Aziraphale + London (1941)
“What are you doing here?” “Stopping you from getting into trouble”
“There are many stories of Assassins meeting, in the course of their business, clients who themselves were ‘old boys’ of the school, and singing a few verses of the old school song together before the inhumation was completed. There have been occasions where the client, shedding tears of joy at the fact that his death would be a part of the ancient and wonderful tradition, signed over a large part of his fortune to the Guild, and many Guild scholarships and bursaries are a result of this. And of course all young Assassins know the story of Sir Bernard Selachii who, upon meeting an Assassin financed by a business rival, spent the entire evening with him, reminiscing about the great days they had shared in Wigblock House, before suggesting that they drink a toast to the old school and then, while his would-be assassin held his glass aloft, beating him to death with the brandy bottle. Subsequently, Sir Bernard endowed the Sir Bernard Selachii Award for Sheer Coolth, a much coveted prize to this day.”
— Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs, “Turtle Recall: The Discworld Companion So Far”
Adding small moments of existence to your writing
What I’m talking about is proof of life outside your characters in your world. Not in the sense of ‘talking to the cashier at the checkout’, but things like:
- Graffiti etched into a desk your character sits in during an exam
- Realising that someone has come along and arranged the cans on the shelf so the labels say something stupid
- Dirty vans that have ‘wash me’ written in the dried mud
- A coin that has been stuck into a piece of gum on a handrail
Little things that show the world still goes on despite whatever is happening to the characters.
This helps make the world a world, not just a setting. There are other people with other lives doing stupid, funny, dangerous, things that in no way impact the protagonist. You don’t have to dwell on them, they can only be mentioned briefly in passing during the set up of a scene, but it will help create life within the background of the story and give the characters a chance to briefly think about something other than themselves/their situation.
Like an open world video game where you find a scrawled grocery list on the ground, or a basketball and hula hoop both on a trampoline, or bullet holes that were once covered by now peeling wallpaper.
Those are my favorite aspects of games, books, and movies. They’re super easy to include too once you start noticing them irl.
Gabriel: Shut your stupid mouth and die already.
Crowley!Aziraphale: *trying to convince himself that killing Gabriel is not an option now, but making a note for the future*
“There are certain things in the movie that are very Russian that is difficult for an American audience to pick up on. Like when [Kirk and Sulu] freefall and I capture them and I say something in Russian….[says Russian phrase]…it means “Oh man!” basically, which is something I ad-libbed. Which goes back to what I was saying. Chekov never speaks Russian in the series, and that was Russian slang. And that that is something I decided to add just for the hell of it, because JJ [Abrams] said ‘throw in some Russian, let’s do it for fun.’ It was just a moment that needed some kind of reaction, and they loved it out there. It is one of those things that Russian people get. I think Russian people are very happy with Chekov because he is one of the few Russian characters in American pop culture history that is not the Red Dawn kind of Russians.” — Anton Yelchin
jesus christ imagine working in a literal subterranean vermin infested basement mould growing out every hole working your ass off to convince priests to have a wank in the hopes of not being fed to giant dogs and then ms crowley walks in looking like That moving her hips like she wants jebediah to milk a different cow tonight and announces that she’s redesigned a motorway and then disappears to get a mocha frap and her nails done. i’d hate her too.
shidoburrito
