So it took quite quite a bit longer than two months as predicted in Short Story Challenge No.1. Oy. Other things happened this spring. A lot of depressing things, one of them being the writer with which I had originally arranged to do these challenges announced at a retreat of writers that she was going to quit writing. Sigh. This person was a big influence on me at Sarah Lawrence so this was more sad news.
But finish the first short story challenge I did, for the most part, over the last few months. The cards were a God-send. I was amazed how much easier it was to write toward unexpected plot points, to get into that kind of creative flow. Much different from writing the poems. And yet looking back, I can see how I was still stringing retooled random life experiences into the story.
I did about three or four passes of “The Ceasefire,” a story about a young pre-teen named Gerald who begins his coming-of-age story in the principal’s office complaining about his French teacher. He falls is love with the new girl who arrives at his bus stop and yada yada yada….complications happen with that (as set forth by the cards we drew in January). I made a change from my original plan to set the story in the 1990s instead of the 1980s (in order to hit a certain plot detail that only occurred in the 90s). I was happy with the way it turned out.
A few weeks ago, I showed this story (and the dream-based first story I did earlier) to Monsieur Big Bang. He seemed to like the story’s characters and humor a lot but deemed the story not really ready for prime time, yet. Horsefeathers! But he gave me some good notes for a few tweaks (which are still left to do) and helped me through a sticky plot point. After a while, I’ll go back to those fixes.
But that story spawned some other in-progress ideas and I figured it was time to keep going with a new challenge. I hope anyone who followed the first challenge had good luck with it, fruitful practice and possibly a viable story.
So anyway, here we go. I’ve added a few other cards from the Ouisi deck my friend Natalie gave me for Christmas for those of us who are visually minded.
To the left are the cards I drew for Challenge No.2.
As you may recall, step 1 is to draw cards from the Synapsis box: 1 spark card, 1 connect card and 2 riff cards.
We then start with the Spark card. Although we’re not writing a novel, our theme and tone is “Romance.” Oh la la. This is a love story (what story isn’t?) and, with that in mind, step 2 is to write our opening sentence using words from the top riff, the second connect and the third riff cards below.
I actually came up with two sentences. I’m not sure if I will choose one of them or use both.
Skin remembers hand.
While skinny-dipping, Wilma remembered Eleanor’s hand-me-downs.
In Step 3 we pull again from the Synapsis deck. We then sketch some quick answers to these questions.
For these questions, I thought about possible really bad love advice Wilma could have gotten in her life. This is an interesting angle to start a character with. The answer to the second question has a big effect on the whole story. My symbol is a lake (probably inspired by the skinny-dipping). And so the third answer was reflected by the lake and the skinny-dipping in a small list of picnic edibles. So we now have some props.
Step 4 is to give you story a title. Mine wasn’t that hard: Memory Lake.
For Step 5, we pull some cards from the other deck, The Storyteller deck. These are character wants (gold) and obstacles (copper).
So our character wants “royalty” and to never be in charge. Figures. Good luck with that, Wilma.
Her obstacles are the unexpected package and the smell that brings it all back. Okay then.
And we have a new step this round. Step 6 is to somehow incorporate these four images into the story:
I would say get something done in the next two months but…all things considered, do the best you can. Good luck.
In other news, I’ve created a poets of New Mexico page! Check it out for a survey of books that cover poems of place, in this case one of my places.
