Tuesday 30 March 2010

Twenty-five times two without cheating



Miss Snark had a competition and I missed it. Work. I love work but it gets right in the way of spending hours on the computer checking out Blogs and entering competitions.



25 words, could you do it: catch a reader, get them squirming on the hook in the desperate need to know?



I tried. I found information about the untimely death of a water vole in the mouth of a much maligned moggy:

Didn't like the cat. With the limp-biscuit of a once-living critter, and dripping blood and saliva over the polished floorboards, I liked it even less.

I can write about demon cats - literal and figurative ones. My two psychopathic cats taught me to fear the sound of the cat flap rapping in the kitchen door. The cat flap only raps twice.

I also have a story I've never made notes about anywhere. The characters just turn up, periodically, to remind me I never did get around to thinking the story through to the end. The trouble is I love the start, whenever I think of this story I - just - have - to - begin at the beginning. So, for the first time ever I WROTE it down. I know their back stories, how all three of them got to be there. I know I care. But is 25 words enough?

She laughed. Bell bright it rang, piercing my dark haze. I stumbled. Missed my footing but not the rusted railing, that pierced me too.

The exact rusted railing is about 5 minutes walk from my front door. Creative photography would be needed to make it look like it was deep in the forest but I could do that.

3 comments:

  1. I like it - great first image - has me guessing and asking questions :)

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  2. I read this post yesterday and didn't comment but I've been thinking about it since. I've tried to do twenty-five words and I can't. I wrote down the basics and have it on my cork board for exercise later.

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  3. Thanks Jemi - Hel's story start is one of my favourite ideas.

    Hi Anne - I agree setting up a story in 25 words us a challenge. My cats were so ferocious they gave feral a bad name. And Hel and Rowanne met a lot of people in the forest that day.

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