This week’s challenge is to write a twenty-word story using as many words from the list given as you can, or you can write a story/poem from the second list:
Option one: Choose your words from the following list and write a twenty-word story:
- Bubbles
- Aquiver
- Mellifluous
- Champagne
- Christmas
- Serendipity
- Nefarious
- Dave
- Aroma
- Supine
- Elephant
- Van
- Phosphenes
- Nancy
- Cromulent
Option two: Write a story/poem, centred around any of the following emotions :
- Shock
- Stress
- Shame
Last week’s words were:
- Xylopolist
- Train
- Ulotrichous
- Sweets
- Feline
- Ecophobia
- Liverpool
- Furious
- Argute
- Trampoline
Here are your wonderful creations:
Amir Hosein Ghazi was quick off the mark:
The Liverpool sweets’ train hit the furious ulotrichous feline.
David Harrison sent in two stories which made me chuckle:
- The xylopolist’s trampoline bounced his furious ulotrichous feline to Liverpool.
- “Argute feline! Scoffed my sweets!” roared the xylopolist with ecophobia.
- The argute, ulotrichous xylopolist loved trains, sweets and felines.
- Furious, the argute xylopolist threw trampolines and trains. Ecophobia?
- Liverpool attracted xylopolists, trains and felines. Argute Andy devoured sweets.
- The ulotrichous furious feline from Liverpool met the argute xylopolist.
- The trampolining echophobic Liverpudlian boarded a train furiously eating sweets.
Option two was to write a story/poem, centred around any of the following emotions :
- Bitterness
- Bravery
- Boredom
Carol Campbell posted her super interpretation of the emotion ‘bitter’ on her blog:
https://writersdream9.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/bitter/
***
Hello Mrs Esther. How are you? Festive moments are coming. December is behind the door. Will knock soon. Preparations already started?
Here is a story with all three feelings shock, stress and shame.
………….my little next door neighbour could have never understood that!
The doctor allowed me home two days ago because I insisted. The smell of medications and seeing everybody around me in white was doing nothing better to me. More I was missing me blanket and pillow. We were in the winter season.
Standing on my bedroom’s balcony I saw Ismael, my little next door neighbour. We used to play together by the riverside flowing just in front of our house.
His small eyes sparkled when he saw me and his little mouth wide open. He jumped and waved his hands.
“Samirah! You are back. You did not come to play with me. I missed you very much.”
He had such an angel smile.
“Oh sweetheart! I come home only yesterday.”
“Yes. My mother told me what happened to you.”
But then he laughed as if it was something funny. I did not like that.
“See, I learnt to make them when you were not here. I made so many of different colours. I’ll show you , wait!”
And he took out several small paper boats from his bag. One by one he put them all in the water. I observed them while they were being carried away by the currents. Then as some distance, one of them turned upside down. Ismael was laughing and clapping his hands. But the sight was agonizing for me, as if I was living the incident all over again.
I had been for a tour on the speedboat of my cousin when it accidentally turned upside down. I did not know swimming and by the time I was rescued I was already near-drowning. I could still feel the pain of my breaths being stifled by the water. I fought until I felt nothing.
The shouts of Ismael and seeing him taking fun from that little boat being crushed against the currents disturbed me and I found myself yelling at him.
“Stop it. Stop it I say. Go away.”
Little Ismael got frightened. He looked at me, confused and rubbing his eyes he ran away.
When I realised what I did it was too late. I regretted my shouting at him but what happened to me had changed from within. Still, I should have understood that my little next door neighbour could have never understood that.
Thank you so much for sending this story and for covering all three prompts. I’m very well, thank you. Hope you are too 🙂
Hi Esther! Here is my twenty word story: Nancy, all aquiver from champagne bubbles, thought it nefarious when Dave arrived in the van with the cromulent Christmas elephant.
Absolutely brilliant! I love it. Thank you 🙂
Thank you, Esther!
Hi Esther, long time no see! Here’s my twenty worder:
Nefarious Dave employed his Christmas champagne bubbles, his melifluent coaxing, his cromulent aroma, his elephant…
Nancy, supine, was aquiver.
Serendipity…
Hi Jane, great to see you on here again. And you’re certainly back with a bang! A super story 🙂
Thank you Esther. I’ve been busy doing grown-up things; it’s nice to come out and play again.
Glad you enjoyed it. Hope the grown-up things are going well!
I think they are , but being grown-up is scary, bringing a danger offuture success and change.
I say go for it!
What if the big boys push me in the water and I forget how to swim?
You won’t. I have every faith in you. And how will you know if you don’t try?
Okey. I’ll make a promise.
I promise to try to try.
Great. Wishing you the very best with it 🙂
Here’s another poem for Option Two, which I have posted on writinginnorthnorfolk.com:
Shock and Shame
Your heartbeat skips
a gap in time
with the shock
electric jolt
of realisation
blurs your vision
fades in
and then cuts
to shame
as it
trickles
down
the
window
pane
crystalline
and
slow
and
spatters
your soul
Oooh, I like this very much. Thank you 🙂
Oops! I just realised it’s more than twenty words – sorry!
I hadn’t counted! So I’ll let you get away with it, especially as it was so good!
Thank you, Esther. I’ll pay closer attention to word count next time!
🙂
I’m back. I done some limericks – posted at http://channing.info/wp/2015/11/27/shock-stress-and-shame-the-joys-of-owning-a-jrt/
Shock, stress and shame… the joys of owning a JRT
I woke up when it was still dark,
To the sound of a frenzied, wild bark.
I said, “Trevor what’s that?”
He said, “I heard a cat!”
That earned him another black mark.
The shock of the noise that I heard
Made me realise just how absurd
Is his incessant yapping
(He needs a good slapping)
He’s as bad when he sees a small bird.
Ev’ry damned day it’s the same,
The neighbours think I am to blame
But there’s no harder slog
Than a hot-headed dog
It’s more than the noise, it’s the shame!
When the bitch from next door is on heat
He thinks he is due for a treat.
She is looking for fun,
But Trevor’s been done,
He is, as they say, incomplete.
The poor lad is totally smitten
With the sight of a semi-wild kitten
He wants to give chase
All over the place
And believes it’s her turn to be bitten.
He never can catch her, of course
Though he chases and shouts himself hoarse.
He comes back in a mess
After all of the stress
Of attempting his will to enforce.
When he goes off with some new alarm
My wish is to keep him from harm.
I know that his prey
Will get safely away;
Lots of places to hide, on the farm.
It’s a different story with voles
And mice and lizards and moles
They’re easier to catch
And quickly dispatch
Except when they drop down their holes.
It’s then he lives up to his name.
He’s a terrier – they’re all the same,
If the ground’s not too hard
He’ll dig up the yard
Leaving super-sized holes – oh, the shame!
Welcome back! I’ve missed you, but I’ll let you off as you’ve been so busy with Nano and because this is so good. Love these. Thank you 🙂
Thank you, Esther. I’m beginning to think that Trevor must be my muse. He even wormed his way into Albert and Jarvis!
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Greg’s Secret (Shame)
Greg was a big man, bluff, hearty, and no nonsense. A Man’s man. At school he was a sporting champion and head boy. At University he sailed through his degree and captained several sports teams. If those who knew him had been asked for one word to describe Greg it would be ‘confident’. He didn’t do doubt, couldn’t be bothered with guilt and sneered at those who underplayed themselves.
When Greg joined the company, the world seemed to be at his feet. But behind that façade of hubristic ego, Greg had developed a problem that, as the weeks turned into months, grew and grew and nibbled away his seemingly impenetrable carapace of bullishness. Every time he left the comfort of his own flat, Greg carried a fear so deeply embedded within him that, had he been forced to confess it, he may well have exploded. Travel was fraught with dangers, evenings out were potential traps for the unwary and holidays a thing to fear. But worst of all, Greg couldn’t play sport.
His friends pressed him and he cited an injury. They cajoled him and he said he was unfit, busy, tied to work. His best friend watched in disbelief as Greg shrunk and crumbled before his eyes. Finally after one dreadful day of watching his friends play a game of rugby and losing for want of a player of Greg’s talents, his friend took him on one side and asked the question.
‘Why?’
Greg was a broken man. He looked at his friend, at those worried, sympathetic eyes and said, ‘I am ashamed.’
Again the question came.
‘Why.’
And Greg held his head in his hands and said, ‘I am no longer a man.’
And his friend looked surprised and frowned and Greg, pain seared across his features, cried, ‘I can’t pee in public. I can no longer use a urinal.’
And his friend understood. He stood and left Greg to his shame. There was nothing to be done. Greg was truly emasculated.
Thanks for this, Geoff. You just managed to sneak it in 🙂
Phew; I hadn’t realised I was so close to the wire!
Living life on the edge, Geoff 😉
That’s me; though I haven’t ordered a cow full of milk recently… is that a Cleopatra complex do you think?
Ha! Love it 🙂 Though, I now seem to have ordered too many tomato purees…I have 5 so I’m not sure what your analysis of that would be 😉
Sounds a bit like you might be suffering from the Faux Abattoir phenomenon that prevails when struggling to write a gory scene in detective fiction first identified when Stephen King went rogue during the Boston Ketchup Riots of 1987
Thanks for that, Geoff 🙂