Expanding A Thought From A Conversation This Morning:

Expanding a thought from a conversation this morning:

In general, I think "Is X out-of-character?" is not a terribly useful question for a writer. It shuts down possibility, and interesting directions you could take a character.

A better question, I believe, is "What would it take for Character to do X?" What extremity would she find herself in, where X starts to look like a good idea? What loyalties or fears leave him with X as his only option? THAT'S where a potentially interesting story lies.

In practice, I find that you can often justify much more from a character than you initially dreamed you could: some of my best stories come from "What might drive Character to do [thing he would never do]?" As long as you make it clear to the reader what the hell pushed your character to this point, you've got the seed of a compelling story on your hands.

I think my favorite thing is when someone tells you that a line you wrote gutted them. Just flayed them open and made them feel everything and nothing all at once. I just think that’s kinda nice.

There really is no feeling quite like discovering a new song that fits your blorbo to a T. Best I can do to convey it is something like

Not My Magical Destiny part 2

Intro <<previous (part 1) next (part 3 coming soon)>>

Gabe brings the fight and some friends to the bakery. How is Kodi coping with these new revelations? Spoiler: not well

After the breakfast rush, I was pulling buns out of the oven when I heard Gabriel calling my name from the shop. Frantically depositing the finished bread on a parchment-lined tray, I rushed to the front.

“Kodi, Kodi!” Gabe panted, rushing into my waiting arms. “I need to hide.” His hair was singed and strange yellow stains somehow showed up on his studded leather jacket. I remembered getting it for him, the beginning of his all-black wardrobe. 

“Anything! Anything. Duck behind the counter.” I shoved him out of sight. Moving to stand at the cash register, I spoke out of the corner of my mouth, trying to be subtle, but not doing well. “Are you allowed to tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m being chased.”

“No,” I snarked, “really?”

He bumped his forehead against my leg. “Idle, Envy, and I were facing off against some goons, but reinforcements showed up. Envy told me to run – I couldn’t handle the fight and it would be easier to retreat in stages.”

“Envy?” I prodded. Explaining things always calmed Gabe down whether they were on topic or not. 

Picking at the fraying edges of my overalls, he began, “Envy’s my mentor. She’s really sweet once she gets to know you, but is a little uptight. She’s been doing this gig for ages and it’s been taking a toll on her. Me showing up is going to do a lot of good, but for now its pretty rough. She didn’t sign up to take on a protege. She’d gut me if she heard me talking about us like that.” He chuckled weakly. 

Gaze narrowed on the street, I ruffled his hair. “I think it’s safe to come out,” I said. Gabe started to stand. “I don’t see anyone coming-”

The door burst open, the bell rang across the room and hit the wall by my head with a clang. Gabe paled, springing into action. His fists glowed purple as his hair swayed in an invisible breeze. Pale, burning gold eldritch silhouettes blew into the bakery. The tables that weren’t thrown against the wall started charring in their presence. Something black and green streaked in behind them. She was difficult to look at, somehow old and young at once, with eyes that had seen millennia. She looked more beaten up than Gabe, black oozing out of a cut on her cheek. 

“Envy!” called Gabe. He strode forward, purple light wavering in formless blades in his hands. “Get Kodi to safety. I run interference better than you.”

Envy raised an eyebrow.

“Please.”

When she spoke, her voice was raspy, with smoke or by nature, I wasn’t sure. “You sure, kid?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Gabe. He shook a fist as the purple flickered in and out of existence. “Idle is on her way, right?”

“You worry too much, Pride,” grumbled Envy. She strode over to me, greasy black hair swinging. A chunk of hair was missing by her ear, burned off. Her nails dug into my shoulder like claws. “Come on, mortal. You cannot handle conflicts of this magnitude.”

The only thing that made me go with her was the concern creasing Gabe’s face.

I stumbled with the force she threw me into the pantry. “Stay here. Don’t leave,” she said, looking at me like I was a fraction of her age and didn’t possess significant intelligence. It was the same look and tone I’d give to a toddler. It made my skin crawl; she was entitled to her unsettling view given what I had understood from Gabe last week. She cast one more glare over her shoulder, saying, “Unless you want to die.”

She seemed to be daring me to leave, seemed to want me dead. I flinched as she slammed the door behind her. I saw it coming, but it made little difference. If that’s how it was going to be, I’d be more than happy to make the feeling mutual. That was only if she wasn’t doing so much to help Gabe and if she didn’t mean so much to him. I had never been good at holding grudges like Gabe did.

A crash rattled my bones from where I sat on a bag of flour. I hoped the bakery could be rebuilt. It meant a lot to me since I started working here over two years ago. There was a flash of white and the sound of something shattering. My pastries had better survive – I had spent too much time on them for them to be covered in shards of glass or incinerated by magic. It seemed trivial to be concerned about desserts, but it was the only thing I could think of without going insane. I recognized Gabe’s cry of pain and resisted the urge to rush to his aid. Metal shrieked and I clapped my hands over my ears; this was going to be challenging to fix. I knew it wasn’t something to worry about, that the world was on the line, but I was trapped in a room listening to destruction I couldn’t see on a scale I couldn’t understand. A wave of blue lapped underneath the door and I instinctively picked up my feet, but the light felt like nothing when I returned them to the floor, even as it curled around my ankles. Something let out a deafening muffled thump and splinters of whatever shattered pattered against the walls, knocking at the door.

Soon after, an actual knock rang out. I jumped a little, but relaxed when I heard Gabe call, “Kodi? It’s okay now.”

I opened the pantry to carnage. Chairs were in pieces, and a figure in braids held a stray leg in front of her defensively. Envy stood in the middle of the room, eyes closed and head tilted to the ceiling. She breathed deeply as her arms stopped smoking and the light died from where it gathered around her fingertips. Running my hands over Gabe, I found a burn on his shoulder and a graze exposed by a rip in his black canvas pants. Pulling him towards the storage closet where we kept a first-aid kit, I passed his leather jacket where it was discarded next to the cash register. The register had miraculously survived with only mildly melted plastic on the side facing the bakery floor. Gabe grunted as I pushed him to sit on a step stool so I could dress his wounds. 

“So,” I said, ripping out a section of tape and sticking it to Gabe’s cheek for safekeeping. His head moved back with the force I applied. “I think I deserve an explanation given what happened to my bakery.”

Envy opened her mouth, the expression on her face guarded and venomous. “Mortal,” she spat as if it were an insult. “It is not in your jurisdiction to–”

“No,” said Gabe, wincing as I dripped rubbing alcohol on his angry graze, “They’re right. And they’re my friend. Kodi is entitled to know about my life, especially when I drag it into their work.”

The only other figure in the room piped up from where she was vainly trying to clear the rubble from the booths, “I think that’s fair enough, Envy.”

Envy shot daggers towards them, snipping, “If you were one of my minions, Idle, you would not speak against me like that.”

“Well, I serve Sloth, not you. Besides, Gabe is the one with the highest authority here. He gets to decide what is told,” Idle, apparently, countered. 

Huffing, Envy bit back what I guessed would be a rebuke about having more experience. 

Gabe ignored her look, deciding, as he so often did, that he was right in his stance. “So, last time, I told you about the big players in the world hidden from you. A while back, I haven’t been told how long, Pride disappeared. She was the authority figure on one side, so everything fell out of whack. Ouch, Kodi!” he yelped as I ripped the medical tape from his cheek to put on the dressing for his graze.  

Our gazes bore into each other. I’m still mad at you, mine said. 

I know, I’m sorry. This isn’t an excuse you deserve. Cutting off our silent exchange, he continued, “Then a little over two months ago, there was a concentrated attack against me by Patience and Perserverence’s goons, and some latent magic was awoken within me. Soon after, Idle showed up, followed by Envy. It turns out I’m some strange reincarnation of Pride. Envy and the others are hoping I restore balance, but it’s been slow going as the world is decaying while I have to learn how to use my powers.”

Towards the tail end of his explanation, my movements had slowed as I wrapped his shoulder up. There was a ringing in my ears as panic clawed up my throat. I tilted my head back to rest against the closet door and closed my eyes. The first-aid kit was an elephant in my lap and against my chest even as it barely reached my knees. My hands dropped from Gabriel’s shoulder. The collar of my purple flannel choked me and my overalls dug into my shoulders and legs. 

There wasn’t a single mark on me. 

I breathed deeply like my dad taught me, slowly tuning back into the conversation. 

Still sounding like she was underwater, I heard Envy saying, “Look… done… listened… me. – never learn.”

I blinked away the tears that had been gathering in the corners of my eyes before the others could see them. Gabe’s face was etched in concern and he lifted his uninjured arm to cup my cheek. “Kodi,” he said, “I think you fainted.”

The world had only just stopped spinning with the implications of his earlier words, so I refrained from shaking my head. “I just need a minute.” I hadn’t fainted and it hurt to see my oldest friend underestimating me. How much had this world changed him?

“I told you not to tell them,” hissed Envy. 

With effort, I pulled my vision back into focus. “You’re being safe,” I asked weakly, “right, Gabe?”

He avoided my gaze. “Yes.”

I jabbed his side, right where he was ticklish. 

“As safe as I can be,” he corrected. “I’m not letting anyone ruin my world or hurt my friends.”

“Okay, okay,” I breathed. There was something still burning in the bakery. If luck was on my side, it wouldn’t be anything in the kitchen. It hurt to look around the wreckage, but I fixed Idle and Envy with a glare. “Does any of your preserving the world involve fixing the mess you made?”

“We’ll do our best!” chirped Idle, picking up where she left off earlier.

Envy sighed, “For someone who means too much to Pride, I suppose. We did bring the fight to you.”

“Thank you,” I said, standing on unsteady legs. “I’ll be in the back if you need me. I don’t think there’s much I can do out here.”

Gabe fell short of grabbing my hand. He stood too and turned away to start on the mess. I let the door swing shut behind me as I tried to let the comfort of the ovens wash over me. My hands still shook.

<<previous (part 1) next (part 3 coming soon)>>

i'm curious about this so please tell me! i personally don't finish them but i know people who do and i'm always baffled so i wanna know how many people actually do that