her justice.

I first met her three weeks after my father’s wedding, which took place exactly one year after his divorce. She was the only child of his new wife-to-be, and the disparity of our ages matched that of our parents. Whilst I was well into adulthood, she was a freckled girl with a wide face, large glasses, and an infectious grin. Sharp too, as only preteens can be.

It was a reconciliatory dinner. I had missed his wedding, and he had divorced my mother, so we ended up splitting the check. I thought it unfair at the time, I had only brought myself with me, whilst they were three. In any case the meeting went by satisfactorily, and by the end of it I walked them home.

Unfortunately, my father’s new marriage was very short lived. Two months after the wedding, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I was abroad at the time, and only returned in time for the funeral. This time it hadn’t been planned - he was simply gone before I arrived.

Standing outside the church, crumpled coat in hand, thanking the attendees for their presence and their condolences, I reflected that in the past year I had seen my father’s new family more times than I had seen him. Once in the dinner, and now once again, beneath the arch of the large church doors. She came to me - the daughter - and gave me a hug.

So it was that in the space of a few months I had inherited a house, and a sibling. I left it to them to live and use as they saw fit, before fleeing back to my job. I did make a point in visiting every three weeks, boarding the plane with only a jacket in tow. She - the mother - always came to the airport to pick me up. A misplaced sense of familial obligation I think, the same that kept me boarding that plane again and again.

Time passed. I boarded, I landed. I was picked up at the airport.

During the ride home our conversations invariably turned towards her daughter. She was struggling at school, I was told, she was struggling at home. She had strange friends and never listened to her mother. Gradually the concerns deepened. She spent long nights away, and did not often bother to go to school. Her mother feared she was taking drugs. Her biological father was long gone, it seemed, and she had no one to turn to. She looked at me as she said so, hands tight against the steering wheel.

From that point on I called her my little sister, and asked certain things from her; that she go to school, that she be careful where she went and who she went with, that she never go anywhere alone. Unlike her mother I did so charmingly and genially, and my words were listened to the point where I felt satisfied that my obligations to her mother, which anyone would have thought unreasonable to expect, were fulfilled.

 

Necroing the fuck out of this.

This comes to mind most recently, but I'm sure if I went digging I'd find a few more.

 

Is the full story available somewhere?

 

Spoiler

It's not, but thanks for asking.

 

Not a lot of poetry here so why not. *cracks knuckles*

Quiet White

A quiet white, southern bred, well-read hip hop head,
Sat inside my room, boom-box bled through the walls,
People scream turn it off -- I won't even touch the knob,
Smokin' buddha after school and I ain't never held a job,
Squeaky clean is not my promise, some would even call me slob,
Even when I'm dressed fresh -- odd that I'm not hot.
Pale skin, skinny frame, a penchant for entertaining,
Pinch of dank in a game, failing out don't bear explaining,
You know I barely made it through the first two years,
Getting drunk off two beers turned into Everclear,
Singing "I ain't never scared" -- too afraid to tell Moms,
I broke up with the cheerleader for some new pom poms,
Close-cropped hair cut, Cuttin' up for too long,
Finally kept my head up and uh, I tried to move on,
Started writing new songs in between an eight-to-sixer,
Broke as hell so I tried to find a way to fix it,

I didn't sell my soul, I tried to sell myself,
And half of 'em don't give a shit, the others give me hell...
I used to say I'm verbal cyanide, dynamite,
Now I realized the real me the real life Quiet White,
I'll never say a word that I don't really mean --
and you're welcome to tell me you ain't really feeling me,
but 'scuse me if I disagree, dissing me just isn't wise,
I ain't listenin' to your lies I stay silent 'cause I'm Quiet...

Shh, listen closely. You can hear my ghost sing,
when I'm gone and dead, left you with this song up in your head,
Everything I ever said, everyone that rides with me,
If I had to do it all again, I'd do it quietly...
I ain't God's gift, but I swear to him I try to be,
On my journey with my journal my internal diary --
Nobody fly as me, my wings got wings on 'em!
Had the dopest rap tracks, Now I try to sing on 'em
I ain't vulnerable, just ownin' up to bustin' bubbles,
Lay it down, always subtle, Yeah my mouth got me in trouble,
More than just a couple dozen times, Buzzed off Soco Lime,
Stuck around just wasting time like when my older cousin rhymes...
That's my dude though! Glued to the studio,
All we need is one mic and three or four groupie hoes,
It's not about who we know its what we do and what we don't,
So I lit the doobie let it all go up in smoke...

I didn't sell my soul, I tried to sell myself,
And half of 'em don't give a shit, the others give me hell...
I used to say I'm verbal cyanide, dynamite,
Now I realized the real me the real life Quiet White,
I'll never say a word that I don't really mean --
and you're welcome to tell me you ain't really feeling me,
but 'scuse me if I disagree, dissing me just isn't wise,
I ain't listenin' to your lies I stay silent 'cause I'm Quiet White...