Friday, May 17th, 2013 So the Husband-of-Awesome™ and I set about to grill chicken for dinner the other night.
Mr. Awesome went out to the grill and opened it up to find this:
Here’s a close-up. Turns out there were five little birdies plus mama nesting in the grill.
The really fortunate thing about the matter is that Mr. Awesome broke with habit when he found the birds. Usually, he fires up the grill willy-nilly without peeking inside, so that it’s pleasantly pre-heated before we cook.
(Don’t blame him, I do it, too.)
Imagine if he hadn’t broken his normal habit. Those birds don’t know how lucky they had it.
And us, too.
And so this unexpected discovery put paid to the grilling endeavor, not just for Wednesday night, but until the little guys decide to vacate the grill.
Here’s Your Prompt
- Write a scene in which either your protagonist or antagonist is unexpectedly surprised by something nice and cheerful which messes up their plans. Note: it’s got to cause your characters some consternation, because a story isn’t a good story without some drama!
- It could be argued that Mr. Awesome’s break with habit was due to ‘divine intervention’ of some sort*. Write a scene in which a similar serendipitous event wreaks havoc with your characters’ plans.
- Journal about a time when something strange happened (divine intervention?) — in the nick of time — to save you or a family member from peril.
Good Luck!
* Or maybe he just saw some straw sticking out of the bottom of the grill.
Friday, May 10th, 2013 I got sued this week for nearly $10,000.
I received two letters in the mail from attorney’s wishing to represent me.
The only problem is, I am not the Kelly Harmon that everyone’s looking for.
I phoned the attorney who represents the plaintiff, and his assistant apologized: they were certain I was the wrong person when they filed the paperwork with the courts, but they wanted to have something in the case files while the other Kelly Harmon is MIA.
(This raises my hackles on all kinds of levels, not withstanding the fact that it appears in public court documents that I skipped town after not paying rent for a few months. But why would an attorney knowingly put false information in court records?)
But we’re getting away from the topic here: mistaken identity.
If I hadn’t proactively called the attorney on the case, I would have been served with papers. (While I was chatting with the assistant, she put me on hold to call the process server and tell him not to drop by my house.)
Being served would have opened up a whole host of problems: all of which are fun to put your characters through…but no fun to live through in real life.
I got lucky. Here’s hoping that your character isn’t!
Here’s Your Prompt
- Imagine you’re approached on the street by a stranger who greets you as though he knows you. Instead of claiming mistaken identity, decide to continue the discussion to see where it leads. Write the dialogue and setting of such a situation.
- Write the story from the opposite point of view: you’re the man who greets the other as if he already knows him. The twist: you know you don’t know him, and you’re trying to scam him in some way. What’s the scam? What happens?
- Write about a character who gets in trouble because of mistaken identity (is sued, or caught by a bounty hunter and thrown in jail, or becomes the target of a smear campaign, or is beaten up by a raging family member hell bent on getting revenge for someone, etc). How does the character clear his name? How is the situation resolved?
Good luck!
Friday, May 3rd, 2013 I’m reading a book by a new-to-me author and I’m really enjoying it, despite my reluctance to start. It was one of these world-traveling books where the modern-day protagonist finds a magic item at a yard sale and is whisked to another world. Quite the trope set up.
But I read a blog post by the author (on something completely unrelated) and her voice caught my fancy.
The intriguing twist in the book is that when our lovely world-traveling protag ends up in her other world, she can tell the future of anyone she touches.
So, of course, my mind is on fortune-telling. Fortunes make wonderful leaping off points for story or scene starters. I imagine they’re great for jogging your memory if you’re writing your memoir.
With that in mind, your prompt today is set of “fortune-teller like” predictions.
Here’s Your Prompt
- “…it came to pass that…”
- You are in the woods. You must prepare a sacrifice.
- The architect of your destiny is…
- You are walking the city streets, randomly turning corners, when an animal approaches you and tells you something…
- You’re on a journey, between heaven and earth, approaching the sacred site. And the sacred site looks like a shiny diamond, protected by the worst of hell’s fatal traps…
- Down into the deepest depths you look…and see what?
- You have the opportunity to visit a seer. What is the one question you’re allowed to ask? What’s the answer?
- Stones by the road tell the future of what’s to come.
- You receive an invitation from a casual acquaintance, and find yourself at a party attended by hundreds in a large, elegant mansion in the ritzy part of a town. An hour after you arrive you receive another invitation — delivered by one of the caterer’s staff — to meet the Lady of All Wild Things on the balcony, overlooking the pool…
- A stranger approaches you in a grocery story and hands you something, saying, “Wear this for protection.”
If you don’t like my suggestions, try the on line Fortune Cookie. You can reload the page to find new suggestions.
Good Luck!
Friday, April 26th, 2013  I had lunch with a writer friend yesterday, and as usual, we talked shop.
I finally asked him if he wouldn’t mind looking over a short story I’m writing, because I seem to have written myself into a corner. It’s science fiction, which I love reading, but never seem to get around to writing.
Absolutely he said yes, but then he offered a nugget of advice while plotting: write the last line first.
His method is to write the last line, ask himself how the characters got to that point, then ask how they got to the point preceding that, and so on.
Brilliant!
I’ve never suffered from “writer’s block” because (as I tell anyone who asks) I always “know where I’m going” when I’m writing. How can you be blocked if you know what’s coming next?
Starting from the end is the nth-most point of this. Now, why didn’t I think of that?
(Thanks, Carl!)
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a poem, a short story, a scene or vignette by writing the last line first. Think: how will this end? And start from there.
- Think of two story/scene/poem endings, then think of how they each begin. Switch the beginnings of each idea and then write one of these ‘twisted’ stories.
- If you’re having trouble thinking of endings, here are a few ideas you can steal (re-write them once you get to the end!):
- Like thee, may New Switzerland flourish and prosper–good happy and free! – Johann Wyss, Thw Swiss Family Robinson
- “Now, that’s something like! Why, it’s a million times better than pirating. I’ll stick to the widder till I rot, Tom: and if I git to be a reg’lar ripper of a robber, and everybody talking ’bout it, I reckon she’ll be proud she snaked me in out of the wet.” ~ Samuel Clemens, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- Then he closed his eyes and humbly surrendered his vanquished throat to the comfort of the blade. Miguel Torga – The Bull, from Farrusco: The Blackbird and Other Stories
- I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can’t stand it. I been there before. ~ Samuel Clemens, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- In this vessel, after a long voyage, I arrived in England, June 11, in the year 1687, having been 35 years absent. ~ Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
Good luck!
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Photo by | Dreamstime Photos
Friday, April 19th, 2013 I finished reading three stories this week in which the main character died. I didn’t plan it, it just happened.
In case you’re interested, the characters are:
- Lily Bart in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth. She accidentally committed suicide by overdosing on a “sleeping aid,” conveniently tying up the unraveling strands of her life.
- Delilah in Jennifer Roberson’s Sword Singer. Tragic and abrupt, it probably couldn’t have been handled in any other way. (Spoiler Alert: Okay, she really doesn’t die. But Roberson leaves you hanging like she does: The sword fight ends with Tiger lamenting that Del paid a very high price…and the final chapter sees him in the graveyard riding off alone. Well, what are you supposed to think?)
- Benjamin Button in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. (I’m interpreting this as death, but Button’s unmaking could probably be described better in scientific terms. Maybe he was simply un-born.)
Frankly, I call bullshit on principal characters who die.
(Especially when the story is first person, and the person telling it dies. But that’s a topic for another day…)
That being said, there are a lot of reasons to kill off main characters: they deserve it, they’ve lost their usefulness as a story tool, or – the best reason, in my opinion– to yank the reader’s chain. There’s nothing better than building up an awesome character and cutting short his life. It just tugs at the heartstrings of readers.
(Hello Ms. Roberson? Brava!)
Still, a character shouldn’t be killed off without good reason. And when there’s not a good reason, I call bullshit.
Benjamin and Delilah’s ‘death’ are well-justified, but I feel Wharton took the easy way out by killing off Lily. It’s convenient for her, because the story was really dragging on, and double convenient for Lily who had been cut off socially by friends and faced a woeful future of penury.
(I couldn’t wait to finish the book. If poor Lily would have defended her social position – she had the means – and discarded a bit of her pride, she would have fared much better. I don’t mind when a character makes stupid mistakes, but I can’t stand it when they make them over and over and over again. Makes me spitting mad.)
Here’s Your Prompt
Good luck!
Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 If it looks a little different around here, that’s because it is.
I’ve decided I want a ‘cleaner’ look to my Web site, so I’m testing out a few new themes. I might change this one by the end of the day…I might not.
I could do this the right way and tinker behind the scenes, get it right, and then do the switchover… but I like to live dangerously.
So… please pardon the dusting and cleaning while I make up my mind.
In the meantime, if you have any suggestions…send them my way. 🙂
Friday, April 12th, 2013  I’m looking to purchase another robot floor cleaner.
I’ve had both the iRobot Roomba and iRobot Scooba robots: one to vacuum and one to wash the tile floors.  
I loved them both…
..to death, you might say. As both have been used long past their usefulness. It’s time for a new pair.
(I’m doing research, since there are a few more manufacturers on the market since I bought my first, but I’m still leaning toward the iRobot brand at this point.)
But as much as I love them, I want something more. Something like…
…Rosie the Robot, from the old cartoon series, The Jetsons.
She dusted, she did the dishes, she ironed. And she talked back. If you’re going to have robot help, you might as well have something which also speaks its mind. It could come in useful:
Me: What do you think of Chapter 3, Rosie?
Rosie: Where’s the drama? It just drones on and on without passion. Too many adverbs. Not enough dialogue.
You get the idea.
I could think of another million uses, too. Like: making sure there aren’t any stinkbugs in the house, pulling the weeds in the front garden, and watering all the plants. Oh, yeah, and making dinner. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve burned dinner while diddling over a scene.
While she’s at it, she could pay the bills, balance the checkbook, and make sure everything is filed away nice and neat… because those piles of paper tend to linger around here until they’re a fire danger.
So…
Here’s Your Prompt
- What job in your life would you like to see replaced by robot — or appliance — help? How would it change the way you do things?
- Write a story about this fascinating new robot (or appliance). What negative aspects could cause significant drama?
Good luck!
Friday, April 5th, 2013
I got inspired by doors today.
Doors are like choices, or decisions. Prompts for action: should you open it or leave it shut? Should you step through, or remain on this side?
And there are so many doors, and an equal (if not double!) amount of choices.
What’s more, the sight of a door leaves one with the impression of what might be behind it. A set of French doors with sheer white curtains might inspire a light and airy dining area. A solid wooden door on the face of a Boston brownstone might convey upper-crust society. A green door, surrounded by ivy and flowering potted plants might imply adventure.
But the frightening aspect is that the appearance could be illusion. A giant troll could live behind the fairy door. An impoverished family — self-imploding on the fracturing nature of drug addition or alcohol abuse — might live behind the brownstone door. The French doors might conceal the dark recess of a sociopath’s hideaway.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- As you drive, or walk, down the street today, take notice of doors. Choose one which inspires you and write the story of what lies behind it.
- If you’re writing a story or a novel, make a list of all the figurative doors (choices) which your character might have to walk through. Make the list long and detailed. Choose the most horrific option for your character, and write how he or she resolves the situation. Don’t just write about the scene, show the scene: let us know how the character is feeling — and thinking — about the decision. Was it the right decision to make, despite the horror of it?
- If you journal, or write memoir (or even family history) write a story about when you — or someone else — literally stepped through a door. Were your expectations met or not? Were you surprised by the situation you found behind the door? How did you feel about what happened?
- If you write poetry — make a list of doors. Describe them: their color, their surroundings, their ornamentation. Decide what lies behind each door. Write a poem about the most interesting one, or, write a poem about all of them.
Good luck!
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Photo © Colleen Coombe | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Friday, March 29th, 2013 It’s been a while since we’ve done a prompt dedicated completely to poetry, so I thought we’d start there this morning.
Writing poetry the tanka way dates back nearly 1,200 years. The subject matter usually deals with nature and the seasons, or very strong emotions. It’s highly structured.
I like all kinds of poetry, but the structured kind holds a certain appeal to me because it’s often like fitting a puzzle together — and I really like puzzles. The “pieces” are the rules of the poem, usually a syllable count, but sometimes there can be others.
For example, the tanka is much like a haiku (I’ve a prompt about haiku, too) in that it requires a certain number of syllables and lines. But to be true to itself, the tanka must also use a simile, a metaphor and a personification.
Some definitions*:
| simile: |
a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like or as (as in cheeks like roses) |
| metaphor: |
a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them (as in drowning in money) |
| personification: |
attribution of personal qualities; especially : representation of a thing or abstraction as a person or by the human form |
Merriam-Webster didn’t provide an example of personification, so here’s one from Toni Morrison in her book Love: A Novel:
“Pimento eyes bulged in their olive sockets. Lying on a ring of onion, a tomato slice exposed its seedy smile . . ..”
The other rules of the tanka are:
- It must contain five lines
- The first line contains 5 syllables.
- The second line contains 7 syllables.
- The third line contains 5 syllables.
- The fouth line contains 7 syllables.
- The fifth and final line contains 7 syllables.
Here’s my first try:
Waves crash like boulders…
“All hands on deck,” Captain cried.
“We’re lost,” the mate sobbed.
Fierce wind shears the mast in twain–
We are stone, sinking to death
It needs work, but it’s a start.
Here’s Your Prompt:
Write a tanka!
Suggestions: Think of your idea first and write the simile, metaphor and personifications without worrying about the syllable count. Once you’ve laid this groundwork, massage your passages to fit the structure. This could mean swapping out words or even adjusting the lines in the poem to fit the pieces.
Good Luck!
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* All definitions are from Merriam-Webster on line dictionary.
Thursday, March 28th, 2013 Fellow BroadUniverse Member T. J. Wooldridge’s The Kelpie is being published by Spencer Hill Press in December. Cover art is complete, and revealed here.
In celebration of publication, T.J.is hosting a scavenger hunt where you can win Kelpie related jewelry and artwork.
Information is below. Good luck!
 The Story:
I can’t honestly say I was joking when I suggested to my best friend, Joe – Prince Joseph, eldest son of England’s Crown Prince – that we could probably find something the police had missed in regards to the missing children. After all, eleven and twelve year olds like us did that all the time on the telly and in the books we read…
When Heather and Joe decide to be Sleuthy MacSleuths on the property abutting the castle Heather’s family lives in, neither expect to discover the real reason children were going missing:
A Kelpie. A child-eating faerie horse had moved into the loch “next door.”
The two barely escape with their lives, but they aren’t safe. Caught in a storm of faerie power, Heather, Joe, and Heather’s whole family are pulled into a maze of talking cats, ghostly secrets, and powerful magick.
With another child taken, time is running out to make things right.
Scavenger Hunt for Prizes!
To go along with sharing the simply gorgeous cover, author T.J. Wooldridge has enlisted several of her friends who have helped her in the journey of writing this novel to put together a special treat for you!
Each day of the week, search for individual components of the cover–with a bonus piece of art on Wednesday–at these blogs. Collect the right words per the instructions, and unscramble the line of poetry to be entered to win one of three prizes!
Prize 1
A handmade fused glass kelpie necklace from Stained Glass Creations and Beyond.
Prize 2
A handmade necklace from Art by Stefanie of Vic Caswell’s rendering of the kelpie from the cover!
Prize 3
An 11×16 poster of the cover of the Kelpie signed by T. J. Wooldridge and artist Vic Caswell
5×7 cards of all the cover aspects featured in the Scavenger Hunt
So, how do you take part in the Scavenger Hunt? Here are the details:
Collect the words from the novel excerpts and put together a poetic phrase.
Monday 3/25
Visit the Faery Castle at Kate Kaynak’s blog: http://thedisgruntledbear.blogspot.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 10th word
Tuesday 3/26
Hop over to Scotland at Stained Glass Creations and Beyond: http://stainedglasscreationsandbeyond.wordpress.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 12th word
Check out an artist rendition of Heather MacArthur’s family tartan with Aimee Weinstein at http://tokyowriter.com
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, first word
Wednesday 3/27
Bonus Art!
Meet Heather’s dad, Michael MacArthur, at Valerie Hadden’s blog: http://valeriehadden.wordpress.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 12th word
Thursday 3/28
Cast your eyes upon the kelpie, itself, with Suzanne Reynolds-Alpert at http://suzannereynoldsalpert.blogspot.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: 2nd sentence, 2nd word
And feel the snark of Monkey, the fey cat with Justine Graykin at http://justinegraykin.wordpress.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 3rd word
Friday 3/29:
Meet Heather’s best friend, Prince Joseph at, who’s hanging out with author Darby Karchut at http://darbykarchut.blogspot.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, 17th word
And finally meet Heather, herself, who’s hanging out with one of Trisha’s editors, Laura Ownbey at http://redpenreviews.blogspot.com/
Scavenger Hunt Goal: first sentence, first word
Collect all the words and put them together in a poetic sentence, and enter them into the rafflecopter giveaway for a chance to win one of the three prizes: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/MTBiNjRkMDYwN2U2MWZjNzBmNmM4YWEwNTEyODI0Ojc=/
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