Tagged: celebrity

Hieronymus Warhol Wandered the Arid Australian Outback

  • by jenonly this wasn’t a dolphin or a lion
  • a certain rock
  • It’s the fever
  • the sparkling synapses
  • tiny bubbles from his angelic lips

Hieronymus Warhol wandered the arid Australian outback in search of his spirit guide for three days before discovering a certain rock that spoke to him. By that time Hieronymus was naked, hungry, sunburnt, and severely dehydrated. The sparkling synapses in his overtaxed mind misfired repeatedly as the rock, the beautiful gray rock, told him where to find his spirit guide.

Hieronymus had been expecting a grand and noble creature to guide him on his quest, only this wasn’t a dolphin or a lion. It was Donald Trump.

It’s the fever, Hieronymus thought as he gazed upon Donald Trump spewing tiny bubbles from his angelic lips.

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Reggie Was Growing Disenchanted

  • by jen“Blowing hard on his face,”
  • from a roadside zoo in Florida
  • order his midnight niblets
  • or ugly or evil
  • his particular phobia is length
  • forced to labor in the vineyards
  • Attacking me, mind you!

Reggie was growing disenchanted with the casting process for the Hieronymus Warhol movie.

“Does he have references?” she asked of an actor hoping to play the hero.

“Yes,” signed Jen. “But they’re from a roadside zoo in Florida.”

Reggie snorted and tossed the headshot aside. “He is not outrageous or ugly or evil-smelling enough, plus his particular phobia is length, if you know what I mean. He’ll never work as Hero.”

“He should be forced to labor in the vineyards until he no longer desires an acting career,” agreed Jen.

Jen picked up the next headshot from the pile beside the margaritas. She whistled and handed it to Reggie.

“Blowing hard on his face,” Reggie said, “is how I would like to start my morning.”

“Why don’t you order his midnight niblets and see where it leads?” said Jen.

Reggie smirked. “I would if I didn’t need to worry about Naveen’s jealousy attacking. Attacking me, mind you! If Naveen’s jealousy would settle for only attacking this handsome actor, it might be worth a try.”

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When Samantha Saw the Season Finale of American Idol

  • k-avatarBe my guest.
  • “God bless you, Sam.”
  • She was at last able to weep
  • taken refuge in the bathtub
  • impulsively kissed Rhoda Johnson’s cheek

When Samantha saw the season finale of American Idol, she was at last able to weep.

Ever since his ouster, Sanjaya had taken refuge in the bathtub. He knocked on her door in the dead of night and asked if he could stay.

“Be my guest.”

“God bless you, Sam.”

What could she say? He knew things about her, things Simon must never find out.

It wasn’t a secret that she’d impulsively kissed Rhoda Johnson’s cheek. No, the secret things were far more sinister, and sensual.

Would she ever be able to take a bath again? Or would Sanjaya stay in the tub forever?

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“Now You May Feel a Momentary Discomfort”

  • k-avatarjust a nip
  • a Swedish gynecologist
  • such as Mr T
  • we watched professional bowling
  • This angered Bruno

“Now you may feel a momentary discomfort, just a nip.”

Sue nodded, wondering how a dental procedure came to be invented by a Swedish gynecologist. Also wondering why her dentist had a mohawk. The hair would look normal on some outrageous celebrity, such as Mr T. On a dentist it looked like he couldn’t possibly be a real dentist.

I have got to get better insurance, Sue thought. Then she winced, but only for a moment.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, right?”

She nodded again, then shook her head, then tried to smile apologetically and that really hurt because of the way her lips were stretched out of the way.

“It’s okay, I understand,” her dentist assured her hastily. “I haven’t seen such a confused sequence of emotions since we watched professional bowling with my uncle, and my cousin Bruno rolled seven consecutive strikes but lost the match.” He sighed. “This angered Bruno so badly that he bit through a pin. Which is how I got into dentistry.”

Bonus points for using the prompts in order!

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“Welcome Back”

  1. by jenCharacter – inventor of the spank-o-matic
  2. Setting – the Ghost Planet
  3. Object – a single electron
  4. Situation – lost piece of jewelry

“Welcome back to Space Ghost Coast to Coast. I’m your host, Brak. Space Ghost is busy right now, so he can’t sit behind the desk.”

“He’s busy being spanked,” Zorak said. Then he laughed gratingly and blinked audibly. “Pa-dunk.”

Moltar pulled some levers and showed a replay of the first guest segment.

Space Ghost is heckling a nebbishy-looking guy about his invention, the Spank-O-Matic. Space Ghost cannot grasp the concept. The man, Phil, invites Space Ghost to try his invention and Space Ghost falls for it. Once Space Ghost is all strapped in, Phil removes his mask and reveals himself to be Zorak.

Canned laughter plays while Space Ghost is spanked.

Moltar pulled some more levers and showed Brak attempting to interview a single electron. The electron was getting the better of him.

Zorak ducked down inside his pod and popped back up holding an earring.

“Hey, Zorak,” said Moltar. “What’re you doing with Black Widow’s earring?”

“Umm. Err,” Zorak mumbled.

Canned laughter accompanied a knowing look between Brak and Moltar.

Zorak blushed.

Run credits.

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Plotline Evolution

r-avatarDwight Eisenhower said that plans are useless but planning is essential. So it is with outlining a novel and then actually writing it.

The outline says certain events will happen in a certain order, but then while writing the scenes it doesn’t feel right, so small adjustments have to be made. Those little changes add up along the way, and sometimes the plot moves off in a totally unexpected direction. If you have a solid outline, you’ll probably be able to swerve around obstacles and get things back on course. Or, perhaps you’ll opt to pursue the new path you’ve found along the way.

There’s another level where things can evolve under your fingertips. The general shape of the events might not change, but you still end up with a radically different story than the one you thought you’d set out to tell.

Does the propulsion come from wondering who the villain will kill next, or from trying to figure out who the killer is? The same basic tale can be flipped between these states by a single critical detail: whether or not you tell the reader who the bad guy is. That decision could move your story to a different genre entirely, without even altering who kills whom.

What looks like a suitable source of action and tension in the outline might turn out not to fulfill its promise in prose. In a collaboration, this is something to talk through with your partner as it develops, especially if you’re divvying up the work and each writing a subset of the scenes. If you rely on the outline as the firm bedrock of your project, but your partner has made adaptations on the fly without telling you, then the whole first draft could fall apart halfway through.

But as always, there’s an upside to having a partner to help cope with the challenge. As long as you communicate you’ll avoid the catastrophe described above, and you’ll be able to brainstorm a solution that makes you both happy. Kent and Jen like to go for walks together, and use the time to discuss these kinds of shifts in the plot. How do you debug your outlines? What do you do when you feel the story pulling you down a different road?

Ursula Carefully Examined

  1. Character – “Bounty” hunter
  2. Setting – vestibule of the time travel agency
  3. Object – compact
  4. Situation – the llama escaped!

Ursula carefully examined the image in her compact. She switched it to conventional mode, and checked her reflection. She looked hot.

Six Einsteins were quarreling with the receptionist, insisting that it doesn’t work like this. A separate window had been opened for the retrograde travelers, staffed by an agent who was fluent in Backwards.

You’ve made quite a mess this time, Llama, but your scheme to escape through time will be your own undoing.

This was a job for the Quicker-Picker-Upper.

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Signs Point To Yes

  1. by jenCharacter – Dick Clark’s evil dopplegänger
  2. Setting – Pere-Lachaise
  3. Object – Magic 8 Ball
  4. Situation – group sex

Signs point to yes.

“Excellent,” breathed Click Dark. “Excellent.” He tried to cackle, but it didn’t work. He carefully rested the Magic 8 Ball on Morrison’s tombstone and stepped back. The crowds were always thin this time of day in the fall, but he’d need to work quickly.

His blow gun made short work of the gendarme, and Dark was able to begin drawing the arcane symbols necessary for tonight’s ritual.

A group of Australian tourists was the first to fall into his trap. They quickly disrobed and began their gyrations. Dark started the video camera and smiled, feeling his own arousal. A lone French student and three Germans completed the group.

Dark watched the steam rise from the twelve nude bodies, and completed his calculations. The blond boy. He would be first. Dark stepped out of his trench coat and joined the group.

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Tolstoy

The opening line of Anna Karenina famously declares that all happy families are alike, while each unhappy one is unhappy in its own way. Writing partnerships are the opposite: the failed ones are all the same in the end, but each successful one is unique.

We haven’t rambled about what makes a good writing partner lately. It’s overdue.

Some teams gel because of the similarities between the partners, which makes sense because they have common ground. Not everyone gets along with other people who are too much like themselves, though, so some partnerships thrive because the members are different. Also, differences broaden a partnership by letting you each draw from the other’s expertise. More than that, some occasional friction can be invigorating. It is a signal that your partner cares about the project enough to get worked up over it.

All relationships take a certain amount of work, and a writing collaboration is no exception. The thing to watch out for is how much of your energies are going into not strangling each other, because that’s energy that could be better spent on something else. The same reasoning applies when there’s too little passion. If you’re exhausting yourself trying to build up your partner’s enthusiasm, that’s not good either.

Every writing team needs to find its own groove, and sometimes it takes a different groove from one project to the next. Work at it, and find a shared voice you love, and your partnership will be happy in its own unique way.

Happy Winter Solstice!

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?