Writing Tools: The Idea Matrix

The Creative Process

In the beginning, stories are nothing but paper filled with ideas. Your ideas. Everything, from the characters to the story to the dramatic twist comes from your little head. You are the creative master. So why not make things a little easier for your noggin’ and add a little structure to your process.

Why a Matrix

Let’s use characters as an example for now. Anyone who had ever written something probably knows that you never ever just write a story about a boy. Your story of a boy eventually becomes:

The bullied – boy in school – who lost his mother at a younger tender age – and lives with his caring uncle  – who wishes the boy will crawl out of his shell one day  – to fulfil his fullest potential.

OR

The bullied –  boy in school – who loathes his mother for abandoning him – because his uncles hides the truth from him – thus making him think that she is the devil incarnated – which is why he cuts himself and just bit off the tip of Eric’s nose.

He doesn’t even need to be a boy, you can turn him into a girl, or a middle age accountant. The idea here is to identify the key traits of the character and put them down into a interchangeable grid format. In the above examples. the characters can easily be swapped with just a few key words. Boy – Girl, Angry – Sad, Fulfilment – Frustration.

And to do this efficiently, you need some sort of matrix. Here’s an example of a matrix that I have used to build my own characters thus far:

Looks simple doesn’t it? Yet, it still managed to serve multiple purposes:

1. It clearly presents to you the choices to transform your character.
2. It inspires you by allowing you to randomly mix and match.
3. It saves you a lot of rewriting, forgetting and headaches.
4. It acts as a database for your old characters if you ever need to reference them.

Using A simple Matrix

You can use very simple ones like the one above, which focuses purely on the characters and let your creative juices filll in the rest. Below are just some examples I just thought of literally 2 minutes ago:

E.g. The Hungry Video Game Nerd opens his fridge and grabs a coke, accidentally brushing against the head of his father. He wouldn’t let him game in peace, so he killed him.

E.g. The Jaded Pregnant Girl is sitting at the abortion clinic… again. All the waiting is making her mad, she has a hot date coming up in a few hours and just wants to get it over and done with.

Going further with the concept, you can even take a well-known, well-referenced character, change enough parts of it, and you get a new character completely unique to you and you alone!

Expanding the matrix

If you’re sort of a OCD freak like me, and would like to creative a more extensive matrix which extends the concept to plot, theme and what-nots, here’s my expanded matrix.

Click for a better view

For an extended Matrix, the basic premises should be filled:

• Who? The Main Character + optional major secondary characters or villains
• Why? The Purpose + optional smaller conflict that leads to the big one + optional plot twists.
•  Where? The Setting + optional smaller, more intimate start point and bigger end game
• When? Time Frame + Optional jumping to and fros if your story calls for it.
• How? The story of the character moving ahead + logic fail-safes + your gimmick

Of course, none of the above should be compulsory. If anything else, having a few gaps would allow you to get the creative process going. This full blown matrix should really only used for archiving purposes or just to stare at when you’re fresh out of ideas.

The combinations here are endless if you’re looking for zany wacky possibilities.

Jaded – Superhero – who attends a High School Reunion – but feels he has nothing else to live for – meets a WitchDoctor –  tell hims he can be someone else in another life – makes him goes back in time to kill his own parents – ending up in a alternate universe of his own doing – but climax and conclusion open for you to fill in. 

Will that work? I don’t know. But it is a hell of a original idea as far as I’m concerned, and that’s what counts. From a bunch of old stories I came up with something new, in two minutes by the way. And I only have eight tracks to work with now. Think of the endless possibilities when you fill this up to twenty, forty.

If you’re a burned out writer looking for inspiration, give this method a try. It helped me, I’m sure it’ll help you too. 

Writing Tools is a series I wish to expand upon in future where I talk about the various resources and processes that budding writers out there can use to better their own creations. Most of this concepts should be easily replicatable and I will present them in the form of my own exercises. If you have any ideas of your own, kindly share them as well, in your own blog or in the comments below!

Update – Practical Exercise Example 

Forgot to include a practical example. Here’s how I came up with a story combining 4-5 elements of what I’ve written before into what is more or less 1/2 the material I need for an entire story. Using a Private Eye from an un-uploaded early work regarding a Demon pet, using the old man from The Biodegradable Urn, using Butterfly Lady from the self-titled prompt, using Japanese man from The Immortal Jellyfish and basically borrowed plot lines from everywhere else. I can easily throw in Irish Manager Bob from Pixel Land as a circus ring leader, and the sugar-loving crazy demon imp from my first story (which sadly I will never upload). Maybe borrow a few spiders from Peter’s work as well.

I just picked and matched this in 10 minutes

Click for a better view

Related articles

• Using Dialogue More Effectively (wilsonkhoo.wordpress.com)
• The Two Pillars Of Plot Progression (wilsonkhoo.wordpress.com)
• Lee Child: Write What You Feel (wilsonkhoo.wordpress.com)

Using Dialogue More Effectively

Searched for help on the internet again when I ran into trouble with my last story. I had pages and pages of nearly unbroken dialogue, which while tells the story, is kinda flat. Aside from inserting action bits in between, I was wondering how else I could make the dialogue read smoother. i.e. In more direct term, less stunted.

Important: What I want is smoother, more flowing, not more emotive or dramatic. That gets tiresome after a while. The problem with dialogue is when you try to add structure to it. He says “something” in one paragraph, she says “whatever” in the next. Then to break up the monotony and make it seem like there’s some up and downs going on, we rely on describing how she is feeling or how the words come out.

Using an extreme example I found online from TheWriterlyLife

This is bad:

“You broke my heart!” she screamed.
“It’s not my fault!” he growled.
“But you cheated on me!” she wailed.
“I’m sorry — it just happened,” he stammered.

This is better:

“You broke my heart!” she said.
“It’s not my fault!” he said.
“But you cheated on me!”
“I’m sorry — it just happened.”

And as TheWriterlylife explains:

The problem with this passage is that the tags start overshadowing the actual words being spoken. They’re completely unnecessary. They are often crutches in our writing; in reality, the words themselves should suggest the tone with which they are spoken. In fact, using “he said” and “she said” is so familiar to readers that the words blur into the background, retreating so that the main action of dialogue can come to the fore. That’s why it’s best to keep wordy dialogue tags to a minimum and just use “said” for most of your dialogue.

Often you try to describe what she is feeling. This is simply TELLING the reader instead of EXPRESSING it to him. I’m looking through some of my past writing and realised that I’m pretty guilty of it. I’ve read about it before, about how the simple “said” is actually more invisible and thus better than laughed, growled, snarled, chortled. One is a speech, one is an action, putting them side by side tends to draw the attention away from the other.

I’m going to be slightly more mindful of this moving ahead, which includes using the following in dialogue more often

1. Better use of punctuation. Question, exclamation points and the infamous incomplete sentence like but… have to be used more correctly and to have more impact.
2. Expressive Words Adopting the use of exclamation words or expressive words more (which I’m having some trouble with) like What the hell, damn you — Admit it, you automatically exclamation pointed the words without even thinking right?
3. One action per dialogue Trying to let one single action at the start of a mini-conversation drive the emotion and action of 3-4 lines of to-and-fro dialogue.

One book I can recommend where this is used a lot is The Bookcase by Nelson DeMille. There’s a lot of interrogation scenes in it where it’s just 2 people going back and forth for quite a few pages. So basically, he had the same problem as me – crapload of dialogue, but he handled it like a best-selling author would and I didn’t.

Here’s a lengthy chunk from Nelson Demille’s The Book Case

“Good luck.” Every store clerk and waiter in this town wants you to know they’re really a writer, an actor, a musician, or an artist. Just in case you thought they were a clerk or a waiter. I asked Scott, “What time did you get here this morning?”

He replied, “As I told the other policeman, I got here about seven thirty.”

“Right. Why so early?”

“Early?”

“You’re scheduled for eight thirty.”

“Yeah…Mr. Parker asked me to get here early.”

“Why?”

“To stock shelves.”

“The shelves look stocked. When’s the last time you sold a book?”

“I had some paperwork to do.”

“Yeah? Okay, take me through it, Scott. You got here, opened the door—front door?”

“Yeah.” He reminded me, “It’s all in my statement.”

“Good. And what time was that?”

“I opened the door a little before seven thirty.”

“And it was locked?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you know that Mr. Parker was here?”

“No. Well, not at first. I noticed the lights were on in his office up in the loft, so I called up to him.”

“I assume he didn’t answer.”

“No…he…so I thought maybe he was in here—in the stockroom—so I came in here to get to work.”

This basically follows the principles I stated above. Doesn’t look half-bad at all without any crutched expressive words and it’s a very decent chunk. One benefit of this style is how flowing the dialogue goes. In your mind, you don’t really stop to think until the end of the conversation.

To conclude, read the article from MyWriterlyLife, read a few technically-well written books like The Book Case and just be mindful.

P.S: I’m currently reading Bag Of Bones by Stephen King as well, realised the conversation pieces are written pretty much the same way. So remember, let your words do the expressing and flush the telling expressions down the toilet.

P.S: As to what happened to my dialogue in my story as mentioned at the start of the article. After cutting out all the saids, chides, rebukes, angrily and hesitations, I think i shaved off close to 500 words without losing any intent.

Until next time…

Related articles (In case you want to explore more about dialogue, the WarriorWriters one is my fave)

• Les Edgerton Shows How to Write Amazing Dialogue – Part 1 (warriorwriters.wordpress.com)
• Writing dialogue: the accepted way of talking to yourself. (tismond.wordpress.com)
• Dialogue, glorious dialogue – Instalment 3 of the Dialogue mini series (ofglassandbooks.wordpress.com)

Becoming a Storyteller: Building Initial Ideas, or, Get Thee to a Nunnery!

Excellent post on inspiration for sparking a story

The Cure For Writer’s Block: Writing Through The Pain

I was originally going to title this post “There’s something about Mondays.” since it has occurred to me that my most productive content-creation days have always been Mondays, but I don’t want to curse myself.

Not only am I up to 15,000 words now, or halfway through my story. I’ve written close to 3,000 words today with another 2 hours of scheduled writing time to go, I’ve also managed to rewrite my first 5,000 words 1.5 times in editing. I think a schedule where I just go about my editing when my energy is low, is really helping a lot. Not in the sense that the edits are good, but that it drives me forward to write later on. My day started horribly, and now its just going so smoothly.

Another day, another new idea that randomly comes up while writing and I’m rushing through the dialogue and action now, intending to go back and squeeze in the narrative in the places where I want it to slow down. Looking back, I think I might just let my imagination run wild beyond my 30,000 word limit now and cut out the boring bits later on – which tend to be narratives… honestly what gives, feels like I’m writing a script.

Oh well, after 3 days of burn, at least I’m back to having fun again. Hope this boom-bust in my writing doesn’t turn out to be a cyclical thing.

Also, as a side note, I guess it’s important to plan out the boring / transitioning bits of the story as well…. those are the parts I have the MOST trouble on. The rest of the story which are really the important parts, is where I have no trouble with once I get into the flow.

So cheers! Suck it Monday blues!

P.S: Game Of Thrones Season 3 is off to a very good start! Still has a meaningless nude scene, but I absolutely love how deep the scarred the Lannisters are beneath all that pomp. It’s hard to believe there can be a antagonist as well-liked as Cersei and Tyrion.

 

Mark of Child: Part 3

Mark of Child: Part 3

When Leticia opens the door to her place, everybody’s senses were immediately assaulted by the sweet smell of incense burning in her apartment.

“Just a old habit,” Leticia says, as she takes off her shoes and enters the dimly-lit unit. She snuffs out the powdery sticks burning away in a jar on the dining table. “My grandfather use to light these around the house every night, to keep away bad spirits.”

“I don’t think bad spirits in America would know that,” Matthew jokes as he and the girls cringe at the sickly sweet odor. Taking Leticia’s lead, they remove their footwear and place them into the shoe stand before following her into the house.

Taking in the interior, they can see Leticia’s heritage and beliefs marking their presence in every corner of the apartment. On the floor next to the door, there is a little altar with an offering of fruit in front of it. Next to it, a strange statue of a deity or humanoid creature stands guard over the door. It looks like a miniature big-headed human with claws drawn in a threatening stance.

Looking into the living room, two wooden carvings are on the walls, one is shaped crudely like the head of a tiger, while the other resembled a boar with tusks. They hang on either side of a larger altar, table-sized this time, ladened with offerings of meats, fruits and more incense. From the door, Joan can see an intricate octagonal box in the centre, and in front of everything lays a thickly bound journal.

“Is that the book,” Joan asks, walking up to touch it. Her hands are almost on it when Leticia suddenly snaps, “Don’t!”

Joan pulls her hands back immediately. Flushing, she quickly offers her apologies. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“That’s my grandfather’s altar,” Leticia explains, “We don’t remove anything from it until we ask him for permission. That’s how we show our respect to the dead.”

“Sorry,” Joan mumbles as she walks back to stand beside her scowling sister.

“Try not to touch anything else will ya.”

“Take a seat, I need to make ready first before I can get the book,” Leticia says, scrubbing her hands at the kitchen sink before toweling them dry.

“Do what?” Penny asks as the three of them settles down onto the sofa.

“Like I said, I need to ask for permission.”

An awkward silence fills the room as Leticia moves in front of the altar and starts chanting in another tongue.

Penny and Joan looks over at Matthew who only shrugs his shoulders. “Don’t look at me,” he whispers, “This is the first time she’s invited me over.”

The three of them look on with bated breath, listening as Leticia’s chanting grows louder. Her body quivers, swaying from side to side as she enters into a trance-like state before their eyes. Joan, frightened by the ominous chanting, squeezes herself next to Penny and holds on to her tightly.

Matthew rises from his seat, but Penny puts a firm hand on him and indicates with her eyes that he should sit down and let this play out. Minutes pass as the pungent cloy in the air starts to make everyone uncomfortable.

Joan breaks into a cold sweat as her eyes fixate on the swaying motion of Leticia, unable to blink or turn away. She is all but ready to bolt, when finally, the chanting stops. The air seems to clear as everyone starts to relax again, breathing easier.

“Leticia?” Penny asks in a soft voice.

The still body of Leticia does not respond. Her eyes, still closed, start to twitch. Suddenly, she speaks again, in the same language she used earlier. Not in a sing-song chant, but in conversation. From her speech, it is evident that Leticia is speaking to someone or something in this room. Questions, answers, a few replies that sound like yes, then she starts to giggle out loud.

A creeping chill went down Joan’s back. The ritual happening before her is just too too much for her young mind to take. “That’s it, I’m out,” she says, making for the door.

Penny hisses at her and tells her to sit down, “You wanted this remember?”

“I don’t care anymore,” Joan replies, acting impulsive out of fear. She runs to the door and pulls it open, ready to run home if need be.

“Where are you going Joan? Grandfather says yes.”

The hairs on Joan’s back starts to stand. Leticia is speaking to her directly. Turning around, she sees a smiling Leticia, book in hand, back to her normal self. “Oh my god Leticia, I’m so sorry, but you scared the shit out of me!” Joan exclaims, awash with relief and laughing at her own cowardly behavior.

“Not to worry Joan, I should have warned you all before I started,” Leticia says with a good-natured smile. “Believe me, I feel the same way when I hear some Christians shouting when they pray.”

“Joan, get back in here!” Penny snaps, staring crossly at her sister for making yet another scene.

“Relax Penny, it’s all cool,” Matthew says, turning to smile at Joan as he intercedes on her behalf. Sheepishly, she returns to her spot as the rest gathers around the living room table.

With everyone in place, Leticia kneels down onto the carpeted flooring in front of the sofa, and places her grandfather’s book in front of them. “I must warn you, this is a book about magic, life and death. Inside, you will find many disturbing things. Some will be familiar, like the drawing of body parts. Others will be alien to you. My advice is to focus only on what you need, and forget the rest of what you see.”

Matthew and Penny nod in unison, turning to look at Joan. Still feeling a little shaken, Joan swallows hard before nodding her head, remembering full well that she is the one who asked for this in the first place.

She stares at the book, and its simple unmarked binding that laid forbidden just moments ago. Now, it’s about to spill its secrets on a group of unsuspecting youths. Somewhere inside its worn pages, is a centuries-old formula that could turn back the clock and repair the damage that Joan had inflicted on herself. All they need to do now, is find it.

Leticia opens the cover of the books, flipping delicately through its thick fibrous pages. The book is written in the language of her people, a deviation of modern Malay that has been adopted widely by the city folk. Words start in one handwriting, and end in another, as countless generations of bomohs add to its collective knowledge.

Each page is filled with notes and little corrections as Leticia scans through them, trying to make sense of the scribbles. But for the rest, it is the pictures accompanying the words that give them pause.

Crudely inked drawings, some no more than scratches, depict creatures and demons in various forms. Bats, tigers, boars, and even the insects of the earth all seem to play a part in inspiring the drawings within.

But these are only the first. As Leticia’s hand flies through the pages, the monsters take on human forms. A head here, a hand there, twisted beings fill entire pages in morbid detail. Some are shambling beings with guts turned inside out, others have additional limbs extending from their rears. Naked horrors, with neither mouth nor genitals jump from the pages, filling their heads with grotesque images of sexless beings crawling silently towards them.

“Ah here we are, childbirth. This is the section. Keep an eye out for a symbol that looks like the the word Janin somewhere in here. J-A-N-I-N. It stands for fetus, which is what we are looking for.”

Why did she have to mention that, Joan shudders at the imagery of floating fetuses. She closes her eyes and sees them, little unformed babies trapped in translucent wombs red with blood. They stare at her with black unblinking eyes, waving webbed hands and crying out for her.

“Please… can we just stop for a moment, please… let me… let me… Oh god I can’t breathe.”

End of Part 3

<– Part 1   <– Part 2

Should be pretty obvious where I’m going with this now. Still I’m having a lot of fun with this story and have a lot more I want to write. Apologies about some quirks with the PoV of the story. I’ll get them sorted out next time. I still haven’t figured out whether I want to go from Joan purely, or try some other approach. 

Mark of Child: Part 2

Mark of Child: Part 2

An hour later, the girls arrives outside the dorm room of one Matthew Banks, a struggling student doing his graduate thesis in tribal cultures at the local university.

“Now, just leave the talking to me. If there’s anyone who can tell us about mystic magic, it’ll be him,” Penny says, petting her hair and adjusting her blouse to make sure nothing is out of place.

“He studies black magic?” Joan asks with fascinated eyes.

“No, he studies the people who studies black magic. He mentioned it… at some gathering. ”

“How did you know him?”

Penny stares at Joan with a look that says mind your own business, before knocking on the door.

From inside the room, came a loud tumbling noise and the creak of the wooden floor boards underneath. Whispers emanate from the room as the girls can clearly hear the voice of a man and woman coming from inside.

From the corner of her eye, Joan could see Penny’s expression, going from one of shock only moments earlier, to one of black hatred.

The door opens,  and a wide-eyed handsome blonde with a head of bed hair opens the door, pulling on a shirt. “Penny, what are you doing here?”

Forcing a smile, Penny cut right through the pleasantries. “We need your help Matthew. My sister, Joan, here has some questions which you might be able to help with.” she says, throwing a quick glance behind the man. “Are we interrupting anything?”

Matthew smiles and brings out the girl hiding behind the door. She walks to the door wrapped in the blanket. “This is Leticia, she’s an exchange student from South East Asia.”

“Hi,” says the attractive dark-skinned Asian girl clearly used to American sensibilities and freedom by now. Still she hides herself behind Matthew. Pleasantries and introductions are made once again as a visibly black-faced Penny shakes the hand of Leticia.

Oblivious, Matthew turns to Joan. “So which part of tribal culture are you interested in?” he asks, happy to meet a fellow enthusiast.

“Not exactly culture,” Joan answers, uncomfortable in discussing this in the open. “I’m interested in finding out more about their medicine. Is there somewhere we can go to discuss this somewhere more quiet?”

“Sure, there’s a cafe nearby, give us one sec and we can all go together.”

Joan wanted to tell him that they wish to speak with him privately. But the doors closes before she can act. The couple get dressed behind closed doors, while Joan watches a brooding Penny pace the floor outside. In minutes, everyone is ready and they made their way to the cafe.

Sitting down, Leticia volunteers to get the drinks while the three of them talk, relieving the girls the pressure of having to get rid of her.

“So, tribal medicine?” Matthew begins, getting things rolling.“Which cultures would you like to start with. African, Aborigines, American Indians?”

Joan looks at Penny, who decides to speak on her behalf of her sister. “Matthew listen, I’m going to be very direct here. We’re trying to find out if there alternative methods that these woman… you know, control the number of children they have.”

Matthew blinks, staying silent for a moment. He’s clearly not prepared for such a query. “Wow, that’s a very specific question, umm yes I’ve.. hmm.. I’ve read about such primitive birth control methods before. I could direct you to a few books or research papers if you like…”

“No Matthew, not birth control, I’m talking about abortion here. And were looking for someone someone familiar with such tribal practices in this town. We need his services now,” Penny says as a matter of fact.

Matthew narrows his eyes, “Wait, are you…”

“Look, just help us alright.”

Leticia returns with the drinks. “Hey, what you guys talking about?” she asks, joining in the conversation as she takes the seat beside Matthew.

“Tribal abor…medicine,” he mumbles, racking his brains for an answer to Penny’s query.

“Oh, what about it, maybe I can help,” Leticia says casually, stirring her latte. “My grandfather use to be a medicine man in West Java.”

The girls suddenly perk, Joan especially. After all the luck she’s had today, this is probably the first piece of good news she’s heard all day.

“What do you mean medicine man?” Penny asks suspiciously, unwilling to divulge too much to this man-stealer from halfway around the globe.

Leticia shrugs. He cares for his village, you know. Medicine, rituals, customs, the whole deal. Where I come from, we call him a bomoh, which literally means tribal shaman.”

“Leticia’s family comes from a long line of Javanese chieftains and bomohs,” Matthew adds, holding her hand and smiling at her. “They’re very highly respected by the tribesmen. For the longest time, her ancestors stayed in the jungles of Sumatra before they moved into the city,”

Joan can hardly believe her luck, she casts aside all worries and the doubts of Penny as she proceeds to tell them both the truth. Matthew sits back in his chair and whistles a long note as Joan finishes her tale, while Leticia looks on at her with heartfelt sadness.

“Oh you poor dear! I know how you feel, the same thing happened to my aunt long ago as well. Such things are a death sentence in tribal cultures back then. Woman who get pregnant without a husband are deemed to be evil spirits, and the child in their womb is cursed to be the devil’s child.

“What happens to these women?” Joan asks, expecting more to the tale.

Leticia shrugged, “Where my family comes from, they bury the woman alive. My grandfather once told me that you can still hear them screaming from under the earth for days after that.”

Joan’s face turns a ghastly white. Suddenly, getting screamed at by father and ridiculed by her friends doesn’t seem like so big a deal after all.

“Wait, how do you know all this?” Penny asks, still not entirely trusting of this woman.

“When he was alive, grandfather taught me the ways of the tribe,” Leticia explains, “That is until my father found out and burned everything in my room. He had a big fight with grandfather over this, he doesn’t want any more black magic in the family.”

“Strange, I could have sworn you used a love charm on me,” Matthew jokes, throwing Leticia a cheeky look while Penny fumes in silence.

“Wait, what black magic?” Penny asks, interrupting the lovebirds.

“Never mind that Penny, can we go back to the woman, what did they do if they want to avoid their sentence?” Joan asks, anxious to hear where this is going.

Leticia smiles, “My grandfather had a remedy if these woman came to him before they got caught. Of course, its a secret, the tribal leaders will never stand for such a thing.”

“That’s great!” Joan screams, jumping up in her seat. She could hardly believe her ears. This night seems to be getting better and better. Thank god they had the luck to find Leticia here. Matthew is turning out to be quite a bum.

“But…” Penny cuts in, staring at Joan to calm down, “There’s always a but somewhere inside, am I right Leticia? ”

She nods, “Yes, black magic always comes at a cost, at least that’s what it says in the book.”

“You even have a book on this? Joan asks, getting more and more impress with Leticia by the minute.

“Didn’t your father burn everything?” Penny interjects.

“Yea, well grandfather gave it to me for safekeeping before he died. My family has no idea that it even exists. It’s a strange book, you’ll know what I mean when you see it,” Leticia says, sipping her latte.

Eyes light up across the table. “You have the book here?

“Of course, I can’t leave it with my parents,” Leticia smirks, looking at us like it should be obvious.

Tiny wheels in Joan’s head starts to click into place. She leans forward and looks at Leticia with serious eyes, “Will you help me Leticia?”

“I don’t know Joan,” Matthew says urging caution. “You should let me take a look at it first, maybe…”

“No, I can’t wait. Will you help me?” Joan asks again.

“Joan, Matthew’s right.” Penny says, siding with reason, “We’re dealing with something we don’t understand here.”

Joan turns and glowers at her sister, “Penny, you promised me anything.”

“Yes but…” Penny looks at the hopeful eyes of her sister and knows that this is a lost cause. “Alright fine, whatever. Leticia, you’re sure it’s going to be safe?”

Leticia nods her head. “Our ancestors have been using it for generations, can’t see what’s wrong. Of course, we might need to find the necessary herbs, that might prove tricky.”

“Between the horticultural lab and greenhouses here on campus, the medicinal shops in Chinatown, and the weird gypsy place down on the west end,  I’m sure we’ll find what we need,” Matthew suggests, actually saying something useful for the first time.

“Well! Let’s get started,” Joan says to all the waiting faces, eager to get this over with once and for all. Matthew and Penny look at each other grimly as they reluctantly agree.

“Great, to my apartment then,” Leticia chirps, “Let’s see what grandfather’s book has to say.”

 END PART 2

<– Return to Part 1

Please let me know how this passage is able to capture your attention. I’m trying to build up the thing here, but might be too draggy. But basically, I’ve passed the first pillar here and will be delving into the action proper soon. Also looking for a more readable theme, looking at Mimbo Pro. 

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