Category: Various & Sundry Prompts

Jacket Blurb #2

k-avatarOur critique group meets in a bookstore, and that inspired this week’s writing prompt. We were each assigned the title of an existing science fiction novel we had not read, and had to write the exciting synopsis for the back cover.

Kent’s assigned novel was Friends Come in Boxes

Pop goes the weasel.

Timmy shivered in darkness, a darkness in his own mind. A darkness reaching for his soul.

Pop goes the weasel.

Years before, he’d had the courage to turn the handle and release the jaunty little tune. To summon the smiling clown. And ever since, it had taken all his courage just to walk outside. Because now he knew.

Pop goes the weasel.

They say that friends come in boxes. But they don’t say whose.

Jacket Blurb #1

by jenOur critique group meets in a bookstore, and that inspired this week’s writing prompt. We were each assigned the title of an existing science fiction novel we had not read, and had to write the exciting synopsis for the back cover.

Jen’s assigned novel was 43,000 Years Later

An epic saga tracking the bloodline, the passion, the tribulations and joys of a single family through the most influential 43,000 years of man’s recent history.

It starts when Percival Gray meets the young, beautiful Persimmon Smith and romance blossoms. Follow through the years as their family grows and shapes world (and eventually galactic) events!

43,000 pages would scarcely be enough to contain the tale of what happens. Where will they end up 43,000 Years Later?

Pool Table

k-avatarThis week’s prompts involved comparing a person to an inanimate object, creating a metaphor and then extending it.

Kent’s object: Pool Table

Jerry had the same low center of gravity as the tables at the pool hall where he kept his “office,” and like them he usually had an 8-ball in one of his pockets. Unlike those tables, Jerry was on the level.

Granted, he was a loan shark (not a pool shark) and there were dozens of local legends about what that 8-ball was for. But he always stuck to the original terms of a deal, and never hurt people who didn’t have it coming.

He also upheld a sort of personal code against talking about his clients, understandably enough. But two underage hustlers had been dragged out of the river in the past week, both known regulars at Jerry’s establishment, and I had to know if they were also his personal customers.

Because if they were, that would put Jerry behind the 8-ball this time.

Obscene Marionette

by jen

This week’s prompts involved comparing a person to an inanimate object, creating a metaphor and then extending it.

Jen’s object: Obscene Marionette

Sexually, Francine was an obscene marionette, preferring bondage games, and always allowing her puppet master to dictate her behavior, pull her strings, and force her to perform on a tiny stage in front of a young audience.

Setting Prompt

During October we will be sharing passages that we’ve written independently from the same prompt.

Today we have a different kind of prompt, the setting/picture prompt. A member of our critique group brought this in for us all to try.

Here is the inspiration photo we were provided:

Lava Rocks

Kent’s Take

Evans knew he could trust Smith. He inched backwards down the sheer face, his safe descent relying on Smith to hang on to the other end of the rope because the weather-beaten basalt was too hard to drive in belaying pins.

Evans actually felt he had the better half of the job, because soon now his progress would take him into precious shade. Smith had to bake in the cruel desert sun at the edge of the drop.

It did take skill and concentration to place his feet, choosing spots between the vertical ridges of eroded lava-rock, where the folds of this infernal theatre curtain couldn’t trap his boots. He could feel the heat through his gloves, through the thick soles of his boots. The glove was becoming threadbare from gripping the abrasive stone to keep himself from swinging, so as not to fray the rope.

If his theory was right, then at the lowest point in the chasm he would see fossils, imprints of life that thrived in magma.

Finally, shade.

And then, weightlessness and swirling fear.

Smith had theories of his own.

 

Jen’s Take

by jenThe Monsters of Rock play Red Rocks

The members of Metallica regretted their experimentation with Japanese radiation the minute they grew too large for their tour bus. Luckily, in their enhugened state, the walk from Los Angeles to Denver took only half an hour.

Lars Ulrich was the first to straddle the peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and he looked around in wonder. Darkness was only just beginning to creep up from the horizon, and Lars shielded his eyes from the sun’s last rays. Below him the mountains jutted, rough primeval and snow-capped. To the east, Lars caught his first glimpse of the amphitheater nestled as it was among the peaks. The ruddy, rusty stones that gave it its name looked warm and inviting, but Lars knew they were no warmer than any of the surrounding grey rocks. The parking lot was alive with tiny moving dots of many colors, but Lars could hear nothing but the rush of icy wind around his head and the occasional roar of a passing jet.

James and the others joined Lars at last and together the Monsters of Rock gazed down upon their fans, wondering where they would find instruments large enough to play.

 

What do you think? Who handled this prompt better?