#audreysfandomblog

[fallintosanity]

Please tell me all about the Glenn Lives AU I’m definitely not writing

Okay! So, this one is... idk 50% thought through?

It starts about a week after the beginning of the Officers' Academy school year (about two weeks before the training exercise where the house leaders meet Byleth). Felix finds Glenn, unshaven, filthy, and badly scarred but very much alive, in the village below the monastery. Glenn is shocked to learn it's been four years since Duscur, and tells Felix that after losing consciousness during the battle, the next thing he remembers is awakening strapped to a table in some kind of Crest laboratory. The scientists used him as a subject for brutally torturous experiments; as a result, he has very little memory of the time he spent there, and no idea what they were trying to do or whether it worked. He managed to escape a couple of weeks ago, and has since been making his way northwest toward Fraldarius territory, though it's slow going due both to his old and new injuries, and the need to stay hidden so his captors don't find him again. He stopped in Garreg Mach for supplies, a safe place to rest, and news; he hadn't expected Felix to be there (or even be old enough to be there).

Felix convinces Glenn to stay in Garreg Mach instead of returning to the Fraldarius estate on the grounds that he would be safer in the Church's stronghold, and Glenn takes a formal position as a professor of combat. Dimitri, Ingrid, and Sylvain are, of course, thrilled to learn of his survival, as is Rodrigue when he gets Seteth's letter about the situation. As Glenn settles in at the monastery, he takes the opportunity to mend some of the broken fences among them.

But as the months pass, strange events begin to pile up: Beloved librarian Tomas is found murdered, his body so badly mangled he almost looks like a different person entirely. An old, ruined chapel on the edge of the monastery grounds blows up without warning. A mysterious illness strikes the people of Remire Village - only to stop as suddenly as it began, when the body of former Officers' Academy student Monica is discovered slaughtered inside a ransacked laboratory hidden in the middle of the village. A terrifying spectre of death begins appearing near the monastery - and then attacks Edelgard in her bedroom, taking her right eye.

As the body count grows and the danger creeps into the students' very dormitory, the Blue Lions resolve to uncover the person behind it all. But the more they investigate, the more they begin to realize that the most likely culprit is the one person whose guilt none of them can believe: Glenn Fraldarius.

[gwynne-fics]

5, Twisted to a Fault, Rachel & her coworkers

“that was impressive”

Rachel glanced over at her American mentor and raised her eyebrows. “This is hardly my first fashion week.”

She got a laugh for that. “I apologize,” she said, surprising Rachel. “I thought the reason you held it together was because you had that assistant. She was very good, despite her English not being great. When she left, I thought this would fall apart,” she gestured to the party of models and production staff around them. “But that was the tightest show I’ve ever seen and it has some of the highest bids I’ve seen.”

The loss of Eun-Sang continued to burn her throat. Rachel tried to smile as she sipped her drink.

“Are you sure I can’t convince you to stay and design under my label for another year?”

Rachel didn’t even hesitate to shake her head. “I miss my home. I miss my boyfriend.” She missed her friends and her country. She missed...Eun-Sang.

“There are plenty of handsome men here willing to take his place. He’s hot but he always looks angry.”

“That’s why he’s hot.” Rachel smiled for real this time as her phone rang. “This is him. Thank you for the opportunity. I’m ready to take over the Asian fashion scene, now.”

[marmolita]

50) If you could write only angst, fluff or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

I wrote an answer to this hours ago but tumblr mobile ate it???

Anyway, smut for sure!  Because I could write angsty smut, fluffy smut, AU smut, dramatic smut, suspenseful smut, all different kinds of smut!  It’s very versatile.

[idiosyncreant]

Rules: Tag nine people you want to know better/catch up with!

Tagged by @asmywhimseytakesme and this was like...months ago. I’m sorry. Hopefully you still want to know ^_^;

Last song: What’s Wrong - PVRIS (playing from my Spotify 2021 Wrapped Radio, I think, lol)

Currently reading: I think the only thing I actually have started that I’m like “Oh, yeah, I’m excited to get back to that!” is Harrow the Ninth. But I read Gideon the Ninth very fast and I need to reread it first because so much I just did not... catch.

Currently watching: I just realized I have been putting off watching the last episode of Leverage!!!

Currently craving: I was craving pizza, but I got some. If I wasn’t so full, though...it was good pizza.

Also just...some chill time. I don’t do well with it but I always need it!

This is a cute lil short one so @audreysfandomblog @fadeverb @jadesabre301 @faraway-lightning @rosamundhodge @gwynne-fics @agreyeyedgirl  who else is actually still on tumblr who is a mutual of mine??

[avianscribe]

@audreysfandomblog replied to your post “I see that it is international asexuality day... I...”

single aroace here, and I really enjoyed your perspective as a married person. <3

💞 I’m glad! It’s not a perspective I see very often wrt this, which is part of why I thought it would be useful to say something about it. 

[fallintosanity]

🏅

Thank you for the ask! ^_^

🏅 What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing (finished a fic, actually planned for once, etc)?

This is going to sound weird, but the thing I'm most proud of right now is that I just ditched about two and a half chapters' worth of writing for Providence. (sorry, everyone who's waiting!!! 😅 ) The chapters cover a couple of scenes that I'd been planning since the beginning of the fic, so it hasn't been easy to let them go, but it's so much better to have done it. I've been struggling for a while with continuing past those chapters, and I finally realized it's because they're simply not what the story needs anymore.

It's definitely a lesson in "kill your darlings", and it's not the first time I've had to learn it, either. It doesn't get easier with time, but I still think it's something worth being proud of - recognizing why I'm blocked and being willing to let all that work go, instead of trying to force the story in a direction it doesn't want to go.

ask me stuff?

[fallintosanity]

@audreysfandomblog replied to your post “all the things I should be working on: Providence,...”:

Now I need to know: Is it a mystery that he lived? Like everyone thought he was dead and then he just shows up one day???

​Pretty much! Here’s the synopsis (so far): 

Shortly after the students arrive to begin the Officers’ Academy Class of 1180, Felix finds a scarred and limping, but very much alive, Glenn Fraldarius in the village at the foot of Garreg Mach Monastery. Glenn claims he was smuggled off the battlefield at Duscur, all but dead, by members of a mysterious techno-cult called the Shambhalans. They kept him prisoner in a hidden underground city, where they performed medical experiments on him. Finally, just a few weeks ago, he managed to gather enough strength to escape, and has been traveling on foot across Fodlan in the hope of reaching the Fraldarius estate. He stopped in Garreg Mach to rest and restock, and hadn’t known the students were there until Felix found him.

Now, though, with his little brother, his prince, and his (maybe ex-?)betrothed all at Garreg Mach, Glenn opts to stay at the monastery. When Byleth arrives, Glenn’s presence tips the scales in favor of Byleth teaching the Blue Lion house. At first, everything seems to be going... well, as smoothly as possible considering Felix’s violent reaction to his brother’s survival, Dimitri’s struggle to confront a living ghost from Duscur, Ingrid’s mixed emotions about the unexpected return of the man she was going to marry, and Glenn’s own unspoken but obvious trauma. 

But as the months pass, mysteries begin to pile up. Beloved librarian Tomas vanishes abruptly in what the Knights believe to be an act of foul play. Glenn’s protectiveness of Flayn, which at first appeared to be merely a big brother instinct benign enough to mollify even Seteth, grows alarmingly intense as rumors of the Death Knight spread. Monica, the student who went missing last year, turns up at the monastery with a story eerily similar to Glenn’s - only to be found gruesomely murdered the very next morning, her body so badly deformed she almost looks like a different person. And on the night of the Academy’s grand ball, the old chapel which the Blue Lions were supposed to investigate is destroyed in a massive explosion, leaving only a smoking crater in its place. 

Felix and the other Blue Lions need to figure out what’s going on, and fast, before anyone else gets hurt. But the more they investigate, the more the evidence points to the one person whose guilt they can’t bear to accept: Glenn Fraldarius. 

[fallintosanity]

Have any comments/tags/responses on a fic of yours ever made you laugh, cry or both?

I think the only time I've cried over a comment was when a regular reader, with whom I'd struck up a casual in-comments friendship, reacted unexpectedly poorly to a character death in one of my early fics. It wasn't anyone's fault, it was just a case where the fic hit them way harder than they could handle, and they didn't realize it until it was too late. (I had tagged for the death, but either they missed the tag or didn't expect it to affect them.) They left a comment explaining why the scene had upset them and that they wouldn't be reading further. They weren't rude or mean about it, but their comment was very... raw, maybe? I could tell they'd been badly hurt, and I felt awful for hurting someone I'd been friends with, even though I had no way of knowing that the scene would hit them like that.

As for laughing, all the time! Some of y'all have an excellent way with words, and the phrasing or descriptions in comments or ask messages cracks me up; other readers straight-up joke around or talk about amusing scenarios. I've also laughed in disbelief and/or evil author joy a few times when readers guessed plot points WAY in advance and well before I (thought I had) dropped enough foreshadowing to predict. And of course, I cackle like a madman whenever I post an eventful chapter and commenters react exactly the way I was hoping.

Also, while it's neither laughing nor crying, I do get a Big Emotion whenever anyone comments that they've read my fics more than once - especially the really long ones. My fics aren't the longest out there, but they're still pretty beastly, and it's an honor that y'all read them even once, much less multiple times! <3

Ask me stuff!

[fallintosanity]

K: What's the angstiest idea you've ever come up with?

Hmm, for raw angst I think it would be To Close Your Eyes, an MCU Thor fic I wrote after seeing some of the early trailers for Thor: The Dark World. It's a straight-up hurt no comfort, major character death, murder-suicide fic. I don't normally write darkfic, and I still have no idea where it came from, other than that I read Lise's Great Ruins of an Unremembered Past one evening shortly after seeing the T:TDW trailers. A particular scene and line - "my cuckoo child" - stuck in my brain overnight, and I woke up the next morning and wrote the whole fic in one go.

...I do have a close second and third, but to say anything else would be to spoil some things that I don't want to spoil...... }:]

Ask me stuff!

[fallintosanity]

15

15. What’s the weirdest fandom you’ve ever written for?

Probably A House of Many Doors, which is an indie game in the style of Sunless Seas. Instead of sailing on an underground cthonic ocean, you’re an aspiring poet captaining a kinetopede, which is what you’d get if a pirate ship ran around on centipede legs. The titular House is an interdimensional entity which absorbs parts of worlds across the multiverse, so that each (city-sized) room you enter is a trapped microcosm of some bizarre otherworld. 

It’s a really fun little game with quite a lot of in-depth plot, but it’s also truly weird in the purest sense of the word. 

Ask me stuff!

[fallintosanity]

#3!!!

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

(This is from an idea I started working on back in *checks notes* March of 2018, apparently, jeez. It’s not so much the set-up I’m lacking as the “where to go from here”, which alas is the usual problem I run into when writing.)

Noctis hated his Crownsguard bodyguards. 

More accurately, he hated that he had to have them, that he had to be followed everywhere by armed guards, hated that he couldn’t just decide to go places on a whim like Prompto did. Hated the way the other kids in the arcade eyed the Guard nervously, hated how their very presence kept Noctis from blending into the crowd the way he wanted, so badly, to do.

So he ignored them as best he could, tried to act as though they didn’t exist. It wasn’t difficult - they were as discreet as they could be, with their guns and earpieces and black pants and jackets that weren’t technically a uniform but were obviously not casual civilian clothes either. They stayed on the edges of the room where they could see the whole place at one, and sometimes Noctis almost managed to forget they were there. 

Today was one of those days. The arcade had just gotten a new co-op shooter, and Noctis and Prompto had waited in line for nearly an hour for their turn to play. Now, with a royal treasury’s worth of play credits, he and Prompto had torn through the early levels and had gathered an impressive audience. None of them seemed to realize that he was the Crown Prince of Lucis; they yelled and cheered and jeered him and Prompto both as they mowed through enemy mooks and made their way to what Noctis suspected was the game’s final boss.

Prompto was a better shot than Noctis, so Noct let him focus on shooting down the tricky incoming missiles and instead trained his light gun on the boss. It was a system they’d developed within a month or so of starting to play together: Noct aggro’ing the boss, his foot light and fast on the dodge pedal, while Prompto dealt with the annoying, hard-to-hit minions and missiles. It worked for them now, too - within a couple of minutes the boss exploded in a colorful burst of digital flame. 

As the final cutscene played and Noct and Prompto entered their initials at the top of the high score list, the crowd pressed closer, calling congratulations and praise. Not for the first time that day, Noctis regretted his decision to wear jeans instead of shorts; it was only early July but Lucis occasionally liked to remind its citizens that it was, in fact, primarily a desert country. The arcade had air conditioning, but the press of bodies around them was too thick for the cooler air to get through. 

Prompto, who also wore jeans but had cut the sleeves off his t-shirt, didn’t look any more comfortable than Noctis felt. He grabbed Noct by the wrist and tugged him through the crowd toward the vending machines. “I’m dying of thirst here,” he said, with an overdramatic swoon. 

Noctis laughed and jostled him. “You’re just saying that so I’ll buy the drinks.” 

“Well yeah,” Prompto agreed cheerfully as they fetched up against the vending machine. “You owe me from last week!”

“Hah, I forgot about that,” Noctis said. He fished in his pocket for his credit card and tapped it against the machine’s reader, keying in the codes for a couple of sodas. 

“I know you did,” Prompto said, grinning. “That’s why I’m reminding you.” He retrieved the sodas from the slot in the side and handed one to Noct, then took a swig from his own. “Oh man, that hits the spot!” 

Noct had just opened his own can when he noticed the Crownsguard approaching them from the side. It was probably one of the newer recruits; Noctis didn’t recognize the man’s face but he did recognize the black clothes, the earpiece, the close-cropped dark hair. The man looked nervous for a moment under Noct’s scrutiny, then swallowed and raised his chin. “I’m sorry, Highness,” he said, “but something’s come up. We need to leave now.” 

Something cold knotted in Noctis’s gut. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He spotted a second Guard nearby, his back to Noctis as he surveyed the room. The first Guard started walking toward the arcade’s entrance, not quite herding Noctis and Prompto along in front of him. 

“Nothing,” the Guard said, and smiled, though his expression was tense. Prompto stared at him, blue eyes wide, his normal smile faded to unease. The Crownsguard continued, “We simply wish to be overly cautious.” 

“Where are we going?” Prompto asked nervously. They’d reached the arcade entrance, the second Guardsman falling behind to watch their exit while a third materialized on the sidewalk and fell into step next to Prompto. Noctis didn’t recognize either of them. Just his luck to be stuck with a bunch of complete greenhorns so worried about being assigned to babysit the Crown Prince that they’d pull him out of the arcade as a precautionary measure. 

“It’ll just be a quick ride around the block,” the Guard promised. “While we make sure everything’s all right.” He pointed to a sleek black Crownsguard van sitting at the curb. 

The third Guard took a few quick steps to get ahead of them and pulled open the van’s side door. As Noct made to climb in, the man plucked his half-forgotten soda can from his fingers so he could buckle his seat belt, then did the same to Prompto. When they were both settled in the van’s middle row, he handed them their drinks back with a reassuring smile. “It won’t take long,” he said. “Sorry for the fuss. We just want to make sure our prince is safe.” 

Noctis waved a hand dismissively, trying not to let his annoyance show. They were just doing their jobs, as much as he might hate it, and honestly it was kind of nice to get out of the crowded, overheated arcade and sit in the relative quiet of the air-conditioned van. The Guard settled into the bench seat behind them, while the other two climbed into the front seats. The engine purred to life and the van pulled smoothly away from the curb. 

Noctis downed his soda, tilting his head back to let the air conditioning run over the skin of his neck. Beside him, Prompto slouched in his seat, fiddling with his own can before reluctantly taking a sip. Noctis elbowed him in the side. “Sorry about this,” he said, trying to make his voice light. He tried to be normal around Prompto - loved that, for the most part, he could be normal around Prompto - but the crown had a way of screwing that up. “Being the prince isn’t all fun and high scores.” 

Prompto shrugged one shoulder, still twisting the can in his hands. He took another sip with the air of working up to saying something, but his mouth twisted and he leaned against Noctis’s shoulder instead, turning his head to bury his face against Noct’s neck. Noctis blinked - it wasn’t as though they hadn’t ever leaned on each other like this, but usually on Noct’s couch where there wasn’t anyone around to see. And while Noctis generally didn’t count the Crownsguard as “anyone”, he knew Prompto did. 

Then Prompto whispered in Noctis’s ear, “So uh, maybe I’m just being paranoid or something, but, um. Are you sure these guys are the guards who came with us to the arcade?” 

Noctis opened his mouth to say something, to dismiss Prompto’s worry, to promise him it was fine - but the words didn’t come out. Cold nausea swirled suddenly in his gut. He hadn’t recognized the guards, and while he saw unfamiliar Crownsguard around the palace all the time, it was incredibly rare for his own Guard to get a single new face, much less three at once. Noctis glanced out the window, his stomach sinking as he realized they’d already driven far away from the arcade, out of the bustling downtown and into an ominously empty district of industrial warehouses. 

No.

Noctis wracked his brain, trying to remember the last time he’d seen his Crownsguard before the man had approached them at the vending machine. But he’d been ignoring the Guard the way he always did, and honestly couldn’t have said if they even made it into the arcade hours ago. And he definitely had no idea which of his usual roster had been with them - it wasn’t as though he paid them enough attention to notice who was whom. 

No…!

“Noct—” Prompto whispered, his fingers tightening around Noct’s wrist. Noct looked down; he hadn’t felt Prompto grab him, but Prompto’s fingers were wrapped around his wrist and his empty soda can was gone, fallen to the floor, and now that Noct had lowered his head it was suddenly hard to lift it again. Prompto was slipping too, his head falling from Noctis’s shoulder as he slumped down into Noct’s lap. 

NO!

Noctis tried to reach for his phone, tried to open his mouth to yell, tried to reach for the magic of his bloodline. But his muscles were slow, his body heavy and unresponsive, and the last thing he remembered was collapsing forward around Prompto’s unconscious body.

[fallintosanity]

For FFXV time travel fic! I love every single bit of it and I’m really curious about what other little luxuries the adults are going to enjoy the hell out of besides quality produce.

Ooh, let’s see. They all only got to appreciate it for one night, but all three of the bros reveled in the luxurious Citadel guest rooms: soft beds, silk sheets, showers with hot water and great pressure, clean toilets, all of that. Now that they’re out in the country, on the road, those little luxuries are harder to come by again. 

Still, Gladio’s most appreciative of having a) a working car, and b) maintained roads. He hasn’t talked about it much yet, but he spent the last ten years traveling greater Lucis on foot or in horrible claptrap transportation that broke down as often as it got him anywhere. A reliable vehicle and open roads are his luxury.

Ignis, I think, appreciates the freedom of not having to worry constantly about daemons. He’s competent as hell, but he’s still blind, and at higher risk than the others as a result. Simply being able to exist during the daylight hours without fear of straying out of the safety of lights he can’t see is a luxury. 

Prompto’s little luxury is being able to leave Hammerhead...

Ask me stuff?

[gwynne-fics]

13, Making it Work, the OT3

In-Hye giggled at the sight of her two men squeezing themselves into a giant hotel bathtub. They were being playful with each other and it was just fun to watch. At least, there wasn’t water filling the tub yet. She liked that they made a special attempt for their fifth anniversary.

“Come join us,” Seung-Woo says. “Plenty of room, I promise.”

“I think we have a private jacuzzi, well semi-private. There’s one for this floor. Should I order room service?” In-Hye stayed were she’s at. Tae-San made a face and scrambled over Seung-Woo to sit on the edge of the bathtub. 

“We already ordered. I think this one,” he elbowed Seung-Woo, who grunted, “ordered fancy strawberries with the champagne.”

“I did.” Seung-Woo got out of the bath and came over to her. He gave her a long, lazy kiss. “I’ll go see how private the jacuzzi is. I don’t want us to get kicked out for indecency.”

In-Hye watched him go while Tae-San came up and kissed her. She smiled and leaned into him. It had been a while since they could indulge in physical affection. It felt like, the last few months, they were always missing one third of their triad.

Seung-Woo returned, shaking his head. “There are too many cameras and there is an open view into the hallway. Even if we could get exclusive use out of it, I don’t want to have to use my influence to erase tapes. Next year, we’ll get a suite at Zeus.” “That’s so expensive,” In-Hye mused. She didn’t complain further when their dinner arrived with champagne, strawberries, and delicious comfort food before they fell into love making.

“I missed this”

[fallintosanity]

📝

📝 a line or paragraph i’m really happy with

From What Stays and What Fades, Chapter 15: Drautos: 

“Who are you?” Glauca demanded as he leaped to his feet with inhuman speed. He didn’t wait for an answer, launching himself up in a powerful leap - but Noctis simply flew higher. He was done with this game, this fight.

Done with Glauca.

The Crystal’s magic sang through him, his royal arms glittering ominous and deadly in the sunlight. Memory flashed through Noctis’s mind: that sunny day in Tenebrae, blasted to smoke and screams by Glauca’s army. The horror on Lunafreya’s face as Glauca murdered Queen Sylva. The calm on Regis’s, seen through the awful clarity of the Crystal, as he died to protect Lunafreya and the Ring. The wet sound Glauca’s sword made as he’d pulled it free, the broken crumple of Regis’s body as it fell to the floor.

Drautos, he’s in your hands.

“You killed my dad,” Noctis snarled. He flung his hand down, and his entire Armiger rained down on Glauca, opening more deep gashes in the man’s armor. Noctis didn’t give him a chance to recover, calling his weapons back and slamming them into Glauca again, and again, and again. Power was building up behind his eyes, throbbing in his blood, the Crystal’s magic drawing burning traces along his veins.

Glauca cried out as the blades tore through him, a pained sound that fed the rage, the hate, the desire to see this traitor, this murderer, dead and bleeding. It was because of Glauca that Noctis would never see his dad - his own dad, not the past version of this time - again. Because of Glauca the Imperials had gotten the Crystal, because of Glauca that Ardyn’s plan had succeeded and Noctis had to die. He wanted Glauca to suffer, months - a decade - of Noctis’s own pain and grief reflected back on the man who’d caused it all—

(It’s a little more than a paragraph but shh) 

This was a really satisfying scene to write and I’m glad with how it came out. Part, I think, of the tragedy of FFXV is that Noctis never gets to simply lash out, to strike back. He doesn’t ever get the chance to be justifiably furious and grieving about everything that’s happened to him and the people he loves. Every time he comes close (on the hill outside Insomnia, in the first tomb, on the train, in Zegnautus), something happens that forces him to pull back, to be Crown Prince Noctis. And by the time he returns to the World of Ruin, he’s had ten years of Bahamut/Crystal indoctrination meditation, so he’s - at least outwardly - at peace with what he has to do. 

But those moments before then, where Noctis gets right up to the brink of a total breakdown, we get a glimpse of how big his emotions are. How deeply he feels, how much he’s hurting. These couple of paragraphs from What Stays and What Fades were a chance for him to begin to have that breakdown. To let loose a fraction of that awful hurt and grief and rage that he bottled up behind the weight of his crown and his destiny. (It’s a little unfair to Glauca actually because while Noct does have a completely understandable beef with him in particular for killing Regis, a lot of Noct’s fury isn’t directed at him.) 

Ask me stuff!

[fallintosanity]

Which of the eight chocobros is handling everything in What Stays and What Fades the worst? Who is handling it the best?

Hah, I tried to answer, replaced the name of the first bro I wrote, and cycled through six of them before realizing that none of them is handling it especially well. XD 

Weirdly enough, I’d have to say Young Prompto’s handling it the best. He had a lot of compressed awful dumped on him about his origins, but he also already got the burden of telling Noctis out of the way, and he’s fixed on the future, on his goal: saving Noct. Just like when Lunafreya encouraged him to be friends with Noctis and he spent the next several years(!) focused on that, he’s got a new goal to work toward and nothing’s going to stop him.  

If I had to pick one as handling it the absolute worst... I still don’t think I can pick just one, whoops. Young Gladio and Adult Prompto are having about equal amounts of trouble with it, for wildly different reasons. Young Gladio can’t accept Adult Gladio - someone who intends to let Noctis walk to his own death - as someone he could ever become. And Adult Prompto... has a lot of issues of his own going on that, in true Prompto fashion, he’s shoving way, way down deep...

[fallintosanity]

#7, please!

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?

An overuse of emdashes

There are a lot of phrases I find myself using over and over again, things like people’s teeth clicking together audibly, or hesitations, or descriptions of physical actions like blinking/flinching/scowling in place of dialogue tags. I’ve been training myself to use qualifiers less - things like the “a little” in “he felt a little relieved”, or “for a second” in “he thought about it for a second”. Filler words that don’t add much to the sentence (another case in point: I first typed that as “filler words that don’t really add much to the sentence). 

I also tend to have trouble ending scenes or chapters; they frequently fade out slowly rather than having a nice punchy finish, for whatever value of “punchy” is appropriate for the scene. 

I’m realizing these are mostly negative and technical things, but it’s what I’ve been focusing on lately as I try to improve my writing. I do like to think that I’m generally good at foreshadowing, and the frequency with which my readers pick up on little clues I’ve dropped around suggests others would agree with me on that, at least! :) 

Ask me stuff!