“Don’t Patronize Me”

  • k-avatarOr Jack Kerouac?
  • simulates the roar
  • so soft and so elegant
  • severe attack of vomiting
  • “Don’t patronize me.”

“Don’t patronize me.” Stacie glared up at Derek. “Just hold my hair.”

Derek’s few memories of the previous night included more than enough drinking to account for Stacie’s severe attack of vomiting. They both had way too many cocktails, something with a kooky name and blended with shaved ice to a creamy texture and topped with an orange-peel origami swan. The drinks were so soft and so elegant it had been hard to decline as the next one was offered. And then the next. And the next, until inside your head their cumulative effect simulates the roar of the ocean in a seashell, drowning any coherent thoughts and drowning out the voice of reason.

Derek liked to go to parties so he could feel like his heroes. Like Fitzgerald, or Hemmingway. Or Jack Kerouac? But his taste in drinks was more like Patricia Highsmith.

bonus points for using them in reverse order

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My Eyes Were Full of Sand

  • by jenSure, it’s iconic and colorful and mesmerizing
  • impelling the machine uphill
  • it had been about eels
  • she was lost in the city
  • expressing his feelings by serious pantomime

Tune In Next Time Part 23                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

My eyes were full of sand when I opened them. I lay on the beach, blood still oozing from my leg wound. As I tried to get my bearings, I remembered the dream that haunted my childhood. I don’t know why, but it had been about eels, and I’d had it again just now, passed out on the shore by the pier. Sure, it’s iconic and colorful and mesmerizing to have a recurring dream, but those eels man, they haunt me.

I sat up in time to see John emerge from the crashing surf, still alive. Dammit. In his grip was my underwater digging apparatus. It seems that John escaped his sharky fate by impelling the machine uphill instead of down, and letting it drag him along behind it. Not for the first time I cursed my engineering prowess.

When John saw me laying there bleeding all over the empty metal box he began expressing his feelings by serious pantomime, his jutting middle fingers quivering in rage.

“Where is Tessa?” he bellowed, stomping up to where I was sprawled.

I knew Tessa was a terrible navigator. I knew she was lost in the city, hopelessly trying to find her way to whatever rendezvous she and John had arranged. My only chance was to send John the wrong way so that I could get some much-needed medical attention and then find her myself.

“They took her,” I lied through gritted teeth. “The ninjas took her.”

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Have A Method, Or You’ll Have Madness

r-avatarMagical thinking sounds like something that would be very helpful in creative pursuits such as writing fiction. Instead, it’s the culprit behind many plot holes. Even if you work from an outline (which we recommend strenuously) — even if you use stubs — you’re not protected completely.

Stuff that looks fine from a distance can hide serious logical problems, things you sometimes don’t discover until you’re writing the scenes. A common form of this, from our experience, is when a conversation must cover certain topics (plot points) but the characters refuse to talk about those things. Didn’t they read the outline? In broad strokes it’s easy to say, “Jack and Jill chat about climate change,” but up close it might prove difficult for Jack to engage Jill on the subject because his beliefs are so radical. But that’s what makes them interesting, and the conflict here resonates with their later need to cooperate in order to survive, so you know you have to find your way through.

We’re not saying tools like outlines are worthless. Just the opposite. It’s even easier to get tangled up in problems when you have no structure to work from. Without an outline to put it in context, how would you know whether it’s worth it to chisel away at the climate change convo? How long do you have to let Jack and Jill ramble for them to get to something you can use? And whoops, Rufus is in two places at once. Fixing that means the boat chase needs to take place ten miles inland. That could be… different. Yeah. No.

Have a process, is what we’re saying. An imperfect process is better than none at all.

We’re coming up on the time of the year when aspiring writers are exhorted to just go for it. Write like a maniac. That advice has its place, but it’s not a good way to proceed if your desired end product is a salable manuscript. What is a good way? Find the right partner.

 

“Hey!” I Shouted to Tessa

  • k-avatarI was thunderstruck
  • from a 72-year-old American woman
  • she was in love with him
  • looked first at the money
  • in an effort to stop the bleeding

Tune In Next Time Part 22                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

“Hey!” I shouted to Tessa, “look what I found!”

I knew she’d sit in that inflatable boat and let the sharks get her as long as she thought John was due to surface with the treasure any second. He should have spotted the digging machine and my hasty excavations and known immediately what happened. He should have come back up already, which made me suspect he wasn’t going to.

I shouted for Tessa again, waving the box over my head so rusty seawater drizzled from it into my eyes. I heard her start the zodiac’s motor, and I heard it grow louder and climb in pitch. Whew! She was headed for shore. Wiping my eyes, I saw the boat barreling straight at me. I was thunderstruck that she apparently meant to ram me. I didn’t want to be zodiac-struck as well, so I jumped to the side and then ran up the beach.

I stopped and turned in time to see Tessa leap from the beached boat. She pulled out the snub-nosed revolver she stole from a 72-year-old American woman at the Oscars several years ago. That woman had stolen it from Joseph Gordon Levitt, because she was in love with him and didn’t want him to be near any guns. Tessa looked like she wanted me to be near some bullets.

“We can still be partners,” I said. “I know you have the combination for this. And I have, well, I have this.” I jiggled the box, watching her eyes wobble to follow its movements.

The pistol in her hand went off. The box sprang open. Her shot had struck it instead of me. Whew again! But then I slumped onto the sand, which was already soaked with my blood. The ricochet had sent the slug into my leg.

Tessa ran up as the people from the film set ran in all directions.

She stood over me and the open box. She looked first at the money in the box, wads of carefully shrink-wrapped bills in large denominations. Then she squeezed my thigh. It was probably in an effort to stop the bleeding. I wanted to make a flirty wisecrack, but despite the horrendous pain in my leg I was suddenly too sleepy to fight it. I laid my head back on the dry sand and let myself spiral down.

bonus points for using them in order

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As I Watched My Former Lover Face Near-Certain Death

  • by jenmazes of winding passageways
  • a bit of low-level xenophobia, right?
  • seizing the black bottle
  • the Lyudmila who was not his sister
  • her mother bought it in Germany

Tune In Next Time Part 21                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

As I watched my former lover face near-certain death by shark attack, I turned the metal box over in my hands. Tessa alone knew the combination. Should I save her? Offer to share the treasure with her in exchange for her help? Demand the digits as the price for her life, keeping the box’s contents for myself?

The fins sliced through the waves, stalking her. It reminded me of when I first met her, years ago at a party. She strode in wearing nothing but a sharkskin minidress. I found out later her mother bought it in Germany. I was drawn to her immediately, and asked her to dance. That’s when John strode in with a couple of girls, both named Lyudmila. He kissed the Lyudmila who was not his sister, and then noticed me dancing with the delectable Tessa. He discarded Lyudmila rather rudely and tried to cut between me and Tessa, but she turned her back on him, seizing the black bottle of our host’s inky homebrew liquor in one hand and me in the other.

To John and his shabby treatment of his Russian date she said, “Nothing like a bit of low-level xenophobia, right?”

Before he could even formulate a reply she dragged me out of the party and through mazes of winding passageways to her own apartment where we spent the rest of the night downing the bitter black alcohol and screwing.

Could I let a girl like that be eaten by sharks? I could not.

 

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Two Brains Are Better Than One

r-avatarSo we’re motoring right along, finishing scenes at a healthy clip, when Jen suddenly pulls the handle on the emergency brake and we come clattering to a halt. The problem? Oh, only a fairly significant plot hole. Nothing major.

It wasn’t as bad as “plot hole” might make it sound. We knew where the characters were, and we knew where they were going to end up, and here in the writing cave we knew that it would work just fine. But on the page we left a couple of steps out of the journey and someone was bound to notice. Luckily for us (this time) it was Jen that did the noticing, which gave us the opportunity to backtrack a little bit and throw in some road signs to help the reader understand how the characters end up in the right place.

Having a writing partner is a distinct advantage. Our problem would have been harder to fix if it hadn’t been discovered until the draft was finished and in the hands of test readers. Or even worse, what if it managed to sneak through the whole editorial process only to snag paying customers?

As authors it’s our job to make the story world feel as real as possible, and it’s a job that’s a lot easier to do when you have access to two brains.

Edwina Has a Tendency

  • k-avatarI want to kiss you but I can’t
  • with the books and the plants
  • to curse and get nasty
  • I lit her cigarette
  • hid myself therein for many, many months

Edwina has a tendency to curse and get nasty when she hasn’t had a fix, so I lit her cigarette as quickly as possible. She took a long drag before muttering around the tube of putrid death pinched squarely in the center of her lips, “I want to kiss you but I can’t take this coffin nail out of my mouth.” Another lengthy drag and half of the cigarette was drooping ashes. “So you’ll have to wait,” she added, her words emerging in a gray plume that scattered flakes of ash into my face. I forgave her. Poor thing hadn’t had a smoke in almost a year. Her father kept her locked away in the conservatory with the books and the plants. Meanwhile, I nearly got caught sneaking around the grounds. I dashed to the cabana and hid myself therein for many, many months until the seasons turned and Edwina’s parents stopped using the pool so much and I could finally join her indoors.

 

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A Second Woman in Chef’s Whites

  • by jen“Look, Esmerelda!” she whispered.
  • my angry heart
  • the fire is slowly dying
  • vital, sunburnt, carefree
  • where social graces are never needed

Tune In Next Time Part 20                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

A second woman in chef’s whites approached the craft services table. The first woman elbowed her and pointed at the vital, sunburnt, carefree Tyler as he cavorted around the beach naked. “Look, Esmerelda!” she whispered. A movie set seems to be a place where social graces are never needed.

While the two of them ogled the actor, I cast my eyes back out to the zodiac bobbing in the waves near the pier. Tessa had double crossed me so many times in the past 24 hours I wasn’t sure I could ever trust her again. The woman was maddening, and for years I carried an inferno of passion for her in my angry heart.

“She’s cast her lot with John now,” I said to myself, “and in my heart the fire is slowly dying.”

I shook the metal box, hoping to divine its contents, but the sloshing rattle gave me nothing to go on. I stared at the lock, remembering that Tessa alone knew the combination.

Out on the sea, the ominous fins were circling ever closer to the zodiac and its lone passenger.

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Stichomancy Generator Update

r-avatarLongtime readers probably already know this, but for the benefit of our new fans (welcome!) here’s the lowdown on the writing prompts we post here at the Skelleyverse.

Most of them are stichomancy prompts, in which the author is challenged to write a short piece of fiction (or occasionally, verse) utilizing — verbatim — a list of phrases drawn from other sources. Stichomancy originated as a form of divination performed by flipping to a random page in a book and pointing to a random spot on that page to see what it says. We use it to compile the required ingredients for a writing prompt.

And, this being the twenty-first century, we’ve gone digital with the process to create our online stichomancy writing prompt generator. The snippets it returns are sourced from books, television shows, websites, and other places, including conversations we’ve actually had in real life. Wondering which of the bizarre phrases represent things we had some reason to say out loud is a torment we gladly infect you with. You’ll learn to love us for it.

This week we added another large batch of fodder to the infernal engine that cranks these things out. Jen did the harvesting, and she’s very pleased with the interplay of new flavors. Kent is insisting you’ll be interested to know that the generator’s code is very clever about not repeating results, so we’ll mention it even though we doubt anyone is as interested in that as he is. What it all means to you is a premium writing-prompt experience that keeps delivering new surprises. Give it a try! Share your results in the comments.

While Tessa Laughed

  • k-avatar— those Unicorn things you know, without horns —
  • at the sight of the nude young man
  • Because it’s the latter.
  • coquelicot malice in his face
  • very nervous about his voice being taped

Tune In Next Time Part 19                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

While Tessa laughed like a warped violin played by a demented jackrabbit and John checked the regulator on his diving suit, I started paddling toward shore, careful to keep the box out of sight beneath the surface of the water. The sharks might get me, but John and Tessa damn well weren’t getting the treasure. If the chum-vortex that attracted the sharks in the first place kept them distracted, I would be ashore and long gone before my former partner and my former paramour found the empty hole on the seabed. When the sandy bottom came up to meet my exhausted strokes, I knew my troubles were all behind me.

“Cut!” a shrill voice bellowed. I looked up from where I had crawled onto the beach and discovered a film crew in front of me. I stifled a laugh at the sight of the nude young man jogging in place. The director stormed down on me, coquelicot malice in his face and a piece of driftwood in his hand. I stood, tucking the metal box under my arm and scowling to match the director’s vicious mood.

“What are you doing here!” he screamed. “Can’t you see we’re filming! Beach closed!”

“I’m here to inspect the set,” I improvised. “Your permits better all be in proper order, too!”

The director dropped his driftwood club. “Oh, of course. It’ll only take a moment. Help yourself to some hot coffee.” And he scurried off.

I glanced back out over the water to see Tessa alone in the zodiac, eyeing the circling fins uneasily. I tried not to laugh, in case the film crew started doubting my story. Never wonder if it’s a good or bad idea to laugh out loud among your enemies. Because it’s the latter.

At the craft services table, I got a hot beverage. The nude young man jogged up to me and said, “In my scene, in the finished movie, I’ll be riding animals — those Unicorn things you know, without horns — but it’s all digital. So I have to move like I’m riding.” His eyes fell on the corroded metal box I still carried. “You’re not recording this are you?” And he ran away.

The caterer shrugged. After I stared openmouthed for a few seconds, she said, “Tyler’s going to do fine in this business. He’s very nervous about his voice being taped, but he’s okay going full-frontal.”

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