Random things you've made up for your stories

[Bubo_bubo]

Well, it looks like he died about four years after it opened, so at least he didn't have to suffer for too long.

Oh, this is pretty good: "Maupassant penned his own epitaph: 'I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.' " Jesus, he makes me look cheerful in comparison.

He was not in a good place at the end of his life, suffering from both degrading mental and physical health (and when he died he was only 43). And as regards that epitaph, I can only find that in English, which makes me a bit suspicious, especially since that line in Wikipedia does not give a reference. (The French Wiki page does not mention an epitaph, but quotes a moving speech by Zola, who calls him one of the people that have been both most happy and most unhappy during their life).

 

[oggbashan]

Ghosts that can become solid; robots; androids, unbirth (physically impossible); mythical giant squid (that cannot survive except in the very deep ocean but mine lived in a tank); witches with impossible powers...

 

[yowser]

At first I thought there were only a couple items, the major one a 15th century occult manuscript that spun off three stories, but then I realised there were far more inventions: The Google Condom, The Fitbutt (a 'smart' buttplug), the 'Back to Nature' music festival, magic pens and keys and books, and innumerable places (Stoutwood GA, and a whole world: Wensworth, Fernwood, etc.)

What's the fun if you can't make stuff up?

 

[gunhilltrain]

He was not in a good place at the end of his life, suffering from both degrading mental and physical health (and when he died he was only 43). And as regards that epitaph, I can only find that in English, which makes me a bit suspicious, especially since that line in Wikipedia does not give a reference. (The French Wiki page does not mention an epitaph, but quotes a moving speech by Zola, who calls him one of the people that have been both most happy and most unhappy during their life).

Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not a reliable a source for many things, unless it's a very specific list of something. (Like, I don't know, every bus line in New York, where I have yet to find an error.) I once corrected something that I was sure was wrong, but I generally don't bother. It used to be that almost anybody could dig into it and mess around, but I'm not sure if it's still their policy.

 

[AlexBailey]

I set a story at what is basically the Santa Monica pier in Southern California but I made the pier larger than it is and I invented a shop dedicated to earrings. I have the vaguest childhood memory of a similar place, probably at Cannery Row in Monterey.



------
The shop is old and iconic. It's near the end of the pier, across from the fancy seafood restaurants. It caters to romantics who have gone as far west as they can. A sign in the window keeps a tally of over a quarter-million ears pierced since they first opened....

...Shards of light sparkle all around the room, reflections from spotlights on the water of a decorative fountain dance across the ceiling, striking mirrors and hanging crystals. Everything in the store is glittering. Endless racks and trays of earrings are organized into different themed sections. No one could wear them all in a lifetime. There's an old brass salon chair, surrounded by windows to the sea and mirrors on the walls. I recognize the room as the background in pictures in the hallway at home.

My sisters had their ears pierced here. They had pictures taken on their seventh birthdays, sitting in that chair with their fresh new studs.
-----

 

[Omenainen]

Oh, I’ve made up all sorts of things. In one story I needed a name for a band and had to really work for it, because the first two or three I thought of turned out to be existing bands, and I didn’t want that. I’ve made up methods for therapy, customizable sexbots and a virus that effectively ends mankind. And magical cowboy boots and a hat to go with them. Among other things.

I’ve never understood the “write what you know” advice. Where’s the fun in that?

 

[MelissaBaby]

You need to do Kingsville. Have it name after a fictional horror author King Cane or something like that.

Well, the main character in The Dancing Ghost of Webster's Gore is a horror author named Jared Prince...

 

[Duleigh]

I’ve never understood the “write what you know” advice. Where’s the fun in that?

If it's not fun, you're not doing it right.

I LOVE to write about regions and areas that I'm familiar with, basing my characters on off the wall people I've known and loved. All of that lets me become Bob Ross painting a compelling story with a keyboard instead of a 3" brush and a knife. And the readers know when you're comfortable with the background "colors" and will believe much more readily what you "paint" in the foreground.

 

[NC_Coastal]

Well, the main character in The Dancing Ghost of Webster's Gore is a horror author named Jared Prince...

That's one of the best stories I've ever read here.

 

[MelissaBaby]

That's one of the best stories I've ever read here.

Wow. Thank you very much.

 

[NC_Coastal]

It's such a well-written story, perfecty Gothic with a beautiful, shocking finish. Love how you completed the circle, so to speak. Loved it. (I also love Ramona; she's quite a gal.)

 

[SamScribble]

I have used the same (fictitious) restaurant in several (unrelated) stories. And a couple of readers have told me that they dined at said restaurant when they were visiting London. Happily, both readers seem to have enjoyed their meals there.

 

[Voboy]

So many.

My most prolific is Secret Whispers, the VS analogue at which all my discriminating female characters purchase their underthings. When I need an InstaTwitPageFaceSpace analogue, my characters use Pixboox.

But my favorite is probably Ahab's, a regional chain of coffeehouses. I don't think it's ever come up in a story, but the intent was for the employees to be able to draw themselves up and quite haughtily tell people, "Well, of course the coffee here is better than it is at that other place. Because Ahab was Starbuck's boss."

 

[Voboy]

Or Jamaica Plains in the Boston area which would be a good setting for a horror story because if you've ever been there after dark its scary.

Jamaica Plain. No S.

The locals would read that, and they'd point and laugh at you.

 

[lovecraft68]

Jamaica Plain. No S.

The locals would read that, and they'd point and laugh at you.

If they laugh I'll tell them Roxbury is cooler than them.

 

[Rustyoznail]

"Tales of Leinyere" has been great for making stuff up. All the ideas bouncing around the thread evolved into a story of a magic based steam punk world with Anocots, autolandaus powered by magic, and descriptions of things not quite in English.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

AVCs - Arcano-Voltaic Cells. Batteries that slowly recharge drawing on the ambient magic.

 

[RetroFan]

I've invented quite a few fictional movies, TV shows and books in my stories. Also in my April Fool's Day story this year 'The Lost Hours With Annabelle' I invented an AM radio station in Melbourne Australia which the two main characters listen to with the call-sign 3QG, but there's not a radio station in Melbourne that used that call sign either today or in 1962 when the story is set.

I also sometimes have characters wearing offensive tee-shirts. For example in my 'PTA Queen Bee & Teen Rebel' story main character Jenna, a heavy metal fan, is seen wearing a black tee-shirt containing an image of the Devil with 'Satan Loves Suicide' inscribed upon it.

 

[FifthEstate]

I made up a fictional place called The Bullpen that I have referenced in other stories and most recently had my protagonists from “Cuckolds Anonymous Ch. 04” visit. I describe it as such: The initial club, like all those opened since, had morphed from its original design into a large multi-faceted interracial entertainment Mecca. In addition to the nightclubs and sex theatres, Bullpen venues now included massage parlors, Queen of Spades tattoo and body piercing centers, vast adult sexwear and novelty shops, full state-of-the-art workout gyms, pools, saunas and decadent hot tub facilities, BDSM rooms, private overnight accommodations, and the largest interracial video production company in the country. In the past two years, as much as 75% of the high-quality IR porn produced in the United States was filmed at Bullpen studios—much of it containing amateur wives and Bullpen bulls.

 

[lovecraft68]

I made up a fictional place called The Bullpen that I have referenced in other stories and most recently had my protagonists from “Cuckolds Anonymous Ch. 04” visit. I describe it as such: The initial club, like all those opened since, had morphed from its original design into a large multi-faceted interracial entertainment Mecca. In addition to the nightclubs and sex theatres, Bullpen venues now included massage parlors, Queen of Spades tattoo and body piercing centers, vast adult sexwear and novelty shops, full state-of-the-art workout gyms, pools, saunas and decadent hot tub facilities, BDSM rooms, private overnight accommodations, and the largest interracial video production company in the country. In the past two years, as much as 75% of the high-quality IR porn produced in the United States was filmed at Bullpen studios—much of it containing amateur wives and Bullpen bulls.

There's a club in Providence called the Bullpen. Its a hot spot for gay gloryhole action.

 

[FifthEstate]

For that matter, I created a place called Cuckolds Anonymous where couples trying to kick the habit go for “treatment”. For some strange reason, the really attractive pairs are the ones who the services never seem to work for !

 

[FifthEstate]

There's a club in Providence called the Bullpen. Its a hot spot for gay gloryhole action.

I knew I hadn’t created the club name…mine’s just my own little spin.

 

[TadOverdon]

Restaurants, coffee shops...a backward little 1950s-ish town where incest is ridiculously common and almost an open secret. Wow, now, isn't that original?

That evolved into a fictional city and its neighborhoods, a whole state ("DeSoto"), corporations, an island nation, a rejuvenating aphrodisiac...somewhere in there, I still get around to some sex, sometimes.

People and things get mentioned in passing in a story and come back to center stage later. The novel I'm trying to get into right now is set in a sex spa that figures briefly in Settling The Score, which is owned and operated by a cosmetic surgeon who featured in the final chapters of Mothers Gone Wild.

The only continuity is that there is no continuity. Or a very loose one.

 

[Voboy]

I've got a whole region mapped out in my head: cities, towns, restaurants, churches, state parks, all sorts of places. I'm careful never to mention what state it's in, but I assume it's somewhere on the Chesapeake.

 

[NotWise]

The otherwise-unnamed blue metal in "The Third Ring." It's a trace metal that when refined in sufficient quantities can be used to concentrate and focus the living energy of an entire planet.

I've mostly avoided recycling characters outside the series where they initially appear. I want to keep it that way.