Descriptive Settings: A lake in the rain

The lake stretched away, fringed by steep rocks and dripping greenery, surface pricked by the rain, flat and grey as far as the eye could see. Logen's eye couldn't see too far in this weather, it had to be said. The opposite shore could have been a hundred strides away, but the calm waters looked deep. Very deep. Longen had long ago given up any attempt at staying dry, and the water ran through his hair and down his face, dripped from his nose, his fingers, his chin. He closed his eyes and felt the rain patter against his skin, heard the water lapping on the shingle. He knelt by the lake, pulled the stopper from his flask and pushed it under the surface, watched the bubbles break as it filled up. THE BLADE ITSELF, Joe Abercrombie

Description: Not Letting Go of a Painful Memory

...Ridcully's mind kept on swinging back to the absent Dean the way a tongue plunges back to the site of a missing tooth. Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

Action: Fast Fighting

There must have been a switch in this desk, too. A door flew open and two men burst in, one armed with two long knives, one with a crossbow. It was quite horrible, what Mr. Tulip did to them. It was, in its way, a kind of skill. When an armed man runs into a room in the knowledge that there is trouble, he needs a fraction of a second to assess, to decide, to calculate, to think. Mr. Tulip didn't need a fraction of a second. He didn't think. His hands moved by themselves. It required, even to the calculating eyes of Mr. Slant, a mental action replay. And even in the slow-mo of horror, it was hard to see Mr. Tulip grab the nearest chair and swing it. At the end of the blur two men lay unconscious, one with an arm twisted in a disconcerting way, and a knife was shuddering in the ceiling. From The Truth, by Terry Pratchett

Witticism: Smug Inner Voice

(bla bla bla), said the internal voice, and it sounded as if it was grinning.

Action: A Siege Catapult

There was a deafening crash as a section of parapet was ripped apart nearby, sending out a cloud of dust and flinging chunks of stone into the air. Splinters whizzed around them. A soldier not ten strides away was neatly decapitated by a flying block. His headless body swayed for a moment on its feet before its knees buckled and it toppled backwards off the wall.

The missile crashed down somewhere in the Lower City, smashing through the shacks, buncing and rolling, flinging shattered timbers up like matchsticks, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Glokta blinked and swallowed. His ears were still ringing, but he could hear someone shouting. A strange voice. A Styrian accent. Cosca.

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

Description: Memories of a Loved One

Dogman remembered the smell of her hair, the sound of her laugh, the feel of her back, pressed warm and soft against his belly while she slept. Well-used memories, picked over and worn thin like a favorite shirt.

Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie

Simile: Wanting Something

The idea of a smoke stuck in her mind like a bone in her craw.

Source: Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie