Round Up: Week Eighteen

Last week’s prompt:

If you, the reader, has been paying any attention, you know that all of us authors are in college. That means that stress abounds.

One of the best ways to deal with stress is to visualize a happy place. Happy places can be real or fictional, you just have to be able to see it and relax.  

Write in detail about a happy place.  This place can be yours or a character’s.  This character can be one of your own, or one that someone else made.

What does it feel like? What does it look like? Smells like? Sounds like? How does your body feel being there? What emotions do you have?

Do your best to make the place come alive.  Focus on the details. This way we can get rid of stress and expand our writing too.

Amanda

When I first heard the prompt to write about a paradise, I thought “Oh, easy peasy, I have the best happy place in the world, I can just put that down on e-paper and call it good!” but then I thought… how boring. I decided instead to explore the paradise of someone else, someone quite different from me. A number of factors went into my decision to write from a werewolf point of view- the proximity and my excitement about Halloween, the fact that as I was writing the story there was a blood moon eclipse going on, and the fact that I had recently listened to a podcast about werewolves from Stuff You Should Know (seriously, look them up). The stone circle and multiplying stones refer to an old werewolf legend that they would have to take off their clothes to transform into a beast, and their clothes would change to stone so nobody could mess with them in the meantime.

I like my werewolf character because he’s not outright bloodthirsty or ashamed of his condition like other werewolves seen in books and movies, especially Harry Potter. Instead, he knows he can enjoy his condition if he separates himself from humans so as to not make any grave mistakes. Instead, he just goes for Bambi’s mom.

MY VOTE: Korrin

Korrin

I have had a lot of experience with the visualization technique.  I have taken many classes where it is used to relieve stress and also used to get your mind in a creative place.  Every time someone asks me to see a calm, peaceful place I always go to the same place.  It may be silly but it’s where I am happy and peaceful because I have imagined it so many times for so long in my life.  My place was the grounds of Hogwarts.

No one ever said it had to be a real place.

I have had so little peace in my life that having it is a magical experience for me.  So what better way to get their than with the biggest magical experience in existence.  Most people don’t understand how Harry Potter can be such a big deal to some of us, but those who do can see why that is the place I choose to relax and be happy.  Especially since there are so few opportunities to travel there anymore.  

MY VOTE: Amanda

Kylie

This story is short because A) school, and B) this character is very blunt. She says what she’s thinking and she doesn’t say much more. I’ve written about her before, so good luck finding that story (it actually isn’t that hard to find). She’s actually more sentimental than she seems to be, but she doesn’t like all those “emotion” things so she tries to avoid those things as much as possible.

MY VOTE: Amanda

Next Week’s Prompt:

Pick a fairy tale and rewrite it by changing one key plot point. What would happen if Sleeping Beauty never fell asleep? What if Beauty never fell in love with the Beast? You get to answer these questions for us.