Well I can’t say I’m surprised, truth be told I think to myself as I watch the hero-marker enter the map from the stairwell. A moment later a handful of the other familiar markers come into focus as they enter one after the other just behind him. Now obviously, there is an issue at hand here, friend. One I’m a little confused about myself. You see, this was the last floor originally, right?
Well, if that’s true then… where are they going to go? Is there a ‘new’ staircase here that leads to the floor below? To floor ninety-one? Because as far as I know there’s only the secret staircase and honestly, I don’t even know where that one comes up into this floor. I remember it was behind some bookshelf but… well, there are more bookshelves here than I can tell you about. The entire floor is just made up of bookshelves and a short-haired carpet that really does need to be cleaned more often. Dungeon-life can be so unhygienic.
But no, really. This is a dead end, isn’t it? For them? Swiping my menu away, I decide to worry about it while continuing my search. If it’s a dead end for them, that means they can’t go further and clear the dungeon by reaching the last floor anymore. That means… I’m safe from timing out, doesn’t it? Will they just be stuck here forever? Just wandering around the library in a circle looking for a staircase that doesn’t exist?
Wait no, there’s a bigger problem. If I die and respawn below, how am I going to get back up here? I can’t take that pipe that leads here as anything else other than an ooze, which I’m not guaranteed to respawn as to begin with but… no wait. I stop myself for the third time now. There’s a staircase on the floor below that leads up, right? So there must be one here that leads down. Uh… I’m lost, guy. Sorry. The mechanics of this whole dungeon-life, respawn forever, cosmic punishment thing are just too much for little old me to keep track of. I can tell you all about mushrooms though if you want?
Did you know that the thing you probably think of as a mushroom isn’t actually the mushroom itself? The uh… uniquely shaped growth that sprouts from the ground is just the fruiting body, the reproductive organ of a mushroom. The actual mushroom is the mycelium, which is sort of a series of clear, colorless roots that are buried beneath the substrate and spread out far and wide. That’s why if you have some food that’s gone moldy, say some bread, it isn’t safe to just scrape it off and eat the rest. Because you’re just scraping off the fruiting body, but the real mold is still spread through the food itself, most likely invisible but all too present. So just throw it out, okay?
I bump against a shelf, not having paid attention to where I was going. Reorienting myself, I turn the corner and continue my search. Wait.
Aren’t they just going to kill the dungeon-master now that they’re here? Won’t them doing that make me respawn? I figured that was what was happening this entire time to begin with but apparently not. Somewhat worried I rise up out from the shelves and look to the pit, but everything seems to be as I left it, though I think I hear some fighting off in the distance, off behind the shelves on the other side of the floor. Hmm. Floating back down I continue on with the task at hand.
Mushrooms aren’t plants either you know? They’re their own unique kingdom that is entirely separate from plants and animals actually! What am I even looking for I wonder as I bump around from shelf to shelf, scooting some books to the side and looking behind them as if there would be a secret passage hidden in the shelf, which to be fair, there might be. But there isn’t this time. I push the books back where they belong and think.
If I was the dungeon-master, where would I put the secret staircase in the library? The section on wine making? No… too obvious. Alcoholism self-help? No, too introspective for the boss. Maybe in the adult only corner, honestly I’m not sure why we even have that. I think it’s just uh, you know, just for the dungeon-master. But… hmm… well, it’s possible actually now that I think about it. The problem is I have no idea where that is now since the library has shuffled again. Mm…
Did you know that mushrooms are extremely important for the natural cycle of death and rebirth? Fungus is a decomposer in natural environments since it gets rid of old dead matter, breaking it down and returning it to the soil in a usable form.
Hmm… I wonder i- AH!
Something grabs me out of the air and I squirm and fidget as two hands tightly grip my cover and swing me around to face her smiling self.
“Hey! Hey!” She presses her face forward, so close that she is almost smashing her nose against my leather-bound cover. “I found you! I found you!” says the thief, her eyes glowing with their usual haunting glimmer. She lets out a small giggle which then turns into a laugh as she inches in closer still.
Did you know that a single large mushroom can release up to sixteen billion spores at once? Crazy stuff!
Wrapping her wet fingers around each of my covers she tears me open and sticks her face inside of my pages and takes a deep whiff of the paper. I feel somewhat violated, I’m not gonna lie. I’m not sure if I feel more or less violated then when she stabbed me to death, but… you know, it’s up there. I’m glad Madeline isn’t here to see this.
She pulls back and holds me at an arm’s length with a broad smile on her lips, which have clear bite-marks. Something dribbles out from inside of my body. “You smell nice! Did you miss me?!” She presses me against herself. “I missed you! You were gone so long!”
I flap my pages, trying to talk.
“I can’t speak book, you dummy!” she says laughing, as I barely manage to move my pages at all. “Hey! Hey! I got you something! You know?” I notice my insides stick together as I try to talk, but she continues to hold me shut. Looking down curiously I see that her fingers are covered in a thick layer of dripping red.
Suddenly there is a human scream in the distance that echoes out over the shelves. The room begins to rumble a moment later as it sets to motion once more. Whether the moving shelves were triggered by this shout or if it’s just a coincidence I can’t say.
“Hey!” she spins me around in a circle as the world begins to twist all around us, as the shelves set to motion. “Hey! You know what? You know what?! I lied!” She giggles. “I lied just a little… But it’s okay! I know, I know you’ll understand!” she says smiling a giant, giddy smile at me as we spin.
I twist myself curiously in her grip, not sure what she’s getting at. We really should move though, it’s dangerous here. But she seems oblivious, uncaring of the churning mass of shelves grinding past us. Her fingers clenching tighter and tighter around my body, the stained leather of my cover squeaks under the pressure she is applying to me and more wet drips out from between my pages that are compressing something.
“The truth is…-“ she laughs, her eyes growing wider and bloodshot. “The truth is, I couldn’t forgive her! I couldn’t forgive her for babying you when you were a dragon! I didn’t like the way she looked at you!“ she laughs, spit landing over me as it sprays from her mouth.
“It’s okay now! It’s okay now! Everything is okay now!” she presses me against herself again, holding me tightly as the world shakes in an embrace. “See?! See?!” she extends me out to an arms length and spreads me open wide. Two crushed, green pupiled eyes fall out from between my pages, down to the carpet below.
“See?! I got them for you! I do it for you!” she laughs staring at me with an expression of childlike jubilance.
“I do it for you!” oooohhhhhh shitttttt!!! That twist of one of the running themes of the novel, not damn!!! That was really cool!
Constant repeating themes are a huge element of this story. I don't want to post a list, but for sure some things like eyes, being watched and taking action for the sake of others are very common elements in our lovely dungeon because of.. reasons
@DMRhodes It’s such an awesome theme that has so many different ways of saying it, and they’re all so packed with such emotion every time, goddamn, it’s awesome! It gives me inspiration for my own stories!
How much did you plan this in advance, by the way? I keep getting to the point where I plan out a main character and plot line, and then I decide I want to do something else with the story. I kinda sorta shelved the problem by making a universe with a bunch of stories and characters but I can’t imagine ever writing/planning a plot to completion at this rate
@Plantorsomething Classic problem, if it's what I used to do to then you're not invested in your actual story yet because you haven't paid the price of entry. The price being time spent writing. I got my inspiration from a bunch of Stephen King lectures on writing. I really like his philosophy of not really planning a story at all. To the point that you don't even know if your character is going to survive or not at the end because you're literally making it up as you go along. Basically have as little planning and foundation and character arcs and all of that as possible. Best case none.
You don't want to know the ending. Let your own ending surprise you when the time comes.
Find a (1) single story idea you like. Some single character who you think has potential and put them in a place in your (very, very bare-bones) world and then just follow them with your mind's eye and report what's happening. Don't get caught in the preemptive world-building trap, it makes you feel like you're being productive, but the hard truth is that at the end of the day none of it matters if you don't put pen to paper so people can actually see your story.
I do a ‘soft’ offshoot of that. I basically get an idea and I write it down as one of those long, convoluted manga titles. “Everytime I die, I respawn as a trash mob at the bottom of the dungeon” was literally all I knew about the story when I started writing chapter 1 the next morning and now here we are =)
At this point, the story and world-building has grown so organically that I now have a clear plan of action for the future because as the world and the characters grow, you as a writer begin to understand them with a very deep nuance that you can't plan or account for. You can't build a tree, you know? It has to grow.
@DMRhodes Oooh very interesting! A bit too late for bare bones for me lol, and very debatable, but as the fastest way to gain writing experience, I’d say that sounds like it works pretty well! Hm, alright, I think I’ll try it out with my magic hive mind idea. It’ll be hard with my overthinking tendency, but what you said about world building hits really close to home! How about editing? I tried a similar approach before but got caught up rewriting the first chapter three times, but having no editing also sounds chaotic.
@Plantorsomething My method is that I write a chapter. Then I reread it out loud once immediately after and fix anything that sounds wrong. Then I run it through google docs once for machine spelling/grammar check. Done =)
Takes about an hour on an average day.
Don't touch it after that. Embrace the chaos. I get that we want to 'control' our worlds to keep our vision of them pure and authentic. But that's a bad road in my eyes, it's just the worldbuilding trap MKII. In the end you'll just end up re-editing chapter 1 six times instead of writing six more chapters. I've been down that road haha. Quantity has a quality all of its own.
Way I see it, it's better to have 7 'good' chapters instead of 1 'perfect' chapter. I can live with that because I know none of this is going to be my magnum opus, you know? But by producing more content I can get feedback faster from the audience, which will allow me to grow faster as an author than if I needed a week for a chapter and then still felt unsure about it after release
@DMRhodes Thank you so much! It’s a niche approach that definitely won’t work for everybody, but I think it’s honestly exactly what I need, because at this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if I made nothing for years.
@Plantorsomething Glad to help. Let's both do our best to tell our stories!
@DMRhodes Wanted to update, I’ve been trying your approach, taking the general idea of what you do, seeing what works for me, and going with my own flow. You honestly helped me become 400% a better writer! (I wrote and posted four chapters so far instead of none) so I just wanted you to know how much of a real inspiration you’ve been to me!
I don’t do what you said exactly, I kind of write the chapter and edit it as I go along, but never really changing the essence of what I’m writing at the time. I do one final read-through to see if things are good, and then go to post it. Then I fix all the little things when I realize that could make it better. Then I actually post it. Then I see a few minor-ish mistakes I missed and update the chapter about three times. It sounds really contrary to your style but in practice this is just my monkey brain compromising because it’s so drastically different to what I usually do, lol, and it really works for me.
And yes, this reply is half an excuse just to extremely subtly hint to you that I would love your opinion on my story cuz I’m really proud of it and you’re pretty much the reason it exists in the first place, and I’d feel too much like a beggar/annoyance/burden to ask directly. The other half is that I’m genuinely very thankful to you.
@Plantorsomething Awesome news friend! You've taken the first step, now you just need to keep going further! Consistency is key!
I really like how descriptive you get. I'm a big fan of slowing down the story if need be and filling out the world more, as you might have noticed. I notice you get a lot of comments on that stuff in particular, so my advice would be to stay true to your voice. Don't be scared to go as long or as deep as you want with descriptions. The audience on SH can be very action oriented and they tend to be impatient and they'll let you know that. But at the end of the day its your story, not theirs, so do what you want to do!
It can get scary, especially with your first story when people say they don't like this or that. But everyone's stories get that. Even Bob Ross videos have dislikes on youtube, so just keep going and tell your story how you want to tell it!
@DMRhodes Thankyou so much! Yeah, it’s super scary lol, but it’s a lot more fulfilling than keeping it all to myself and worrying to death over it! And yep, I’ll keep writing what I want to write, and thank you if you keep reading it! If not, thanks for reading any of it! Good luck to both of us!