The Hangar

Try this writing exercise at your group.

Open a dictionary on a random page.

Ask your group to shout a number between one and twenty. Count the words down from the top of that page and stop at the chosen number. That word is your prompt for a fifteen-minute writing exercise.

Here's our word, and my piece:

HANGAR

On the border of Surrey

there's an aircraft hangar

where underneath is buried

all the causes of anger

blueprints of construction

that were hidden from danger

he'll have to retrieve them

if he's going to frame her

so he pulls in a team

who he knows is dependable

and brave and tough,

but ultimately expendable

they enter the base

under the cover of night

and dispatch the guards

one smothered, one knifed,

they drill through the doors

and spray black on the lenses

to damage the compound

and smash their defences,

and find their way in

to the cavernous tomb

and the unoccupied space

says something's happening soon...

It cannot be denied that I had no idea what I was thinking when I wrote this, which is why there's zero pay-off by the time the bell rang on the exercise. You might make something a bit more fruitful (i.e. generally better) than I did.