Tag Archives for creative writing

The 3 A.M. Epiphany – Exercise 157

Firing Weapon at Night

The hot asphalt is drenched in sweat. A turnout of over 3,200 triatheletes this year. Over six million viewers and close to six thousand users paying for direct links. And although they’ve been outlawed in several countries, we know of plenty underground linkage providers that have parallel sensory links with embeds. The users feel everything the tri’s feel. Everything. But that’s for big gold. Only the toppers can afford that. The rest of us down here at street level have to gorge ourselves on second hand electro’s and coarse-fitting neurals.

The runners have weaved their way through the sweltering January heat, through the smog pits, along the outer rim of the ground zero crater for the 2025 nuclear attack on what used to be Los Angelos. The initial swim through the shark infested waters of Upper Mexico left around 2,500 participants. That’s another 200 over what was eaten last year. They’re thinking about moving the swim lanes again, as the sharks are starting to gather in greater numbers every year at the currently designated lanes. There have also been reports of people illegally chumming in the areas a few weeks prior to the games. You can’t really blame them, though. After the amount of money they lost in the years following the 80 percent games, people were very forgiving when it came to rigging and cheating. They called it the 80 percent games because almost 80 percent of the participants survived. Nobody is interested in games where everybody wins. What’s the point? Where’s the danger? The adrenaline? People were paying record prices to link to tri’s that crossed the finish line. When they unplugged, they were just exhausted. Not much of a rush for the price. Things are much more exciting now.

The timer is huge this year. It’s neon yellow numbers are over 30 feet high in the amber sky, and you can even see it through the pollutes from almost a mile away. Everyone is crowding the road. The first time idiots who make their way to the front of the masses find out too late that when the timer runs out, they are suddenly part of the games, whether they like it or not. In the frenzy, everyone pushes forward, expectant, and those little two foot gaps that existed between pavement spectators disappears. There’s no way to turn around and sift back into the crowd. You wanted front row, buddy you got front row.

The timer is ticking down now. 38 . . . 37 . . . 36 . . .

The crowd’s murmur is intensifying; some of the tri’s family members are screaming for them to Run! For the love of God! Run! But the exhaustion is setting in and the pollutes are filling their lungs. Tri’s aren’t allowed to wear their masks for the last part of the race. Their throats must be burning pretty bad right about now. People linking in are probably hacking and coughing away in their little underground playpens. Choking on what is, to them anyway, imaginary particles of acid rain, CFC’s, ammonia, and enough carbon to choke a horse, if there were any still in existence.

12 . . . 11 . . . 10 . . .

The crowd is going beserk now. You can look out over the sands and see ripples of excitement coursing in waves through the masses. The runners near the line expend whatever energy they have left to make it before the countdown ends. A few groups of ten or twenty make a last ditch effort and make it across in small desperate clutches. Everyone knows that if you miss the countdown, the only chance you have is to form a clutch with the unlucky RBI’s on the outside.

3 . . . 2 . . .

When the timer hits zero, the crowds are deafening. You can’t even hear the gunfire. You can see it though. Flashes of red from the tips of the weapons and the runners forming and reforming groups as they struggle for the line. Some of the front row spectators are dropping.

The big gold players, they pay big for the first shots. During a race three years ago, a man paid a month’s food ration to have the first five minutes to himself. He had all twenty weapons in a row, filled to capacity, and emptied them all in the first five minutes. Only three or four tri’s out of a couple hundred got by. It was a slaughter. Viewings were at an all time high.

They can’t all be like that, but this race looks to be a solid 30 percenter. No shame in those kind of numbers, folks. This is ViewLink One bringing you live coverage as always, right from ground level. Remember, we stay connected until the end.

The 3 A.M. Epiphany – Exercise 2

Hospital Hallway

You walk into the doctor’s office and there is a heavy smell of antiseptic and death. There is no one at the front desk so you stand in front of it like a confused tree. Five minutes tick by and no one returns to the desk. Other patrons sit with straight backs, spines so erect it makes you uncomfortable. You are wearing a T-shirt, faded jeans, and a pair of muddy sneakers. Looking at the other patrons, you see everyone else is wearing their Sunday’s best. Ties and brooches, diamond earrings, shiny black shoes that make hard clacking sounds on the floors of important buildings. You look down at your shoes to see your left one is untied, so you lean over and retie it.

Sitting down without signing in will make your visit a useless one. You will never get seen. There is no sign-in clipboard on the counter. The other patrons are eyeing you with careless pity. You do not make eye contact with them. You listen for footsteps. Perhaps someone is about to open the door and call out one of these citizen’s names. You have waited eight minutes. You are now this room’s center of gravity; its focal point. If someone throws this room across the universe in a wide arc, your path will remain a smooth curve on an unseen graph. You decide to sit down at the chair closest to the front desk. Someone will come in and you will see them and jump up and take your rightful place at the head of a two person line. Or the person will come back from their bathroom break and sign you in.

You stare forward at nothing, making yourself invisible. No one can detect you in your invisible chair, surrounded by an invisible cloak. You focus on nothing and you are nothing. You are unaccounted for with no name on a paper that is not on the counter.

A lady in a white coat emerges from a small doorway behind the counter and you jump up like a rabbit during hunting season. You will soon exist. You will soon be a part of a process with a name, a time, an insurance card, and a phone number. These are all properties of you, and since they exist, you must therefore also exist.

The lady opens your mouth to say something, but another lady comes through the main door and opens your mouth instead.

“I am ready,” you hear yourself say.

“Wonderful,” you feel yourself thinking, and the words emerge from the lady’s mouth.

You intend to smile and her lips part to show pearly white teeth.

She leads you down a long, polished concrete hallway. The walls are white. The lights are bright. Nothing to hide here. When you turn and enter the room, there is an elderly lady lying on her back. The cold, silver puddle of steel lies underneath her. There are instruments lying in front of you. A scapel, tongs, pliers, garden shears, lighter fluid, a translucent bag of leeches, and a small kitten actively trying to escape its cage. The woman has already been opened from belly-button to sternum, a crimson meat flower ready for pollenation. You step forward and as you reach for the lock on the kitten’s cage a small, rustic farmer-looking gentleman rushes into the room, boots leaving clumps of red clay all over the floor.

He says, “Sorry, sorry . . . this young citizen is here to have her gall bladder removed.”

The woman in white says, “Oh . . .” and then turns to you and says, “come with me.”

You turn to look at the room one last time on your way out. Everyone is smiling. Their smiles are wide, like a youth minister’s. The kitten hisses at you. The woman on the table breaths through a tube. You make your way down the hall again. The smooth floor becomes textured. The walls are made of cotton. The nurse stops and suddenly turns to face you.

“I need you to cough,” she states. You can tell by the manner in which she says this that she has said it millions of times. You try to repsond, but cannot. “I need you to cough,” she states again. The walls begin to dissapate; the cotton turning a soft, slow black, like survivalist tinder. And then without warning the floor is gone and you are falling at 9.8 meters per second.

“Sweetie, I need you to cough,” the nurse says. You emit a dainty wisp of air on your third attempt. The room spins and time is no more. You open your eyes again and the nurse asks if you would like more blankets. Yes, you would. How you convey this, you are not certain. You are not fully self-aware, but this person is standing in front of you. You are not invisible. She can see you.

Before time is fluid again, you think for some reason of Juliet, your cat. Have they fed her? You must do what the nurse and doctors say and heal quickly so you can get back to your garden. So you can dig your wrinkled fingers in the dark, wet potting soil and give life to your flowers and herbs.

The 3 A.M. Epiphany – Exercise 1

Lava Storm

There are flames everywhere. I’m sitting in the window seat of the bookstore, sipping my coffee.

Exactly three people are on fire. Two are dead. It’s St. Patrick’s Day. Only six of the people outside are wearing green. One of the dead is clad in all green, but his foot-tall, striped hat was blown off with the wind from the initial impact. His beer mug, however, is still clenched firmly in hand. One wonders if these priorities will carry over to the afterlife?

The people around me are choosing three different methods of panic. Nine of them run screaming to the back of the store, looking for a way out. Four older German ladies run screaming to the bathroom, a solid structure in the middle of the store. That would help in a tornado, but not for this. Who wants to die in a public bathroom? Apparently old German ladies. There are two stalls in the men’s bathroom, but I have no idea how many are in the ladies. I thought about a quick glance once, just to see, but the thought of getting caught was too much. Two people, a loud-speaking, maudlin hipster couple, are behind the coffee counter huddling with the baristas. The woman who has received her double chocolate-chip frappacino has kept hold of it as she dashes behind the safety of the expresso machine. You can have my overpriced caffeine and diuretics, these citizens are saying, when you pry it from our cold dead fingers.

The two people who are on fire are being put out by four men who have come from the bar across the street. They are dragging the limp bodies back through the door of the bar. The stuff that was burning them is like Greek Fire. Their clothes and skin, the men were able to put out, but the amoebic lava that had crawled its way into the flesh, that was still burning them from the inside out.

There are two mopeds, six bicycles, and one motorcycle outside. There are 36 flowers in the median, evenly spaced in a checkered pattern. They are all fake.

The second impact sets everything in the street on fire. The vehicles, the dead people, the plants, and even the asphalt in the road. The sidewalks are not on fire, the curb being the straightline separator. Everything between the two curbs is melting into the river of liquid Sun that was the road. The heat doesn’t penetrate the imaginary line either; a wayward burger wrapper sits a few inches from the volcanic pathway and doesn’t so much as turn black.

The book I’m reading costs twenty eight dollars. It has 320 pages. Why does a piece of cardboard in front of and behind the content of a book raise the price by thirteen dollars? The tax is ten percent here, but a membership card cuts ten percent off of the price.

There are two other people sitting at the window, watching and counting. One is a small boy and the other is a female college student. We will sit here for another thirty two minutes, until the fifth impact. That’s when the culling begins. But we count first. How many of them are left is important. To few and we’ll end up having to take care of this planet ourselves. To many and there’s always insurrection.

There are 346 other planets to resource, but when we’re done, we get to pick any of those for the Longevity. It is 2:31 pm in this time zone. There are twenty-four time zones.

All hail Lord Pox.

How To Write Your Own Perfect Sentence

Peter Pan First Sentence Diagrammed

 

After reading Stanley Fish’s book How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, I decided to do something that I’m usually too lazy to do; actually practice some of the exercises in the book. But first, the book.

There is what seems like an implausible expectation in the title. You might be thinking, okay, I can see how someone could write a book about how to read a book. There’s a lot of concepts, styles, theories, messages, meanings, etc., that one could spend ages deconstructing and studying how to consume each work. But to try and pull the stage curtain back on a single sentence? But Stanley manages to do so, and I can definitely say that, although the central dogma is the same for understanding anything on a higher level, I learned some new and helpful things. And that central dogma is reflection.

All of us have, at some point, stayed up late studying or reading for pleasure and arrived at the point where we’ve read the same sentence four or five times and never gleamed any meaning from it whatsoever. The words are nothing more than that, words. And at some point, we’ve all listened to a professor wax poetic for what seemed like hours about hidden meanings in obscure books, as we sat drooling from the corner of our mouths and wryly imagining that the author was still alive so they could burst into the room and scream at the pontificator of pomp that they never created a work where a tree was the metaphor for how a father treats his son. There is surely a safe and happy place between these two pointless points, one devoid of meaning and one bloated with pregnant apples just out of reach, where one can reflect on a book, paragraph, sentence, or even a word itself (in context), and not feel empty or pretentious. A reasonable amount of contemplation where we can achieve more than visceral pleasure without looking at every glass of water in the book as an element of baptism or birth.

Stanley Fish introduces us to the formula – Sentence craft equals sentence comprehension equals sentence appreciation. If you write sentences, and then strive to understand them on a slightly higher level, you will appreciate them more.

The key is understanding the skeleton within each sentence. Once you understand this inner structure and can separate the framing from the interior decorating, you can then imitate great sentences by substituting your own fleshy content in place of the author’s. His first example is the beginning of Lewis Caroll’s Jabberwocky . This is the perfect separation of sentence structure and content:

Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves

Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe:

All mimsy were ye borogoves;

And ye mome raths outgrabe.

 

You can understand the layout of the sentence enough to substitute your own words and have it make perfect sense.

Twas dusky, and ye slimy toads

did swim and paddle in the pond.

 

You get the idea. And you can do this with any sentence once you spend the time to break it down and really understand it. He makes it a careful point not to get too caught up in the whole parts of speech naming or pointing out every single literary term. The main point is how the different parts of the sentence relate to each other; the philosophy of the sentence. Stanley points out a few main types of sentences. Subordinate is a rigid approach that sets up expectations and then follows through. Additive is a more stream of consciousness approach, where you might move from past to present and back to the past, or even jump around subjects without warning. Satire is a style that promises one direction and then moves in another. You can pick a style that suites you, but the subordinate is the easiest to imitate.

I like this because it’s an algorithmic approach to literary creation that seems, to a lot of people, a great mystery. It’s a method by which, with nothing more than reflection and a few awkward starts, you can create sentences similar to your favorite authors. It’s not impossible.

I handed my wife a Virginia Woolf book called The Voyage Out, and she picked out this sentence:

Angry glances struck upon their backs.

Angry glances. Angry is specific, emotionally. It lies between peeved and hateful. Not fighting mad yet, but on the way. Glances is plural, which tells us right away that there are many people who are mad, not just one. And it’s a glance, not a stare, which would be confrontational. Instead, these people aren’t about to let whoever they’re glancing at know their emotional state. Struck. These glances are being delivered with physicality. Looks that leave whelps. Upon their backs. It’s more than one person absorbing ill will from this crowd. That’s a decent amount of information gleaned from a short sentence, and all we had to do was slow down and take a minute to really get at the essence of the sentence.

Then, you define the parts of the sentence, and substitute your ideas and words. My definition for this sentence is – something nonphysical, preceded by a description, acting physically on something else. Here is my wife’s first and very literal attempt because she really didn’t understand what we were doing (She was bored the minute I told her the name of the book).

Frustrated stares physically affected their heads.

And a funnier one:

Pissed off passersby provided them with pitiful attempts at provocative looks.

And my attempt:

Useless hopes bounced off her horn-rimmed glasses.

No awards imminent here. But you get the gist. It’s the practice that counts.

Here is another sentence taken from Victoria Laurie’s book Ghouls Gone Wild:

I’ve always believed in ghosts.

It’s a first sentence, and a good one. It’s short and hits you quick and strong, like a jab in a boxing match. There is no hesitation. I’ve. It’s in first person, so by definition, it’s personal. This is not something one screams to the people in a food court. It’s something you might tell a good friend or a small, close group of people you trust. The reader is already in a one-on-one with you. They are perhaps being let in on a secret. Always. Not sometimes. There is no room for doubt. Always believed in. This is something that has always been, and isn’t it harder to question things that have always been? This isn’t a statement you have time to negotiate with. In ghosts. So you know what’s coming. This isn’t a book about trolls, goblins, or sorcery. Ghosts are real, and you’re going to be seeing and believing in them pretty soon, if you don’t already. Ghosts. Plural. This isn’t one angry relative hanging around the kitchen table during dinners. They are many and everywhere.

The definition here, or structure, is a personal pronoun contraction followed by an adverb that connotes a definite history followed by what you’ve always done.

We’ve always swam barefoot in creeks.

I’ve never parallel parked a car in my life.

And so on. I surprised myself when I realized that a lot of kids today, myself included, already experience this type of algorithm every day without realizing it on the Internet. We’ve all seen a meme (Rhymes with seem). In its simplest form, it’s an idea that spreads. Here are two examples, the second one is mine:

 

Politically incorrect Sister

 

 

Republicans 1

 

 

You can see that it’s a skeleton concept, or structure, that you can fill in with your own content, or idea.

So my point is this – If a bunch of satirical Internet junkies in their pajamas can make us laugh everyday by using the same concept and changing the text, you can do the same thing with any sentence you love and create a perfect sentence of your own.

 

 

Creative Writing Exercise #1

 

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to get up in the middle of a book store and just stab someone repeatedly in the windpipe? No? Well, never mind. Back to what I was saying.

My name is Chris. That’s not my real name. I could tell you my real name, but then I would have to kill you. That’s not cliché. It’s the truth. That’s kind of what I do. Not that it’s a bad thing. It’s sanctioned where I come from. The land of Id. The land of blood and daisies. Of tricky window Saturdays.

What? You’ve never heard of – that’s right, never mind. I forgot for a second. You guys think this is all made up? Right? Fine, whatever. You asked. I’m telling. You want the whole thing at once or do you want to pull off at a rest stop?

Okay. Then. Tricky window Saturdays. There’s the crews, all colors, all brands, you know, and they take the hoppers to the burnouts and – hoppers? There the fidgety ones wanna hop from place to place. They always think the grass is greener, you know? But borders are borders for a reason, right? So they – oh, yeah the crews. They’re the ones with the most guns or the most food or the most water, depending on where you are. Course, most guns usually equals most food, you know?

The burnouts? Buildings man. Just buildings that are burned out. Black with death and plague and soot and canker and you name it and there it is, cluttering the floor with human detritus, draped over the bombed out remains of walls like a Louisiana coffee house, smoldering like a dead turkey on thanksgiving. Bad, bad mojo. Gotta watch the stairs in burnouts. One-two-three-four-five- One-two-three-four-five- One-two-three-four-five One-two – boom! You’re a beauty-school drop-out. Five stories to the wet floor. Maybe a Wiley Coyote brick on your head to boot.

And they take ‘em in the buildings and light some fires at midnight and everybody stands down on the streets and looks down the blocks and waits. Yeah. They just wait. And then they hand out guns, sometimes one, sometimes 50, and they cock ‘em and wait. There’s these cooking grills, grated little splices of crisscross metal, rusted and clamped to the underside of the window. Got the wood underneath and burning white. The grill’s all red. The people are silent. Guns raised.

And then they make you wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

I seen people piss themselves without moving the gun an inch. Didn’t want to miss, you know. And then out of the blue, they shoot out from the windows like flying fish. Hands always tied behind their backs, and the guns fire away, concrete chunks flying, embers disintegrating, Hoppers flailing or going limp, the crews shooting off fireworks and the music bumping, sometimes country or something jazzy for contrast, and a few always make it, landing on the molten grate, skin sticking to it, with their teeth clamping down wildly on a bone or flank and reeling all awkward to their knees before launching backward, food in jowls, to disappear and fall back inside the burnout’s window.

Can I have a glass of water? What are they after? Food, dude. There’s not a lot of it, you know? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you really don’t. What year did you say it was? Huh. Yeah, right. Right. Are you with Chris? Yeah, the Church of Chris. I don’t think so brother. The crews speak the word and the word is. I’m not letting a letter take me down. Right?

Thanks. I’m really thirsty. Holy Chris, this is clear. Where’d you get this? Really? What year did you say it was again? Wow. Okay. So what else, man. Wait a minute, you guys ain’t crew. That just hit me, man. You guys can’t be crew. Crew knows everything about everybody. Scourge of the data. You guys, you guys look confused, man.

Hey. Is it really 2015? Oh. Okay. What?

Yeah. I’ll state it as clear as I did the first time. My name is not Chris and I’m a carrier in the Hot Zone.

The year? Yeah . . . 8256.

I already told you. Carrier’s carry. Pestilence incarnate. We deal in specific deaths. Mine is unique.

Can’t say, less you want me kill you two and everybody listening? Then it wouldn’t do much good to know, now would it? Yes, sir. Even the ones behind the listening glass. Say, you ever just wonder what it would be like to drive head on into a car on the other side of the lane? No? Well, okay, where were we?

The Hot Zone is where everything’s on fire. No reference points. Boiling, scattering, flaying, Napoleons.

How are you losing me? We’ve been over this already. Are the recorders not working? Do you people have those? Okay.

About here and now? All the books were rewritten by Chris in 6000. So not much. Just a little worrisome though. What? Well . . . suppose you’re telling me the truth? And? And it’s been about 6000 years since now in my Now. And it don’t seem like a lot has changed, that’s all. Just more fire and less green. Something doesn’t seem right with it. And how’d you say you found me again? Passed out in a church? On fire, yeah, that’s right, on fire. No, I didn’t set it. I’m not a Burner. Carrier. I told you already. Fire is not my specialty. Are you serious? I don’t think you really want to do this. I know your partner’s outside the room and behind the window, but that doesn’t mean he’s safe. All witnesses go, it spreads like that. You observe it and the wave function – it spreads, non-local, distance means nothing.

Locked up? Why? I didn’t set it on fire. What? For how long?

This is bullshit. Okay then. What’s the chain cycle? I mean you’re watching me, here, now, and whoever’s watching us on the other side of the window, that’s second level, and then whoever’s watching them, like a tree you see? Where does the tree stop? So that’s it? Three of you? Fine.

What are you afraid of? I said, what are you afraid of? Mice? You’re lying. I bit my tongue. Why? To get the blood, you need blood for everything. No, really. Mizion Seuzye paktche. Huh? Just a key. Like encryption stuff. Bloriddin pluragrir. You guys encrypt things here? Code? What’s that? Noriem jzestifer munhywella. It’s really not that funny. Krystoun vhallestia. That’s okay. See, I knew you were lying. I can tell by now just from talking to most people for a few minutes. Yeah. They’re real to you guys. Ever see snakes that fast? Spiders that small? Can’t stop it, not now. No. I just can’t. So, shoot me. Try to shoot all of them. Won’t do any good. If you’ll stop panicking, you might can get to the door. They’re not biting me because they came from me. You don’t bite the hand – no, begging is just – you’re just feeding it by begging and whatever you do, don’t pray. Do that and they find the path inside your head and file in. they’ll close it up and you’ll never get there.

Chris, this is boring. Chained to a desk 6000 years ago. No one around but Deads.

What happened? You’re all dead now. Yes you are. Look at your skin. Screaming won’t help. Well, I told you it wasn’t that funny. Fix it? I don’t know. We could go back to where you found me and see if we can get back in? In the Hot Zone. I must have slipped out somehow. Well, you can walk around dead here or walk around dead there, doesn’t matter to me.

Okay. Let’s go.