Prompt Group: Frenimies and Thunderstorms

I actually went to my prompt group! Yep, that’s right. I haven’t been going a lot lately because life has been super crazy but I went on July 1 (and took forever to post this).

Our fearless leader was absent so our friend John bravely took over. We did four prompts, which I’ll share here along with my response for two of them. I’ll list the prompts first and if you want to do them yourself, please pingback here so I can read them.

Prompts:

1. Think of your favorite antagonist and the trait that makes him/her/it an interesting character. Write a scene with a character who has that trait (7 minutes)
2. Last minute disappointment (3 minutes)
3. An interrupting thunderstorm (5 minutes)
4. How did it/he/she get that name? (3 minutes)

My Responses:

Prompt 1

“Caitlin, you can’t play with her at recess.”

I looked around, confused. The only person I was playing with was Ashley and as far as I knew, Hannah and Ashley were friends.

“With Ashley?” I asked, understanding that I wasn’t going to figure this out in my own.

Hannah glared at Ashley who shrunk under the glare. “Yes, with Ashley and her perfect baby-cut top.”

I looked at Ashley again; I hadn’t noticed her new shirt. It was a blue-green that matched her eyes and had a really nice cut.

“I don’t get it,” I said, really not understanding.

“She went out and bought the same shirt as me!” Hannah was mad, pointing her finger at the offending article. “She’s trying to copy me, to be just like me. How sad.” Hannah crossed her arms, continuing to glare at Ashley who was kicking the ground with her toes and tugging at the hem of her shirt as if she could change it.

“That’s not true, Hannah, you don’t know that.”

“My mom bought it for me,” Ashley pipped up in a weak voice.

“Shut up, Ashley. Don’t lie to me.” Hannah was glaring at us both; at Ashley for stealing her style and me for not choosing her side. What’s a girl to do?

“Hannah, it’s just a shirt; we can still play together.”

“I’m not going to be seen with someone who’s copying me. And I won’t be seen with someone who’s obviously not my friend!”

I knew the last bit was directed at me and I took a step toward Hannah. Hannah started to smirk and Ashley looked on the verge of tears.

“Is there a problem girls?” The tall shadow of the recess monitor, Miss Molly, loomed over us all.

“No, Miss Molly,” we all said in unison as if it was rehearsed.

“Just deciding what to do on this beautiful day,” Hannah said with a smile.

“Well, no need for the yelling. Run along.” She turned and walked away to take care of some boys pushing each other really high on the swings.

Hannah’s eyes turned dark again. “Let me know when you decide who your real friends are,” she said to me and turned away from us. I looked at Ashley, still not knowing what to do. I took a step toward Hannah and paused again. I wanted to be her friend, but I didn’t want to follow her.

Prompt 3

“What was that? Was that a gunshot?”

“No, baby, come back to bed.”

“But what if someone’s dead out there? Bleeding?”

“It was a thunderstorm; come back to bed. This was just about to get good.”

“How can you be thinking of anything besides the fact that there might be a dead dog out there?”

“Because of what you were just doing to me. Can we get back to that?”

“Not until you go look for the blood trail the poor animal is probably leaving through the parking lot.”

“There’s no dead dog, Jill.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I think you’re trying to get out of doing something.”

“How can you think of yourself right now?”

“You’re working yourself into a panic.”

“You’re working yourself into apathy!”

“Coma back to bed, Jill. What are you doing?”

“Looking for my shoes. I’ve got to get out there.”

“It’s pouring.”

“Then I’ll need to find my shirt, too.”

“If you didn’t want to, you could have said something.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes you do.”

“Well, maybe I do and maybe I didn’t know how to tell you but now I’m worried about this dog. So, I’ll be seeing you later because I’m about to storm out of here looking for that dog and I’ll probably jump in my car and go home after. Good night.”

 

Until next time, write on.

You can follow me on Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. I’m available via email at SamAStevensWriter@gmail.com. And as always, feel free to leave a comment!

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Prompt Group: Personality Traits

Yes, I finally went to my prompt writing group again. Crazy, I know! Nicole and I even went to a book store before and I only bought two books are you proud of me yet? Well you should be. At group this week we all introduced ourselves along with a favorite personality trait to pass on to our characters. Mine was re-telling the same story over and over to the same person, something that unfortunately runs in my maternal family (I feel bad for anyone having dinner at my parents house when my grandma is there; that’s three generations of the same stories!). The traits were then paired together in sets and we had to write a character that had all of the personality traits listed.

As per usual, I’ll give you the prompts and time we took to do them and then you can give them a whirl as well! My responses will be below. If you do post yours, please link back here so I can see your awesome writing.

1. Anger Issues and Indecision (5 minutes)
2. Bad Memory and Impulsive Liar (5 minutes)
3. Bad-ass, Indomitable Spirit, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (5 minutes, but 7 would be better)

 

My Answers

Number 1
It would take me, how long, twenty minutes to get back to work? I had twenty five, so that meant I only had another five minutes to pick out my sandwich. Easier said than done for me. If you don’t know, Jimmy Johns has 17 sandwich options and they each sound delicious and have a funny and quirky name, like “Turkey Tom.” There are a handful of nu-numbered options, each with its own fun name. So I’ll have to read each one.
Standing off to the side, I’m glaring at the menu, often interrupted by what those at the register are ordering.
“Number 7!”
“Slim 4, add mayo.”
What? There are slims? That adds another six options, oh God.
I think I’ve finally got it narrowed down to the Vito or the California Club when I hear someone order their sandwich “on Wheat.”
“What’s wheat?” I ask to cashier whose elbow I’ve been standing at for almost ten minutes already.
“You can order any of our sandwiches on wheat bread.”
I furrow my brow, not ready to make another decision.
“Are you ready to order, sir?” he asks me.
“No!” I snap, frustrated at my own indecisiveness.
“Would you mind stepping to the side?” He’s treading lightly around me like I’m going to explode. How does he know?
“Oh, sure, I’ll step to the side.” I’m glaring at him as I take one precise step to the left. He checks over his shoulder at a chubby woman I assume is his manager. Like she can stop me from doing anything.
“I’ll be ready to serve you whenever you’re ready sir,” he says with a forced smile.
“I’ll have the JJ Gargantuian on Wheat.” I smirk, knowing I’ve ordered the most expensive thing on the menu, which must be the best choice.
“Would you like to chips, cookie, pickle, or a drink?”
“WHAT?!”

Number 2
I was out with the guys.
Oh, fun. Where did you go?
To the bar.
With who again?
With Mike and Chelsea.
You said with the guys.
I’m using ‘guys’ in the loosest form possible. Chelsea really wanted to grab McDonalds.
Was this before or after the bar?
Um, before.
So what time did you get to the bar?
What’s with the third degree?
You tend to lie.
I’m not lying about Applebees.
You went to Applebees?
I just told you this, Jesus Christ. The bar, we went to the bar.
So Applebees is the bar?
Yes.
And you went to McDonalds first?
I told you, Amanda really wanted McDonalds fries.
You said Chelsea.
Well, she did too. They both wanted McDonald’s.
So it was you, Amanda, Chelsea, and Mike?
No, the guys were there too.
All of the guys?
Some of them. Do I pass your test yet?
What did you order?
A stripper and a lap dance.
Aha! I knew it.
Are you serious? You think I’d give in that quickly? I ordered the onion rings.

Number 3
His cape was ‘super pressed’ without a wrinkle in sight. His powers were precision and practiced to the point of obsession. But he was a lethal weapon and lint free to boot. Would you mess with him? Would you really? Don’t lie; I know you’re just saying that.
Well, there was someone who did mess with him once. We thought the guy was crazy because there was no way someone as big as him, as overweight and unkempt as him (really, he looked like a drunk homeless man) would stand a chance against the killing machine that was Mr. Wonderful. No way.
But this homeless bum had found his Achilles’ heel. It wasn’t a gun the bum pulled out of his pocket, but a bottle of cheese wiz with a range of about four feet. Mr. Wonderful reached into his back pocket, pulling out some wet wipes and stain removing pens and explained the proper way to remove cheese stains under his breath.
The bum ran up while Mr. Wonderful was distracted and kicked him in the thigh. Of course, it didn’t hurt him at all, but Mr. Wonderful now had a muddy footprint to deal with on his nicely pressed blue slacks. Again, the wipes and stain pen.
It went on like this for forty minutes, the longest anyone has lasted against Mr. Wonderful. But in the end, the bum ran out of ways to ruin his clothes and hair and Mr. Wonderful put him down with one quick punch. He’s still wonderful.

Nicole’s Prompts

How are your prompts? I can’t wait to read them!

Until next time, write on.

Prompt Group: Snowboarders and Sunrises

Hello readers!

This is the first time in a while that I’ve written a post only hours before it’s posted and I’m nervous about it. I don’t have a night to sleep on it and fix everything in the morning so my feet are sweating. Ahh!

Last night my prompt group met and we did three prompts. I’ll share what we did, but I’m not going to share my first prompt, I’m not overly proud of it. If you want to do these prompts as well, please pingback so I can read them. I love seeing the different directions people take a prompt.

1. The cars killed the trains and the buses died of depression (3 minutes)
2. The ice skater that dated the snowboarder learned of an unexpected secret. (5 minutes)
3. Blueberry sunrise (4 minutes)

My Responses

Prompt #2

There are things you just don’t want to know about people. Like take for example when people found out that the actor who plays Chandler from Friends went through weight fluctuations because of a drug addiction. Did you want to know that? No, but now you can never forget it. It was in this sense that I learned Shawn White picked his nose and wiped it on the bottom of competitors’ boards when they weren’t looking.

“You’re serious? Like, that’s a thing?”

“Well, yeah. It’s his power trip. You remember the swimmer who spit in the other lanes? Well, it’s kinda like that.”

“Did he do it to you?”

James shuddered. “It’s better not to think about it.”

The next time I went to one of his competitions, I was determined to catch Shawn in the act. I hovered near the team equipment areas, pretending I was watching over James’s things while he warmed up, but, well, you know what I was really looking for.

And it’s true! I saw it. He walked around while everyone else was warming up, wiping his green gold all over the undersides of the boards. What was I supposed to do?

“Hey!” I yelled out as he walked toward James’s board. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He stopped, staring at me wide-eyed. I guess no one had stopped him in the act before, only watched to report out to unsuspecting strangers later.

“I, um…” He only faltered for a second. “What are you doing here? Only participants and coaches are allowed.”

“My boyfriend’s a rider.”

He eyed me slyly. “You’re Jamie’s girl, aren’t you? You look like a little figure skater. Is it true what they say about figure skaters? About how flexible you can be?”

My face flushed. This damned tomato was not going to make me feel like a fool. “Is it true what they say about you, wiping your nose on other people’s boards?”

Prompt #3

It’s that time of the morning when the sun is just about to breast the horizon but is still thinking about not coming up at all. That split second when it’s the brightest you’ve ever seen and the sun isn’t even up yet. It has a way of affecting the sky around it, bringing the baby blue of the morning sky and the dark black of night together, blending them into a deep, rich blueberry. This isn’t a time of the morning I normally experience.

It’s beautiful to see it stretched in front of me on the long, lonely highway of Nebraska. The car is humming steadily under me and I tap my thumb on the steering wheel to a song that doesn’t exist. ‘Happy,’ I think to myself. ‘This is what other people call happy.’

A smile creeps across my face the way the blueberry sunrise steaks across the horizon as I chase the sun to South Carolina. Before I’m done I’ll seen another sunset but before the sun rises again, I’ll be home. Maybe this time I can see some sunrises instead of always leaving them behind. Maybe I can stop driving away.

 

Until next time, Reader, write on.

Prompt Group: Book Plot, Gangs, and Disney Villains

I went to my prompt group last night for the first time in almost a month. It’s crazy how awesome it was to see everyone. It was only Sonia and I from the Novel Girls and by the way, you can check out Sonia’s blog here. I’ll give you the prompts first and then give you my responses. If you want to do the prompts, please link back here so I can read what you wrote!

Prompts:

1. Write the title of a hypothetical book and the synopsis that goes with it (2 minutes)

• Most of us thought this would be good practice to do during October to prepare for NaNoWriMo next year.

2. Write a short justification of the thought process of a Disney villain (5 minutes).

My Responses

1. Penguins, Pot, and Paraguas
   John has always wanted to touch a penguin. It’s a childhood ambition that drove him to study zoology and take an internship on an Antarctic expedition. Finally within the reach of his un-flying aviary dreams, he meets Tomas, a Swedish sea-captain who befriends him and invites John to long sessions of ‘just hanging out’ in the hull of the boat. When his internship supervisor dispels him from the expedition days before they set off for the final leg, John is stranded in Johannesburg without a way to get back to his home in North Carolina. He has two months to kill and gets a job working for a Spanish immigrant in a tourist shop that only sells umbrellas.
2. Cruella de Vil. (Written as a transcript of her civil suit trial)
   I think this case is focusing less on the issue of if stealing was wrong and more on the moral side of if killing 101 puppies for their fur is wrong. I want to redirect the jury’s attention to the decision of the law at hand and not the subject of my client’s moral fiber. She is no worse than yourself or your mother. Let’s be honest, Miss de Vil motivated by the same thing must humans are: money. She’s not seeing cute little Dalmatian puppies; she’s seeing dollar signs in their spots. We’ve all heard of puppy mills and seen ASPCA commercials that make us want to cry but the true reason they still exist is because someone can make a buck off of little Fido. So Miss de Vil is no worse than those men at the pound who you called to take away the scared little kitty you found in your back yard and though you think it’s cute, you’re still afraid it has rabies. In a culture that values entrepreneurship, why are Americans passing judgment on one of their own; a capitalist trying to pick herself up by her bootstraps and make a decent living. Shame on those who shun her. They can go have fair trade coffee at Starbucks while wearing Tom’s shoes and talking about volunteering in Namibia while secretly swearing to themselves they will never go to Namibia. Look at yourselves and think; wouldn’t you do the same?

I hope you enjoy, let me know how your prompts go. Happy writing!

Prompt Group: Statue

Every other Tuesday is my writers’ group that focuses on prompts.  We did two as a group last night and I wasn’t happy with either of them.  The first was “I’m feeling hot, hot, hot” to which I wrote a short account of someone who’s sick going through the overheating/freezing stages, but it was noting special.  The second was to write an overly fictionalized account of someone in the room going to a museum of natural history.  While Nicole and KK found what I wrote amusing, I don’t think it would appeal to the wider audience of WordPress.

So, Nicole and I stayed after and did an ‘Extra Credit’ prompt which, I can happily say, I am pleased with.  In the spirit of NaNoWriMo prep, I used my main character from my NaNo.

I’d love to hear what you think in the comments, as well as how you are preparing for NaNo.  Enjoy!

There was a statue of the founder of Fairbanks in the middle of town, E.T. Barnette.  Unfortunately for him, the person who made the statue didn’t think about the climate of Fairbanks.  The statue was porous and water could sneak under his skin. E.T. defrosted every spring and parts of his body fell off over time.  By now, his left hand, left ear, right toes, and his entire forehead were missing.  As Melissa sat there in the spring, there were bird feces covering the gouge in his head, dripping out like a boiled stew.

She sat down on the pedestal, breathing deeply and feeling the rise and fall of her stomach, knowing that soon enough, it would be mostly rise and not as much fall.

In only a month, the place she was sitting would be buried under a foot of snow and in just the thin sweater Melissa was wearing she would catch frost bite on 90% of her extremities.

Melissa realized that she didn’t know a thing about Fairbanks, Alaska, or harsh winters in general.  In fact, she had never even seen a movie that took place in Alaska or bothered to read Jack London books about surviving winters north of Minneapolis.  She was drastically unprepared for the Land of the Midnight Sun.

On top of surviving an Arctic winter, she had her grandmother to care for.  Taking care of someone couldn’t be that hard, Melissa reasoned.  People take care of old people and babies all the time.  Granted, most of them probably don’t do both at once during one of the harshest winter in the United States.  But somewhere, someone’s got to be doing it as well.

She heard her mom calling her from the hospital.  “Grandma’s ready to go.  You have to sign the release papers.”

Melissa got up: not excited, not dreading, but not quite hopeful.