This
week’s Writer’s Connect was held in
Manchester’s Waterhouse, a JD Wetherspoon pub on Princess Street. With its stone
walls separating the venues into smaller and more private rooms, it’s
perfect for a writer’s meeting. The food is awesome too. The group
could be sticking with this venue, so by all means join us there.
For
the exercise this week, we started off with this phrase:
“Once
upon a time, there was a”
This
was the opening phrase of our vignettes.
We
then each took a slip of paper and wrote a noun on this slip. If you
do this, make sure your nouns are countable nouns, like “box”,
“horse”, or “car”, not uncountable nouns like “water”,
“music”, or “love”.
We
each folded up the slip, threw it into a pile, shuffled the pile and
picked a slip back out at random.
This
word was to come after our opening phrase.
We
were to tie up the vignette with this phrase:
“And
they all lived happily ever after.”
With
10 minutes on the clock, we each knocked out a story. My word was
“foot”. Here was my attempt:
Once
upon a time there was a foot. The foot was, for the duration of its
life, a fully functioning part of Fred's body. The foot, along with
his brother, also a foot, allowed Fred to stand and balance. In fact,
he allowed Fred to do many things. Fred was a Mixed Martial Artist,
and the foot, along with the hands, arms, head and torso, all had
roles to play in Fred’s career. The body parts dedicated themselves
to Fred’s cause- winning fights. All, that was, except the foot.
The
foot had a tendency to play up, to annoy Fred. On occasion, the foot
would land in a funny way, or scrunch up its toes during a takedown.
This would result in Fred’s opponent crushing the foot under their
combined body weight. As punishment, Fred would put the foot in a
bucket of ice for minutes on end. Sometimes, the foot thought it
would fall straight off in the searing, numbing cold. But no, the
foot would continue to play up.
Fred
talked to the foot, on occasion. “I can’t afford for you to play
up again this way,” Fred said. “Please don’t let me lose this
fight.”
The
foot, pressured by the rest of the body, begrudgingly agreed.
During
the fight, when the whole body felt pain and tiredness and an
overwhelming desire to stay in one piece, the foot stayed strong and
steadied Fred. But, on the floor, Fred’s opponent took hold of the
foot.
The
foot fought valiantly, but the opponent locked up the foot in a
painful gogoplata, and Fred tapped out.
After
the fight, Fred dunked his whole body into the ice as punishment for
a collective failure. But there were no lasting injuries to Fred. A
few bruises would heal, but he was grateful that there were no
sprains to his feet, hands, arms, legs, head or torso. The body parts
healed over a few days, and they all lived happily ever after.
So. I managed it. I
must point out, though, that where I wrote gogoplata, I actually
meant “toehold”. A toehold looks like this:
Whereas a gogoplata
looks like this:
What
a mistake to make. Now the whole thing seems silly!
Ho
ho.
One
of the drawbacks to timed writing exercises is that you can't
proofread what you write. You've just got to fire it out and see what
you come out with when the timer goes.
2 comments:
Can't believe you got those two moves mixed up. What an idiot!
Fluffy Oakes went ballistic at me when he realised I'd made that error. The scenario looked a little like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW7WlT6OJxE
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