Tagged: shared prompt

The Big Six-Oh-Oh

It’s another milestone for everyone’s favorite chain story. This one. We’re talking about this one. The one you’re currently reading, which has reached its epic 600th installment. Some might say we need a hobby, but the joke’s on them — this is our hobby!

To celebrate such a grand achievement, Jen and Kent will be working on today’s entry together. Jen will go first and write until she manages to work in the first prompt phrase, then she’ll hand the keyboard to Kent. We’ll alternate until we hit the bottom of the list, then we’ll hit the showers.

Through the years we’ve accumulated a small collection of writing advice and style guides, and various and sundry reference books. We’ve drawn today’s prompt phrases from a handful of them: The Deluxe Transitive Vampire, Woe is I, The Writer’s Journey, Writing Better Lyrics, and American English Compendium.

Tune in next time part 599 & 600      Click Here for Earlier Installments

  • Frisk whoever enters.
  • moped in my boudoir
  • don’t always land gently
  • Certainly there is magic in the briefcase
  • rose to his haunches
  • aeronautical engineer could give a more precise description
  • ghosts of dead rules and spirits of imaginary taboos
  • where one style maven sees UFO’s
  • American slang and colloquialisms
  • vintage macho expression

For the next hour, while my horny necromancer costume dried, I regaled Tessa with stories of Jessamin’s terribleness.

“I get it,” Tessa said. “Your sister sucks.”

“It’s more than that,” I said, but before I could explain we heard a commotion outside. I pulled my still-damp pants on and told Tessa, “Frisk whoever enters. We don’t want any surprises.”

The noises outside grew more distinct as their source got closer to the door. I could only make out one voice, which sounded angry, mingled with enough crashing of branches and crunching of sleet-crusted snow to suggest a whole brigade. The angry voice said, “I suppose she’d have been happy to have moped in my boudoir all weekend, but I had places to go.”

I recognized the voice, and so did Tessa, judging by the look she threw my way. It was a look that said she was ready to land some punches, and we all know that a robot’s punches don’t always land gently.

The knob jiggled once and stilled. The voice outside shouted, “I know about the briefcase! Certainly there is magic in the briefcase, that’s not even the issue anymore!”

Why John thought I had the briefcase was anyone’s guess. I hadn’t seen that thing in years. The door flew outward and there stood my onetime partner/ofttimes nemesis, in the teeth of the storm. The snow rose to his haunches and was plastered to his clothes so that he resembled a yeti. The wind and ice had sculpted his hair into a lopsided wing, of which I’m sure an aeronautical engineer could give a more precise description. All I could think was that if his head were an airplane it would be doomed to fly in circles.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he boomed. “You’re going to say you can’t give me the briefcase, and you’re going to say your brother has it, and you’re going to cite all these ghosts of dead rules and spirits of imaginary taboos, and all that other Contrarian shit. And I’m sick of it, Jason. Sick. Of. It.” After a few seconds he raised his phone to his ear and muttered, “I’m going to have to call you back.”

Tessa and I exchanged a look. Her eyebrow quirked in a very lifelike manner, and I thought I knew what she meant. I knew our game plan. But then I looked at John again, at that hair, and I was mesmerized. It was as if he’d used a time machine to visit a salon in the 80s where one style maven sees UFO’s and translates them into coiffure.

“Have you misplaced your flock of seagulls?” I asked.

John’s confusion contorted his face beautifully and I had to suppress a snort of laughter. “You know I don’t understand all of your American slang and colloquialisms,” he said. “And it’s rude of you to use them around me.”

But it wasn’t long before the confusion on his face shifted rapidly to a vintage macho expression, a confident smirk, as he said, “You, ‘Jason,’ seem to have misplaced your lisp!”

bonus points for using them in order

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Another Way You Can Tell

Our weird and wonderful writing-prompt chain story journey has reached an exciting milestone — our 500th episode! If you’ve been around here a while you know how we approach these centenary increments: Jen and Kent share the keyboard and alternate the prompt phrases. Also, we choose a specific source for the prompt rather than using our awesome generator. (You should really check it out!)

In honor of hitting the half-thousand mark, this time out we’ve extracted all the prompt phrases from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which we watched again on our most recent night off. The movie provided us with tons of fodder, so much so that Jen had to winnow it down to just ten items. Kent randomized the order, and here we go!

  • this outrageous accent
  • carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock
  • quite indefatigable
  • you have to know these things when you’re a king
  • shrubberies are my trade
  • farcical aquatic ceremony
  • exciting underwear
  • this isn’t my nose
  • silly knees-bent running about
  • nibble your bum

Tune in next time part 499 & 500      Click Here for Earlier Installments

Another way you can tell Troy and Trent apart is by their toes. Trent’s toe muscles have this outrageous accentuation from his years of ballet, and looking at the toes of the faux-yeti standing before me as he scratched himself, I knew instantly that it was Trent pretending to be Troy. His beefy foot-digits traced the words of Oksana’s manifesto, carved in mystic runes upon the very living rock of the cavern’s floor.

While I pondered my brother’s toes, the bidding continued at a leisurely pace, creeping ever higher. As an auctioneer, Oksana was quite indefatigable. From my station beneath the table, I overheard someone pompously remarking to John, “Sometimes it takes a week to finish the bidding on the first item. Doesn’t do to rush in right at the start, dear boy.” John muttered something I couldn’t hear. But the reply was, “Mother warned me, while I was still a prince, that you have to know these things when you’re a king.” He slurped loudly from a beverage.

“And what are you king of?” John asked.

“Boxwoods, my dear boy! Boxwoods! They call me King Woody. Shrubberies are my family legacy and shrubberies are my trade.”

“Well,” John huffed, “if it takes as long as you say, the spring thaw will make a farcical aquatic ceremony of things in here.”

“But it will be worth it,” King Woody assured drunkenly. “Rumor has it that Jim has some very exciting underwear beneath his fashionable trousers.” The table over me lurched as John used it to keep his balance. King Woody’s laughter drowned in another slurp from his drink, then he said thickly, “I’ll bet you’ve got a nose for such things!”

“But this isn’t my nose,” John said levelly, moving around to Trent’s side of the table.

If I didn’t want to spend the remainder of the auction trapped under the buffet table, I had to get John and Trent to move away. If I did the snowcock cry again, John would undoubtedly start his silly knees-bent running about routine, but did I dare risk the chance that Trent would look under the table in search of the bird?

Luckily, King Woody seemed to pick up on John’s subtle hints. He shuffled away, trying to save face by exclaiming, “I’ll leave the rest of the crudités for you, then, so you can nibble your bumpy gherkin and imagine how demeaning it will feel to lose this auction to me!”

bonus points for using them in order

and mega bonus points for reaching such a milestone!

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Happy Anniversary, You Big Dumb Chain Story!

Our illustrious chain story, Tune In Next Time, has reached another milestone! 400 installments, if you can believe it. Soon it will be as long as one of our actual novels. We can’t imagine trying to edit it into coherence, though.

This time, we’ve pulled our inspiration phrases from one of the baby name books in Jen’s vast collection. Some of these “definitions” are rather dire, as it turns out.

As these shared prompts usually go, Jen will take the first phrase and write until she manages to work it in. Then Kent will take over the keyboard, and so on.

  • personification of madness
  • now little used except in the Highlands
  • youthful delight in fine necklaces
  • wreaked havoc on
  • unsuccessful attempts to pronounce
  • the tinkling sound of pieces of jade
  • “Red flag”
  • the murder of her father
  • merely a Cornish curiosity
  • in origin a local

Tune in next time parts 399 & 400      Click Here for Earlier Installments

We sped onward across the waves, the fisherman in his hip-waders and lipstick, me dressed as the personification of madness. The fisherman told me about the garment he’d foisted upon my torso. “The peacock-feather vest is an old symbol of wisdom, now little used except in the Highlands.”

“The Inimical Archipelago has no Highlands,” I said.

“The Archipelago is all Highlands. Just thirty years ago the Lowlands were still above sea level. They’re gone now, of course, lost due to the folly of the Warlord and his dalliance with the American president. Back in those days William Penn XI took a youthful delight in fine necklaces, and that lady president had the finest.”

I knew he was talking about Mother. And I knew that it was she, not the warlord, who really bore the blame for the catastrophe that wreaked havoc on the Great Lakes and, evidently, also partially sank the Archipelago. But it didn’t seem worth arguing that point.

What would this lowly fisherman say if he knew that I was the son of the president he so reviled? Or that Jim, the man we were chasing, was the result of the Warlord’s affair with her? Through the years since the cataclysm there had been several unsuccessful attempts to pronounce Mother dead. Would this man take out his ire on her sons instead?

The catamaran swooped over the waves. The rushing wind and crashing surf were complemented by the tinkling sound of pieces of jade on a strand of silk that whipped in the breeze and curled around the mast.

“The Warlord should have known better than to trust that woman,” the fisherman said. “He even made a speech on the radio where he said, ‘Everyone around me says that she has “Red flag” written all over her, but I can resist neither her charms nor the opportunity to view a calligraphic tattoo of that nature first hand.'” He turned his head and spat into the waves. “Perhaps it’s wrong to judge her so harshly, though. It’s little wonder that the murder of her father left her mind unhinged.”

I had never met my grandfather. He’d been assassinated in Cornwall decades before my birth, in a very mysterious incident known to the world as the Curiosity. But to Mother, her father’s death was not merely a Cornish Curiosity — it was part of an elaborate conspiracy theory she sought to this day to untangle.

“You’re quite well informed on global political history,” I remarked, “for an Inimical fisherman.”

He grinned. “The fishing life here in the Archipelago suits me, but I would not say that I am in origin a local.”

(bonus points! whew!)

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As I Lay Here With You

  • dark thorn stuck in the skin
  • and there he lay for eighteen months
  • It was fascinating.
  • “I mean, obviously.”
  • as I lay here with you

Kent’s Take

k-avatar“As I lay here with you, I think of him. Not just his physical aspect, warmth and solidness, but his humor and his regrets. So I wonder about your regrets. We began as colleagues, and bonded over the riddle of the dark thorn stuck in the skin of a quarantined banana. It was fascinating. We ruled out every known kind of plant that produces thorns, so in the end we failed to determine whether this one might be dangerous, or deduce anything useful about where those bananas had been. But researching it side-by-side for a year and a half was how you and I fused into a single entity. He knew it was happening. He collapsed on the sofa the first night, sobbing, and there he lay for eighteen months. One day he was gone. I hear that now he only eats bananas.”

“I mean, obviously.”

 

Jen’s Take

“by jenAs I lay here with you, I am reminded of a weird, feminist retelling of Sleeping Beauty, where it was the prince who pricked his finger and fell asleep. Instead of a misadventure with a spinning wheel, the prince encountered an enchanted rose bush belonging to a witch. He made a ham-fisted attempt at plucking a bloom for his girlfriend and got jabbed. The dark thorn stuck in the skin of his index finger and he fell over, unconscious, on the garden path, and there he lay for eighteen months until he was awakened by a kiss from the valiant female gardener. It was fascinating.”

“I mean, obviously.” Jacinda smiled. “That’s why you never shut up about it.”

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Cotton Umbrellas, and Useful Knowledge

  • cotton umbrellas, and useful knowledge
  • throw other people’s lives into disarray
  • Whenever she wore pants
  • Should it ever leave the ground
  • scattering in all directions

Jen’s Take

by jenFor years Lolita’s sartorial choices were the talk of the internet. Whenever she wore pants instead of a short skirt it would throw other people’s lives into disarray. Fashion bloggers never knew quite what to say, their clever words scattering in all directions like so many cotton umbrellas, and useful knowledge of how the masses could emulate Lovely Lolita’s style never appeared. Lolita dreamed of turning all of her cast-off clothing into a giant hot air balloon. Should it ever leave the ground, she thought she would enjoy looking down on all those who had previously looked down on her.

Kent’s Take

k-avatarHer imagination was like a giant, colorful balloon filled with fish and sneakers and harmonicas. Should it ever leave the ground, the townsfolk would be flabbergasted by cotton umbrellas, and useful knowledge, scattering in all directions.

Her balloon would always throw other people’s lives into disarray. They couldn’t reconcile her chaotic visions with their own preference for beige humdrummery. To see the creative faculties of her mind soaring over the trees made their earwax buzz.

Whenever she wore pants, her balloon sailed in figure-eights. Whenever she wore shoes, two tiny banjos were elected to parliament.

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2013 Holiday Prompt

In this special holiday edition, the stichomancy prompt phrases were all taken from Christmas carols. Jen and Kent both tackled the same set, with markedly different results. Whose do you prefer?

  • so lively and quick
  • dashing through the snow
  • he began to dance around
  • tis the season to be jolly
  • nine ladies dancing
  • when we finally kiss goodnight

k-avatarKent’s take:

“I forgot these things were so lively and quick,” Herb remarked, drawing a bead on one of the creatures dashing through the snow in the clearing.

“And I forgot they bite! Ow!” exclaimed Remmy as he began to dance around holding one boot up out of the deep drifts, a creature dangling from the toe.

Herb chuckled, prompting Remmy to ask him with some vehemence just what was so damn funny.

“Oh, nothing. Just, tis the season to be jolly, I suppose,” drawled Herb in reply.

Remmy shook the xenopod loose and stomped it, muttering about better times before the invasion. “I’ve had enough for one day. Let’s go get drunk at the Nine Ladies Dancing. I’ll buy.”

“Okay,” Herb said. “I’d like to see that sweet little barmaid again anyway.” Herb’s opinions on the invasion were slightly more mixed. “When we finally kiss goodnight, I’ll find out what those suckers on her tongue feel like.”

bonus points for using them in order!

 

by jenJen’s take:

My blind date with Bertram started out well enough. I found him to be so lively and quick-witted that I was able to overlook his unfortunate ears. I thought him quite galant when he offered to pay for dinner, but halfway through the meal he began to dance around in his seat like he had to pee. Then he grumbled at our waiter, “It’s winter, dude! Tis the season to be jolly well sozzled so you don’t notice the cold! Bring me a yard of Schnapps! And one for the lady.”

He finished his shots in record time, and most of mine, all the while telling the tale of a bachelor party he’d recently attended where there were no fewer than nine ladies dancing naked. I was unimpressed.

Bertram’s fate was sealed when he said to me, “Hey babe, when we finally kiss goodnight, I’m going to slip you the tongue.”

Horrified, I left him at the table and went dashing through the snow and wind all the way to the subway station so he couldn’t follow me home.

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Dizzy Fracas

Today we offer two versions of the same prompt, one written by Kent and one by Jen. This prompt is a simplified form of the stichomancy prompts we use most often. Instead of phrases or sentence fragments, we have a short list of words that must be included.

  • dizzy
  • fracas
  • gender
  • curve

k-avatarKent’s take:

In the tumultuous midst of a fracas

Said the dizzy lad, “Here’s where your mistake is

Although I’m quite slender

I assure you my gender

Has no curve: my bosom all fake is.”

by jen

 

Jen’s take:

“All I said was I like the gender with curves,” Sam said, gazing out the window at the flaming chaos below.

Gina replied, “Well, Samantha, this is a pretty conservative town. An announcement like that coming from the new librarian is bound to make some of the gentry dizzy.”

“I suppose you’re right. I should have expected it. But, Gina, this fracas is making me horny. Take off your spectacles and kiss me!”

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Fear-Joy

Today we offer two versions of the same prompt, one written by Jen and one by Kent. This prompt is a simplified form of the stichomancy prompts we use most often. Instead of phrases or sentence fragments, we have a short list of words that must be included.

  • concerned
  • concentration
  • fear-joy
  • murderous physicians

by jenJen’s take:

“Murderous physicians fill me with fear-joy,” Joanne told her concerned therapist. “Doctors in general frighten me with their looks of caring concentration, their probing questions, their needles, and nasal-lights. And yet, their deadly intentions, the dangers they represent, are a turn-on.”

 

k-avatarKent’s take:

Fear-joy heightened all Carlos’s senses in the waiting room. The idea that he was perhaps waiting to see one of the murderous physicians he’d read about made him giddy, stoking the fetishistic core of his mind to a white glow. He directed all his concentration at a magazine. Outwardly, no one would know of his agitation. He did not look at all concerned.

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Hotel Room in Prague

Jen and Kent both took a stab at this prompt. Who do you think did a better job? Why?

  1. Character – the human fly
  2. Setting – hotel room in Prague
  3. Object – camcorder
  4. Situation – inventing something

k-avatar

Kent’s Take

Spike always loved climbing in the old cities, clambering over all the ornamental stonework and making faces at the other gargoyles.

But he mostly hated climbing hotels. Other buildings’ occupants could usually be counted on to be thoroughly sick of whatever sad excuse for a view lay beyond the window, but in hotels everyone is still getting used to the scenery. And paranoid as hell that some lunatic might come in over the ledge and do some hideous thing that the papers will hush up to protect tourism.

At the fifth floor of the Prague Hilton, Spike heard moaning. Slowly he pulled himself high enough to glance in. The first thing he saw was the camcorder on a tripod. The next thing took him some moments to comprehend. It was something that had never occurred to him, although it looked like fun.

He climbed on, secret witness to an invention of passion.

 

by jenJen’s Take

By Eastern European standards, the room was luxurious. By Misty’s Vegas standards it was merely not squalid. But it would do.

The light on the camcorder blinked steadily, letting Misty know that her every move was being recorded for later broadcast by Czech television.

Shifting her weight entirely to her left hand, Misty slowly, slowly lowered her knees toward the floor while pointing her toes toward the gilt ceiling and flourishing madly with her right hand.

The chandelier she hung from swayed slightly and Misty worked with the movement, augmenting it until she was swinging several inches in each direction. Her movements stabilized the arc, controlled it, and she was ready for the final motion, the twist that would make this move her own.

Taking a deep breath, Misty thrust her feet outward and her head down, while simultaneously rotating clockwise.

It was beautiful.

Prague would forever be known as the city where “The Nightingale” was invented.

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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?