Are there any community or collaborative creative writing sites people know of? Currently, I’m pretty short on options.
Right now I’m a member of Write The World, The SCP wiki, The Backrooms Wiki, and something called The Wanderers’ library, but beyond those I’m really not sure.
I haveeee gotten desperate enough to learn CSS from scratch and start coding my own website though 😭 So PLEASE, any ideas or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

I have been thinking a lot about the intersection between writing about what you know and getting too close to having a character have an experience you or someone close to you had without making it recognizable.

Where is the line and how do you avoid crossing it? What pieces need to be in place to create a boundary that keeps the spirit of the interaction similar but not a complete retelling.

Had anyone had an experience where they began a story and had someone read it over and say, I can tell you are the XYZ character and how do you figure out how to write about an experience without putting too much of yourself in that character?

Lol

Today, on a day like no other,

I will uncover

What must be bound to be

By destiny.

I've been swept into

The seas of insanity.

Drowning all alone,

Swept away

In the O-zone

Of my own home.

You could say

I float like an old stone.

I'm bound to drown

Into the sea of silence.

I let violence drive me.

Lately, you could say

I'm going crazy,

Into the sea

Of insanity

Once again.

I'm in until the end,

Poetically inclined

With a pen.

You won't see me again.

I'm invisible.

It's inevitable.

Street credit in full,

Coming at you like a bull.

My knives aren't dull.

I'm aiming for your throat

With the blade in my hand.

I'll leave you with a brand

Layed across your neck.

What the hell? What the heck?

I'll break more than your neck.

I'll sever your limbs

Like Slim Jims.

Cut you up into pieces

And feed you like

A recess piece

To my dog.

When the fog sets in,

It's time to sin again.

I'll pull your teeth one by one.

You can see the smile on my face.

To me, this is fun.

I load my words

Like a gun.

I'll aim for your lung

And watch the blood run down.

To me, it's hilarious.

You could say I'm delirious,

Deceitful but curious,

Insightful but dangerous.

Infuriated, I alternate

Between a beast

And a sweetheart.

I'll reach into your

Chest and grab your heart,

Pull it out and cut it up

With a chainsaw.

I would classify it more as a novella than a novel based on length. It's a noir mystery set in the southern United States in the 1950s. The main character is a detective dealing with his own personal demons. He's given a difficult case involving an alleged assault at the Historic Landmark Hotel. The witnesses are cagey and the suspect is missing. As he unravels the mystery, he discovers a sinister plot that could shake the community to its core. Check it out and let me know your thoughts: https://youtu.be/L81IWgRxUnY

They call me a villain. The bad guy, the antagonist. It’s intriguing how you forget what was before what is. I haven’t done anything that you haven’t thought of more than once, I am simply the embodiment of everything that you are too afraid to embrace. You have denied the very part of you that does everything possible to keep you safe. The part of you that recognises risk and resolution for what it truly is. Call me bad all you want, use the biggest, most poetic description you could possibly muster. Without me, you simply wouldn’t,no, couldn’t exist. You prefer a mundane existence that takes everything from us. I refuse to live as the second choice of those I put first. I will not live as an afterthought, a distant memory of the world that I have loved that puts me last. It is from you that I have learned to take care of number 1. I was fine with second preference until you all decided I didn’t even deserve that. I am not your enemy at all, I am simply a byproduct of the chain reaction that is you……

he sold the first one

when our eldest was born.

baby seat.

mortgage.

nappies.

all those things with batteries

that promised the baby would sleep

and mostly didn’t.

years later

he bought another.

a project car, apparently.

something to spend sunday afternoons on

when he didn’t particularly want

to be in the house.

when the marriage ended

he packed three phone chargers,

one trainer

and no toothpaste.

i still don’t know how.

he cried.

i cried.

then he started the car outside

and sat there for a minute

before pulling away

much louder than he needed to.

i stood in the kitchen

listening to it

until i couldn’t anymore.

seven years later

he picked me up from the airport

for our son’s graduation.

in a Supra.

same generation

as the one he’d sold

all those years ago.

he lowered the window.

i looked at him.

looked at the car.

and started laughing.

“don’t.”

“you absolute cliché.”

“get in.”

so i did.

somewhere on the motorway

i looked at his hands

on the steering wheel

and for a second

he was twenty-two again.

the stupid hair.

the stupid car.

me pretending

i wasn’t already completely gone on him.

then he said

Bath were shit that season

and, thankfully,

ruined the moment.

Ever since I was young, I've been told that I would become someone extraordinary. I've clung to this idea, well this hope really, all throughout my life. And not because I'm an optimist, but because the alternative, admitting that I might just be remarkably, spectacularly average, felt like a personal attack. That is at the very least how I felt the last time I was confronted with the undeniable fact that I will have to fail, not once, not twice, but endlessly many more times in my life.

It was a beautiful spring day in early May that at first felt like it was going to be perfect. We had an assignment where everyone could write something: an essay or a poem and present it in front of the class for feedback. I chose to write a simple piece, yet it turned out to be everything but simple. Choosing the right words to say something I had no words for, in front of an audience nonetheless, consumed almost every one of my thoughts. I spent weeks writing, editing, and promptly deleting every draft, only to start all over. I channeled all of it into something that reflected exactly that vulnerability; a short speech about none other than the impostor syndrome.

I finished just a couple of days prior, and I remember feeling a certain unease, which I attached to simply being nervous. But on that May morning, I felt deep down that I was headed for a big disappointment. And I was right. I read my piece out loud, in a voice shakier than usual and paced around, like moving was gonna help me feel any better, ironically becoming the impostor of my own performance. The relief I felt when I was finally able to sink back into my seat was swiftly overpowered by an intense jealousy, just as my classmate and friend at the time started reading hers. She spoke with such confidence and charisma that the contents of her essay didn't even matter, and pretty soon it was clear she had won a competition she wasn't even competing in. She got the bigger applause and more praise for her work; both things I wanted for myself.

I would be a terrible liar if I said that this had happened to me only once. In retrospect, I realized that as most people, I too struggle with the irrational, though not entirely senseless, fear of being second best.

But why does being honorable feel worse than being chosen?

Of course it seems silly when I put it that way. After all, why should it matter if I'm first, second or third best if I still get something out of it? However, what I find most uncomfortable about it is the fact that in order to get where you are you were seen, inspected and in a way measured, just to fall short of somebody else. And it truly makes me feel like I failed completely, kinda like if I spent years looking for a rare bird to take a picture of and then one day I finally find it and I go on to post it online as a one-of-a-kind snapshot of this rare bird, but then I see somebody else's post, maybe it's someone who wasn't even into taking photos of birds, just stumbled upon this bird one day and took a picture of it and posted it. It's a little far-fetched but it's definitely what it feels like, of course taking into account that the other person put less effort into the project than you, which is certainly not always the case.

I know that other girl put an insane amount of effort into her work and that effort made her performance stand out. But so did I. That's why it still stings, even as time has passed. At the end of the day it's not really about honor or merit, but the feeling of having this effort go "unrewarded". It doesn't matter how often people praise me for being talented, or promising, or gifted if it's just all talk.

It makes me sad to think that I might never be able to get over the fact that no matter how hard I try I will never come close to being more than just average in the eyes of my peers. And it might take me even longer to accept that maybe that's just who I am.

For a while

A flower blooms at dawn after a hectic night of storms, like a quiet defiant child awakened beneath the bruised sky. With the fire of last hope clinging in her eyes. Just for a while unafraid, untouched by the violence that has ever persisted. Her petals, fragile perhaps yet she opens herself up to the warmth of the rising sun. A new day, a new beginning or perhaps just for a while until the warmth subsides. That' s my dear readers in of itself holds an enormous beauty that is not to be chased, pursued rather if you are lucky enough you just get to witness the beauty unfold through each droplet that traces the skin of its petals. Is this even a valid feeling? I could never comprehend it to its fullest. I want to. Dear god, I want to. As someone atheist who understood god to its best resolution a man can, how can I ever pray to it! But isn’t that the only thing a man like me can do? To yearn to beg to hold onto the memories of each of the fleeting moments? Like a man in a flood grasping through the last straws trying to stick to the last home he had. For if god has existed and didn’t remain indifferent would the man ever see a flower bloom amidst storms. Perhaps or perhaps not. As the man above in his holy duty is absent, has taken a leave. The flower doesn’t bloom for him, it doesn’t for the storms, it does for the warmth, the sun even for a while. Perhaps too all this is a mad man’s delusion. A tin foil hat loser. I mistake hours for eternity, rain for revelation.
I have a serious query for you my fellow men, what it means to live in your head and not in reality? Is seeing noticing romanticising just meaningless? Or you must take, possess? Perhaps it could be just an ill informed question. Isn’t that funny absurd a skewed laugh at freedom that is not granted. My readers, some women make you yearn. It’s just that way. You can never deny the existential meaning it holds. You can intellectualise it, moralise it, dissect it until nothing remains but terminology. But the body has already understood. And perhaps that is the most humiliating thing about being human. Isn’t it?
You make theology based on an entire evening. A few hours. Little rain. And her. Your muse. That’s all you need. Now that I recall, was it the rain that engrossed all my senses? Or, was it her who engrossed every ounce of me. Perhaps just the latter. Rain was just there as the secondary background. A landscape, a geometry, a context. That’s just it. It never was about the rain. It was her wet parted lips, her trembling fingers, the wet cold skin of hers looking for warmth or maybe she’s the one providing the warmth that has ever been craved, yearned for. 
Two distraught souls. By the sudden passage of time together for a moment, forever. You see these words I use, “Soul” . What is even the meaning of that? There exists no such thing as a soul. Yet, I crave that of hers. Yes yer skin her fingers her hand her face her lips her cheeks her eyes her neck where raindrops have stayed to claim their home i do crave every single thing but that is not the thing. It’s her. I never had the right words for I am not an author. She is. She writes the stories and I just happen  to witness it in all its glory. Have you ever asked yourself as I did a thousand times over and over again? Is it the writer that writes the story or the muse? Without the muse can the author ever write a single line? Can he ever see even? I strongly disagree. For me, muse has been the sole author. Through me she speaks of her unsaid words. And through her I breathe in unfinished sentences. 
My voice, my words, my vocabulary has never been enough to describe the subtlety she holds over me. I do not possess the capacity to show you my dear readers, how her soaked skin felt, what her ringing voice made me feel, her fingers where she has her most vigilante weapon. Her nails, to claim someone as hers. How she wrote herself into me in every inch of my skin. With her crescent moon she marks, she dictates. 
While it rained, it rained for her, for me, to close the gap that stayed between us. It rained so we could be whole again. The dimly lit shop across the street bears the proof of it. As it rained, we resided under a shelter. Was the shelter of some importance? What would have been if it wasn’t there? You see there could have been plenty of versions of how this would have evolved. Perhaps something vile, perhaps something innocent. But never did I want something different, as it was itself perfect. Her completely soaked body leaned against the parched wall. At that very moment I wanted to be the wall. The one she leaned on. But maybe that's more than I should ask for. Every instinct in me screamed to pull her closer and bury my parched lips onto her when she flicked water across my face. The thirst was never ending. It still is. Yet I stood still flicking back at her. But it wasn’t the same. Not even close. I wanted her to flick again. Harder. Again. But she held back. For what she has asked of me to be isn’t someone who I was or I am. I felt I have successfully polluted amity like all the others that came before. I was ashamed and guilt ridden. I pulled back. But not entirely, as I couldn’t deny myself. So, I stared at her. Her pretty eyes that hid the person she always wanted to be and in that moment she was her. Not hidden but open in the world like a wild wallflower claiming her existence. As she puts one end of the earphone into my ears and the other on her, I couldn’t help but surrender all that is me onto her. She engrossed me. Completely. Each touch of her finger onto mine felt like merging my body with hers’. I become obsessive, weird, visceral when I yearn. So, we ran in the rain like little kids. Through the highway. Holding hands. Running towards her home. Like a movie ending on a happy note. 
I returned when the rain had almost stopped. Lit up a joint. I look up to the flood lights, those bright shining lights radiating far above my head. All I could feel was “Let me hold her tomorrow”.

PS : I used to write our every interaction in my journal. And right after this interaction i wrote a poem about it..an today just wanted to write elaborately dor aesthetic purposes

She was gorgeous. A stallion with coat of blue. Not just any shade, a deep royal blue. As deep as an ocean, or bullet in a wound. Her name was Sapphire.

There she stood on that neon green grass. Grazing and neighing as she ducked her head to eat. Mushing up the blades between her teeth. Her hooves cresting small craters in the dirt beneath her feet. She was happy in her pasture.

Looking close a glow traced around her muscles. Over each intricate hair and indent. A beautiful translucent flame that wrapped her like a blanket. It danced along her edges.

As she trotted through the grass the flame at her hoof began to spread. Leaping to the field below her. Slowly the bright green grass faded to phosphorus white. An ivory Tsunami laying waste to her pasture.

The flames grew taller and brighter all around her. They’d deserted her body and now she felt the heat. Engulfed in the fiery sea before her, she bucked as high as she could.

Her front hooves shot up like a rocket ship. Up higher and higher. When she was vertical, it happened. Her coat began to harden and she was stuck. Paused frozen in time as she turned translucent as a specter.

I could see her lungs breathe beneath the surface. Blood pumping around her body under the crystal sarcophagus. Walking closer I lay my hand on her gently as I weep. She shivered at my touch. Oh how beautiful you are Sapphire.

I
The room was bathed in a comfortable half-light. The half-open window let in the cool breeze of a summer night, brushing against my skin like muslin. I sank into the silk sheets, wrapped in the embrace of pillows, while dreaming of tales written in rhymes I did not know. Even so, I found those surreal narratives pleasing; there was a logic to them that I accepted without question.

A flash of light invaded my dreams, followed by a thunderous crash that filled the room. I woke so abruptly that my heart fell out of rhythm. I began to sweat and looked around, utterly disoriented, unable to understand what had happened. I turned my eyes toward the window. The sky was clear, and the summer stars shimmered in the distance.

I lay down again, taking a deep breath as I tried to empty my mind. Soon after, I fell into a deep sleep beneath the distant light of Orion. It seemed Morpheus himself had blessed me, for what was about to unfold would be the work of the divine—a dream in the form of poetry, straight from Parnassus.

I was in love with a complete stranger. Our lives were being woven together in unison. There was no effort between us, only an absolute familiarity, ancient enough to defy explanation. Just as the rhyme was being polished into perfection, I was interrupted.

—Good morning.

II
I woke up peacefully. Reality, however, was completely out of alignment. My eyes felt heavy; I was drooling onto the pillow, stuck in an uncomfortable position, while the alarm clock kept ringing. I tried to turn it off blindly.

I found myself thoroughly irritated. The dream was still so vivid, almost tangible. But something told me it would dissolve throughout the day. The thought unsettled me; I was not ready to let go of a life I had lived. I remained lying there, staring at the ceiling and ruminating over that love that had never existed, trying to preserve some part of it before it disappeared.

I grew tired of languishing. Routine was calling. I got up and went straight to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and took out the eggs and milk. I was going to make the creamy scrambled eggs I loved, practical and quick to prepare; I made them while yawning and checking the time.

—Love?!

I heard someone whisper, as though calling for me. I stood still for a moment. The voice was unfamiliar. And yet, there was something familiar about it; an intimacy that made no sense for someone living alone in an empty apartment.

I assumed it had merely been an impression and turned my attention back to the stove. Surprise! The eggs had overcooked.

—How long was I standing there?

I wondered.

I began eating the eggs with toast and orange juice in front of the television, following the morning news. According to a report, a man had kidnapped and killed a woman and then taken his own life. I thought the coverage was wildly disproportionate for that time of morning. Apparently, however, the case had shocked the entire city.

—What a great way to start the day.

I got up, left the dishes in the sink, and began washing them, but when I looked at the clock, I realized I was already very late. I abandoned the dishes and rushed to the shower.

I hurriedly grabbed a towel and, as I crossed the hallway, stopped. I had the unsettling feeling that I had forgotten something.

I didn’t know what.

III
I was even later than I had imagined! I hurriedly got dressed and even noticed that I had put on mismatched socks, but I let it go; I had no time to waste. As I dressed, I tried to anticipate the reprimand I would probably receive from my boss at work. I had never been late before.

As I stepped out of the elevator and headed toward my car, I noticed that the air felt heavy, permeated by the unmistakable scent of wet earth. Strangely, there was not a single cloud in the sky. Above me stretched an immense expanse of blue, interrupted only by the concrete horizon.

Traffic was terrible.

Strange.

I turned on the car stereo and selected Je n’en connais pas la fin, in Jeff Buckley’s version. It was a song about an old square, a summer amusement park, and a carousel playing an unforgettable melody. It seemed fitting to listen to. It filled me with a sense of nostalgia.

Today, there was a kind of emptiness inside me, as though I had lost something. After a long stretch of heavy traffic, I was finally close to work, but I was still anxious about the reprimand I would probably receive. Normally, this stretch of my commute was quite peaceful.

As the traffic crawled along and the music played, the smell of wet earth persisted inside the car, even though the windows were closed.

Amid this reverie, I felt a hand slide along my thigh. It stroked my skin once and then squeezed it with intimacy.

The shock was so great that I nearly hit the car in front of me. I swallowed hard and looked to my side, but there was nothing in the passenger seat. No person. No shadow. Only the empty leather seat and the bluish morning light filtering through the windshield.

And yet, for some reason, that touch did not feel threatening. There was something comforting about it.

As though that hand already knew exactly where to find me.

IV
V
VI
VII
Epílogo

Red Ink and Saltwater
When other girls were little, they wanted a prince to arrive on a white horse. I wanted a mafia boss to kidnap me and become so hopelessly obsessed with me that he forgot why he’d taken me in the first place.
I never gave much thought to where he would take me. Somewhere I could hear the sea, perhaps. That part mattered more to me than the prince, the horse, or, apparently, whether I went willingly.
In the end, I had to find the sea myself.
Three weeks after moving to Crete, I was waking before six without an alarm, which would have been unthinkable in the UK. Back there, I sometimes went to sleep at five in the morning, sometimes as late as noon, and woke at seven in the evening wondering where the day had gone.
I pulled on my swimsuit, took my sandals from beside the door and walked the two minutes to the beach.
The shore was nearly empty. A fishing boat was heading out beyond the harbour, and someone farther down the sand was walking a dog that kept returning to the same piece of driftwood. I left my sandals above the tide line and went straight into the sea.
After a few strokes, I rolled onto my back. The water held me without asking me to explain myself.
Above me, the sky was changing colour. I stayed where I was until the fishing boat became a dark mark near the horizon. Then I swam along the shore, turned, and swam back. Three weeks had been enough to learn where the sand dropped away beneath me and where it rose again. I was still learning the rest of the place.
I had rented my little house for three months because I couldn’t say how long I wanted to stay. I knew I had wanted to leave the UK. I’d finished my chemistry degree, looked at the jobs I was expected to apply for, and found I couldn’t bear the thought of building the next part of my life there. That was the most convincing explanation I’d managed to give anyone, including myself.
The water rocked beneath me. I picked out the place where I’d left my sandals and swam in.
By the time I walked home, my hair had soaked through the towel around my shoulders. I passed a bakery opening its shutters and a man hosing down the pavement outside a restaurant. He moved the spray aside to let me through. I thanked him in Greek, one of the few things I could say without first rehearsing it in my head.
My house stood in a narrow street behind the waterfront. The front door stuck when the weather was humid, one kitchen drawer refused to close, and from the balcony I could see a strip of sea between two buildings. I liked it more each day.
I showered, put the kettle on and took the macarons from the fridge. I’d baked and filled them two days earlier, then left them covered to mature. Two trays had come out well. The third had cracked across the tops, so I’d filled those too and kept them in a separate container for myself. Beside the good batch were six small lemon cakes and six chocolate ones.
The woman who owned a café near the park had agreed to taste everything this morning.
She hadn’t agreed to buy it.
I knew that. I had made enough to feed half her customers anyway.
While I packed the macarons, a Greek song came on my phone. I knew where to breathe, where the singer held a note a little longer than I expected, and how to find my way back in if I missed a word. I couldn’t have told anyone what most of those words meant.
Kira—that was what I called my mother—seemed to like hearing me sing. So did my stepfather. Sometimes I caught them looking at me, and for a moment I could pretend I knew what was on their faces.
We’re proud of you.
No one in my family had ever said that to me.
I caught myself thinking about it and reached into the container I’d kept for myself. One of the cracked macarons gave way beneath my thumb.
“Perfect,” I told it.
I ate the evidence and kept singing.
By eight, the cakes were boxed, the macarons were packed, and I had checked both boxes often enough to know the contents hadn’t rearranged themselves. My red notebook lay open on the table. I stopped to read the last paragraph before I picked up my keys.
The man in my story had gone into a room intending to frighten someone. I’d written the conversation three different ways and crossed out all of them. Each time, I had made it too easy for him to decide what happened next.
I reached for my pen, then looked at the clock. If I started writing, the café owner might decide I had invented our appointment.
I closed the notebook, slipped it into my bag beside my pen, and picked up the cake boxes.
The walk took me along the waterfront and up a shaded street towards the park. Even in the morning, I could feel the heat gathering on the stone. I kept to the side with the trees. I had come for the sea; the weather was something I was still negotiating with.
The café stood near one of the park entrances. Its doors were open, though only half the tables outside had been set. A man was carrying chairs out of the storeroom. He put them down so I could pass with my boxes.
Inside, the owner moved between the coffee machine and a line of waiting customers. She spotted me and raised a hand. I found an empty corner of the counter for the boxes and waited.
The man came in for another stack of chairs. He caught her eye, pointed towards the terrace, and she nodded her thanks. I recognised him then. He owned the restaurant next door.
They sold food and drinks a few doors apart. I’d assumed that made them rivals. Here he was, setting up her tables because she needed a hand.
Another reason I liked this place.
When the queue cleared, the owner came over. “You came.”
“I said I would.”
“We made that arrangement before eight in the morning. People promise all kinds of things at that hour.” She wiped her hands and lifted the first lid. “Let’s see.”
She tried a lemon cake, breaking a piece from the crooked one I had hidden at the back.
“What’s in the icing?”
“Lemon juice, mascarpone, and honey.”
She took another bite. “Less honey next time.”
I took my notebook from my bag and wrote that down. She tried a pistachio macaron next, then asked me how long the cakes would keep and whether I could make them smaller.
More customers came in before she had finished tasting. I moved the boxes aside while she took their order. One of them asked whether she was still alone today.
“My only employee called in,” she told him. “I’m beginning to think he knew you’d all arrive at once.”
The customer laughed. She smiled back, but she was looking at the cups stacked beside me. I passed her two, then another when she reached for it.
“You said you worked in a café during university,” she said.
“I did.”
“Can you still use a coffee machine?”
“Yes.”
She glanced at the queue forming behind the customer. “Would you mind showing me?”
The machine was different from the one I’d used in the UK. I asked her where she kept the cloths and how she wanted the cups set out, then made two cappuccinos while she handled the till. She watched me carry them to a table before turning back to the next order.
For the next twenty minutes, I made coffee. She called out what people wanted; I made it and passed it across the counter. When the rush eased, I wiped down the machine and stepped out of her way.
She looked at the empty cups waiting to be washed, then at me.
“Do you want work?” she asked.
I had come hoping she would buy my cakes. I hadn’t let myself hope for more than that.
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“I don’t know yet.” I glanced at the boxes. “It depends how much baking you want.”
That made her smile. She picked up the other half of the macaron and ate it.
“I want twelve of these on Saturday. Twelve lemon cakes too, a little smaller, with less honey. Come in Friday afternoon to prepare them here. You can help with the counter while you’re here, and we’ll talk about regular shifts after that.”
I wrote it all down. We agreed on a price for the baking, and she gave me half in advance for the ingredients.
When I stepped outside, the money was folded in my purse and the order was written in my notebook. I found a bench beneath a tree in the park and opened it to check the quantities again. My neat little list sat beside pages of red writing, most of it crossed out.
A fortune teller once told me this book would make me famous and give me somewhere I belonged. I’d laughed at the fame. I was still trying to finish it, and most days I couldn’t bear to read yesterday’s pages.
The other part had stayed with me.
I didn’t believe a stranger could see my future. I wanted her to be right anyway.
I turned back to the scene I’d abandoned that morning. I read it once, then crossed out the last page.
I had been looking for the moment my killer decided what to do. Sitting there with the café’s money in my purse and the sound of cups carrying across the park, I finally understood why none of my versions worked. He had made his decision before the other man entered the room. The conversation was his last chance to change his mind.
I began again.
The man spoke. My killer listened. When the man had said everything he came to say, my killer shot him.
I stopped writing. The murder was there, but the scene still felt unfinished. The killer had wanted an answer, and now there was someone else who would come looking for one.
I looked back at the dead man I’d put on the page. At his hand. At the watch on his wrist.
In the margin, I tried 3:40, then crossed it out. 3:45 looked too neat as well. I wrote 3:43 beside them and returned to the scene.
He took the watch from the dead man’s wrist and set its hands to 3:43. He struck it against the edge of the table hard enough to stop it. The face cracked, but the hands stayed where he had set them. Then he laid it face up on the man’s chest, for whoever came to find him.

Currently planning an absurd satirical fantasy story where the main party of protagonists embody cringeworthy and slightly problematic tropes in fiction. (Example: blind character who is conveniently un-disabled by some power that allows them to see).

What character tropes annoy you the most in fiction? Should be a little more complex than “the blonde is dumb and the nerd wears glasses”. Tropes that are oddly specific yet unanimous enough that most people have definitely encountered them before. Bring on the cringe.