That's very powerful, MM.

If I might? I'd drop "forth" after erupt. Erupt is such a strong image in itself that "forth" robs it of power. If you want to use "forth," I would use a softer verb.

Otherwise, that paragraph is just gutting.

What Bev said, MM. Excellent work.

My goodness, we're drawing out some good stuff with this topic. Not that we don't always, but this one really seems to have sparked a flame.

just in case you can't see me, I'm sitting over here nodding my head in agreement.

He couldn't move.

He couldn't move and someone lurked in the doorway. He couldn't see who it was in the dark, but he felt the menace.

He strained to lift an arm or turn his head but could only raise his heart rate. This weight on his chest, if he could only move his arms he would be able to push it off and breathe freely. Then he would deal with the intruder.

With herculean effort he gasped and sat up, his body yearning towards the doorway.

The empty doorway.

He turned on a light and waited for dawn. Again.

In. Out.

In. Out.

In. Out.

...

...

Three seconds. Four seconds. Five, six, seven--

I start to reach over.

Snort, snuffle, shift, mutter.

In. Out.

In. Out.

etc.

It's always a seven-second delay. I've timed it hundreds of times. One day it's going to be eight seconds, then nine, and I'm going to reach over and get no response. He swore to me that I'll never wake up to his silent, empty shell, that he won't leave me alone in the dark. It's sweet, but I don't believe he has the power to make that promise. So I time those gaps, waiting, just in case the Dark Angel is minded to put up a fight.

Good stuff, people. I love Ailleann's--yep, been there.

Augghhh!

I finally get my protagonist and antagonist into the same room, for what is supposed to be the Key Scene of the Entire Book, setting up Crucial Themes for the entire SERIES...and they've gone wooden on me! They should have great hate chemistry, but I swear this is the flattest scene I've written since I was an 8-year-old writing Narnia-derivative stories with magical talking horses! These two are supposed to be consummate alpha wolves circling each other and snarling, and they're just SITTING there being wooden!

(I know, I know, I've built the scene up in my mind because it's all so Important. But someone please talk me down and convince me I'm capable of making these wooden puppets real boys again. Because they're such fun to write when they're alive.)

Umm - as an exercise might you try writing a slash scene between them, then the hate scene again? I dunno, we have such different styles I don't know if advice from me will help or not.

I don't know. I've never written slash in my life, and I'm not sure these two are where I'd want to start--partly because I just don't want to write anything sexy for the antagonist.

The problem is definitely me, not them. Mostly. I mean, there's a structural issue in that it's hard to go straight to alpha wolves circling and snarling when at this point in the story the antagonist holds all the power. But I think I'm afraid of the scene--afraid I'll screw it up, afraid I'll never be able to make it anywhere near as cool as it is in my head. The archetypes are a lot closer to the surface here than they normally are in my stories, so I need to figure out how to work with that instead of against it.

Yeah, that is why I was suggesting something to shock y out of the pattern to make you take them less seriously. If slash is wrong for you then how about a snark fest. Have them break character and make fun of each others weakness, even the ones they could not know about. Or invent rediculous childhood incidents they could tell about each other. Again the object is not to produce a good scene, but to get you laughing at the characters and taking them less seriously. Do something frivolous with them, then throw it away or hide in a drawer and write the scene you want to write.