by Naomi L. | February 8, 2017 | Blog, Creative Writing |
Valentine’s Day is around the corner, which means many of us creative writers are thinking more than ever about romance (at least, I am). All the talk of love in the air has gotten me thinking about my favorite love stories and the characters who bring them to life. February is the perfect month for romantic inspiration, so it’s no wonder I always take this time to indulge in stories about my favorite fictional couples. To be honest, there are probably too many to count, but I’ve managed to narrow my current favorites down to a few that I’d love to write about!
So to celebrate the upcoming holiday, here’s a list of six of my favorite fictional couples and why I love them. Enjoy, and Happy Valentine’s Day!
Warning: the following post may contain spoilers for Harry Potter, Pride and Prejudice, Friends, How I Met Your Mother, and The Hunger Games. Proceed with caution.
1) Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet
Could I really have started with any other couple? Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet has long been my favorite love story, so much so that I’ve written a post about it every year since I started blogging and even adapted the story into my own novel-length fanfiction (not sorry). It’s a tragic tale of passion thwarted by fate, and it may well be the most famous love story ever told.
Romeo and Juliet started out as lost and lonely teenagers who quickly found meaning for their lives in each other. They defied a generations-old feud through a forbidden love affair, complete with consummated marriage and the determination to be together at all costs. And though they didn’t get the happy ending they arguably deserved, they did immortalize themselves as the star-crossed young couple whose love finally ended years of violence and hatred. Love may not conquer all, but it’s still one of the most powerful forces on Earth!
2) Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger
To anyone who knows me well, it’s no secret that the Harry Potter books have been my favorite series since childhood. I grew up with J.K. Rowling’s beloved fantasy books and have been in love with her magical world for most of my life. Each new book was better than the last, and just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, I reached the second half of the series to find she had tossed the exact romantic subplot I wanted into the mix.
Ron and Hermione had a rocky start to their relationship, even as friends. Every Potter fan who read the entire series watched them grow from disgruntled acquaintances to close friends to jealous crushes to will-they-or-won’t-they admirers to romantic couple to happily married couple. It’s the perfect example of a childhood friend romance gone right, and Rowling couldn’t have done a better job of timing this beautiful love story all the way to its satisfying conclusion. Best friends forever indeed!
3) Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy
I finally got around to reading Pride and Prejudice last year, and I have to say it’s such a delightful story that I’ve ranked it among my favorite books ever. The story of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy is a complex tale of true love concealed beneath (and often obstructed by) a veil of manners and morality, with a hint of irony to comically highlight the incongruence between a charming demeanor and a good heart. These two are the ultimate proof that when it comes to romance, first impressions don’t matter as much as character, assuming both parties are willing to open their minds to humility and their hearts to the possibility of love where it’s least expected. Jane Austen was truly a master of romantic comedies!
4) Monica Geller and Chandler Bing
Ross and Rachel may have been the star couple of Friends, with their ten-season-long will-they-or-won’t-they story that culminated in a heartwarming “they will” (“I got off the plane!“), but my favorite romance in the series was the far more stable relationship between Monica and Chandler. After hooking up the night before Ross’s wedding in England, these two best friends embarked on a beautiful journey of love that became the saving grace of the show. You didn’t think viewers would hang around for ten seasons just to see Ross and Rachel get together for good, did you?
Monica and Chandler are a classic example of a romantic experiment that worked. While Friends didn’t start with the expectation of getting them together, their chemistry was so great from the earliest seasons that their entire relationship, from friendship to happy marriage, just felt natural and real. Sometimes true love really has been right in front of you all along!
5) Marshall Eriksen and Lily Aldrin
While diehard fans of How I Met Your Mother are still arguing over which couple was better in the Ted-Robin-Barney love triangle (Ted and Robin FTW!), I’m sure everyone can agree that Marshall and Lily were the most adorable pair in the series. Not only were they college sweethearts and each other’s first love, they maintained a loving and (mostly) stable relationship all the way to the show’s conclusion. From engagement to marriage to parenthood, these two continuously took on the challenges of a committed relationship and kept knocking them out of the park. And let’s be honest: while we all waited nine seasons for Ted to finally get to his happy ending, wasn’t it fun to watch Marshmallow and Lily Pad already living theirs? Seriously, cutest couple ever!
6) Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark
I admit it: I was one of the Hunger Games fans who cheered for Katniss and Peeta from the start. Not that I had anything against Katniss and Gale; I just preferred the dynamic between the two characters who were thrown into the Games together. Katniss has a strong spirit, which often manifests as a hardened demeanor and a refusal to show weakness through emotion. Peeta, on the other hand, is considerably softer and more sensitive, though no less strong in spirit than his fellow tribute. Their chemistry not only makes for an interesting relationship but a refreshing departure from the stereotypical “strong man, weak woman” pattern. An innovative love story for the novels’ young adult audience!
Over the course of three books/four movies, District 12’s “star-crossed” duo endure two Hunger Games and a revolution, through which they evolve from acquaintances to allies to a fake couple and finally emerge as a real couple in love. They go to hell and back for the greater cause at hand, but draw enough strength from each other to never lose themselves on the way (at least, not completely). So when these two finally earn their happy ending, you know it’s a love that’ll last. It seems the odds were in their favor after all!
What about you? Who are your favorite fictional couples? What love stories inspire your romantic fiction?
by Naomi L. | January 20, 2017 | J.C. Wolfe's Writing, Short Stories |
As the creature reared its massive ugly head, we all trembled. We had never seen anything like it. Where had it come from? What was it capable of? And why hadn’t we seen it coming? The answers were more terrifying than we dared to imagine.
The sorcerer smiled thinly at the crowd from the platform. His beast towered behind him, held fast to the ground by a massive chain that rattled whenever it roared. We shuddered to think its master could unleash it on us at any moment.
“My friends”, the magician cried as the audience grew quiet, “I am honored to be your champion. My beloved pet and I will be proud to serve as your defenders in this new age of peace and prosperity. But trust me, we could not have succeeded in ending this terrible reign of oppression without your overwhelming support, courage, and spirit. We have all won a grand victory today. This day will be remembered for centuries as the day we ended tyranny, the day we crushed the bloodsucking rats who thought they could steal your freedom and leech off your hard labor forever.”
“He’s talking about us”, I heard one of my friends mutter next to me through the thunderous applause. It was true: every right we had worked for over the past decade, every step we had taken in the name of justice, everything we had thought was for the good of the people, was now being undone before our eyes because it was only ever good enough for us. It was a cruel reminder of how fragile our world really was; the harder you fought for change, the more afraid and resistant people became.
“This is your time, my friends”, the sorcerer continued. The cold look in his eyes as he addressed the people sent a chill down my spine. “It’s time you took back what is rightfully yours. Together, we can return this land to the thriving state it once was. Things are going to be very different from now on.”
The rows of people around the platform cheered, while those of us huddled in the back of the crowd remained more lost and confused than we had ever been in recent memory. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The queen and her army were supposed to save us, to fight the dark forces and vanquish the evil into oblivion. We were supposed to be celebrating today. Instead, she had been defeated and most of us were left cowering like frightened children in the wake of the revolution. What had gone so wrong?
Some of us blamed the town criers for carrying false news and exaggerated reports of the army’s successes. Some of us blamed the queen’s advisors for devising a military strategy that ultimately failed. Some of us blamed the queen herself for overestimating her own power and placing her trust in the wrong people. And some of us were reduced to blaming each other for taking our beloved leaders for granted and not doing our part to defend the progress they had made possible.
In the end, it didn’t matter. We were all to blame for this travesty, we knew that, and now it was too late to stop the storm. History had already been changed. So now what?
“He’s right.”
My gaze fixed on the stage, I saw the others turning to face me from the corner of my eye. It might have been the weight of my words that made them stare, or perhaps they were just surprised that I had spoken for the first time in hours.
“What are you saying?” said one of my companions, her voice small and nervous. I shook my head.
“Things are going to be different. This is just the beginning. The queen is gone, the army is scattered, even the scholars are starting to disappear. There’s nobody left to protect us… so we have to protect ourselves. No running, no hiding, no pretending that everything is normal. It’s time to organize. It’s time to fight.”
“But…” another friend stammered, “how are we supposed to fight them when they have that… thing on their side? It’ll kill us as soon as they know we’re coming!”
“And who’s going to see us coming?” I said, turning to the group at last. It was the first time I’d smiled in weeks. “We’re rats, remember?”
The monster roared again, flaming locks of fur flying as it convulsed like a raging madman. Somehow that horrible sound made the crowd cheer even louder. Stoic as I planned to be for the foreseeable future, I turned my back on the holes in the wall and jumped down to walk away into the darkening streets. I didn’t have to look back to know my friends were only a few steps behind, nor that nobody else saw us leave. They never even knew we were there.
We still remember it as our darkest day. And though none of us knew exactly what to say, to think, to feel anymore, of one thing we were absolutely certain: these were going to be the longest and hardest fought years of our lives.
by Naomi L. | September 14, 2016 | Blog, Creative Writing, What If? Writing Prompts |
My apologies, but I must leave you all with another set of “What If?” Writing Prompts this week. As I finish preparing for the defense of my Master’s thesis, it seems the only thing on my mind these days is science, so I thought it would be appropriate to share some more fantasy and science fiction prompts. Have fun writing new stories from these ideas, and feel free to add more of your own!
What if… a massive meteor were heading toward Earth… and only you knew how to stop it?
What if… you found a capsule in your backyard containing an alien artifact?
What if… you were granted the power to shape-shift into one magical creature of your choice?
What if… you could learn the ability to breathe fire or ice?
What if… magic were a field of science?
Good luck spinning more tales of fantasy and science fiction!
If you have any “What If?” writing prompt suggestions (for any theme), please feel free to share them in the comments below. Ideas I like may be featured in future “What If?” posts, with full credit and a link to your blog (if you have one)! Also, if you’ve written a piece based on an idea you’ve found here, be sure to link back to the respective “What If?” post. I would love to see what you’ve done with the prompt! Thank you!
by Naomi L. | June 8, 2016 | Blog, Creative Writing, What If? Writing Prompts |
Okay, so this is a little embarrassing, but it seems I’m having trouble keeping up with blogging again. It’s hard to manage so many things at once, so for now I’ll have to tide over my creative writing topics with some “What If?” Writing Prompts. Thanks for understanding! Since I haven’t featured some in a while, now may be a good time to share a few more fantasy and science fiction prompts. See what stories you can create from these ideas! Enjoy!
What if… you and your pet switched bodies for a day?
What if… you had the power to rewind time at will?
What if… you found a portal to another dimension hidden in your own basement?
What if… all humans were naturally born with different magical abilities?
What if… you discovered that your computer had the ability to think for itself?
Have fun writing more fantasy and science fiction tales!
If you have any “What If?” writing prompt suggestions (for any theme), please feel free to share them in the comments below. Ideas I like may be featured in future “What If?” posts, with full credit and a link to your blog (if you have one)! Also, if you’ve written a piece based on an idea you’ve found here, be sure to link back to the respective “What If?” post. I would love to see what you’ve done with the prompt! Thank you!
by Naomi L. | March 30, 2016 | Blog, Creative Writing |
It’s time for another round of Silver Threading and Ronovan Writes‘s Writers Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge! I had so much fun with the romance prompt a couple of weeks ago that I decided to participate again! Here goes nothing!
The theme posted last week is one of my favorite creative writing topics: magic! The quote I chose for this challenge is by one of my favorite authors from my childhood, Roald Dahl:
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it. – Roald Dahl
This quote comes from Dahl’s last children’s story, The Minpins. In fact, these are the very last lines of his last story, making this quote a final message to his young readers before he passed on. Beautifully said, Mr. Dahl! And now here’s a short story I wrote inspired by this lovely quote. Enjoy!
Believe
Abby watched from behind a tree, waiting quietly with a piece of string clutched tightly in her hand. She had laid candies and chocolates under the box a few feet ahead; surely something would be hungry enough to come along and eat them soon.
She was right; within ten minutes, a few little balls of light appeared from behind another tree across the clearing. Abby watched as they slowly floated over to the box, and the moment they landed on the sweets, she pulled the string. A stick attached to its other end dislodged from under one side of the box, dropping it and trapping the figures inside.
“Gotcha!”
The eight-year-old grabbed a large glass jar sitting beside her and ran over to the box. A minute later, the jar contained a handful of small chocolates and three colorful glowing fairies. Abby smiled at the tiny creatures inside, who were too busy nibbling away at the sweets to even notice they had been captured.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered as if they were listening to her. “I promise I’ll let you go tomorrow.”
And she hurried away through her backyard into her house to punch some holes in the lid. She could hardly wait for tomorrow.
The next morning, Abby took the jar to school for Show and Tell. She was so excited for her classmates to see what she had caught that she couldn’t stop fidgeting in her seat. When it was finally her turn, she pulled the jar out of her backpack and hurried to the front of the room to proudly display it to the class. To her surprise, however, they simply stared at her in confusion.
“What’s so special about a jar of chocolates?” said a boy in the front row.
“It’s not the chocolates,” said Abby, amazed that anyone would ask such a silly question. “It’s what’s eating the chocolates!”
The other children looked closer, but they merely giggled in amusement.
“There’s nothing eating the chocolates!” a girl in the back exclaimed.
“Yes, there is! Look! Don’t you see the fairies?”
“Fairies?!” At this, all the other children burst out laughing. “There’s no such thing as fairies!”
“Ya-huh, they’re right here!” Abby held the jar up for the whole class to see, but the tiny glowing figures only seemed to be visible to her. All the other students began pointing at her and jeering.
“Abby believes in fairies!” they shouted. “What a dummy!”
The teacher tried to calm the class while Abby hugged the jar close, bowing her head to hide her watering eyes. She spent the rest of the school day sitting quietly in the corner of the room, and she went home that afternoon in tears.
That evening, Abby sat crying on her back porch, the fairies eating a fresh helping of candies in the jar beside her. She was so lost in thought over the day’s events that she didn’t realize a man had stepped out the back door onto the porch until he spoke.
“Abby, sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
Startled, Abby looked up to see her father standing to her right. Suddenly embarrassed, the girl wiped the tears from her eyes before she answered.
“Nothing, Daddy.”
“Are you sure?” His daughter looked away as he sat down beside her. It was then that he caught sight of the jar sitting between them. “Could it have anything to do with these fairies?”
Abby snapped her head up, her eyes wide with shock. Her father smiled.
“Your friends can’t see them either, huh?”
The girl hesitated, then shook her head. The next thing she knew, she was sharing all the events of the past 24 hours, from catching the fairies to trying to show them to her class to crying on the way home after being teased. She then listened as her father told his childhood story about the time he had found a gnome in his mother’s garden and tried to show it to the neighbor kids, only to be made fun of for having an “imaginary friend”.
“They laughed at me for weeks”, he said with a shrug, “but I knew what I saw. That gnome was no more imaginary than these fairies.”
He lifted the jar and unscrewed the lid. Abby reached out her hand and her dad tilted the jar to let one of the glowing creatures tumble out into her palm. It was still nibbling on part of a chocolate coin. Father and daughter laughed as the former reached into the container and extracted a lollipop from which the other two fairies were dangling.
“Daddy”, said the eight-year-old as she stared curiously at the creature in her hand, “why can’t the other kids see them?”
Abby’s father set the fairies down on the porch, then split the lollipop in half and offered a piece to each of them. He thought seriously for a moment before turning back to his daughter and smiling again.
“Because they aren’t looking for them.”
Abby faced her dad once more as he scooped the fairies up from the porch. She was too amazed to speak, instead sitting in stunned silence while they both watched the tiny creatures munching away on the sweets in their hands.
“Don’t ever change, princess,” he said after a minute. “This is my greatest advice to you. Keep on believing in magic. Always look for the beauty in the world. And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you, because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.”
Father and daughter grinned at each other, then simultaneously lifted their hands to let the fairies fly away into the forest behind their house. Abby huddled close to her father when he put his arm around her, and as the two of them watched the little balls of light disappear into the night, he whispered with a smile…
“Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
I hope you enjoyed my story! Be sure to join the Writers Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge and share your quote-inspired works! Thanks for reading!
Writers Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge is a weekly blogging event by Colleen Chesebro of Silver Threading in collaboration with Ronovan Hester of Ronovan Writes. Be sure to check out both these authors’ blogs for your weekly dose of inspiration! Happy writing!
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