Getting To School On Time
or with a rhyme
Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts —
The Exercise -
Write five mini-stories (limit: 200 words each) to account for a single event or set of circumstances, such as a man and woman standing on a city sidewalk, hailing a cab. Each story should be different - in characters, plot, and theme - from the others.
The Objective -
To loosen the bonds that shackle you to a single, immutable version; to underscore the fact that plot is not preordained but something you can control and manipulate at will, like the strings of a marionette; and to demonstrate once more that there are many ways to skin a cat.
1) On her way to school, Sally ran into George. She literally knocked him down. When he got up, he grinned at Sally and said, "Don't you worry, it wasn't as bad as all of that." Sally stood crying next to George. When George tried to console her, she cried all the harder.
"Whatever is the matter?" asked George. Sally wiped her eyes and nose with a kleenex she had in her purse and started to cry all over again. She had realized that she planned to ask George to a Sadie Hawkins dance, where the girl asks the boy. Now, who would she ask?
Just then, George said, "Sally, will you be my date to the Sadie Hawkins dance next week? Sally was so relieved that she gave George a big hug, and they were on their way to school hand in hand.
2) On the bus on the way to school, Rose and Glen had been sitting next to each other for a few years now, when Rose asked Glen if he would move to another seat. She wanted her boyfriend to be able to sit next to her on the bus.
Glen thought he was her boyfriend and refused to move. So Rose got up and moved to another seat, and Ted joined her. When Glen started a fight with Ted, and Ted punched him, Rose was upset. She didn't want to see her friend of many years be hurt.
She realized just then that George liked her in a different way than she had realized. So, just that quickly, she was up helping George back to their seat, and that is where she stayed happily until graduation.
3) Walking to the bus one morning with friends Katie and Becky, Marcene gave a loud scream when she saw a spider crawling on Katie's backpack. As Marcene pointed at the backpack, Katie quickly threw it to the ground, and even quicker, Becky picked up the spider and said, "So, that's where you went."
The spider was Becky's pet, and she knew her friends were afraid of spiders. She never understood that, and that is why she figured they would never want to be arachnologists, and why she hadn't told them that was her plan. She instead told them that she wanted to be a veterinarian.
4) Sara was driving the school bus part-time and knew the importance of getting all of the children to school safe and sound. Except that on this Monday, they were all so excited to later be going on a field trip to the zoo that she could not control the distraction and ran the bus right into a truck, stopped at a stop sign.
The school was just a few blocks away, but the bus was undrivable, so once the bus was moved to the side of the road, Sally got all the kids to form a line and they marched to the school, singing:
"Ms Sara, our bus driver
is sorry she ran into a truck driver,
but she made sure we were all safe
and then she got us little waif
to school on time.
And that is the end of this rhyme"
5) "I'm late for school, Mom, can I get a ride?" screamed Carrie. Chuck said, "We can't be late another time this year!" Mom said, "Okay, get in the car, and I will take you to school, but you'd best not do this again at the last minute."
"Sorry, Mom, we won't," answered Chuck. Mom said, "I will sure be glad when you get your license." Chuck said, "It should be any day for my permit now. But you will still have to ride with me until I'm sixteen, remember, Mom?
About the Creator
Denise E Lindquist
I am married with 7 children, 28 grands, and 13 great-grandchildren. I am a culture consultant part-time. I write A Poem a Day in February for 8 years now. I wrote 4 - 50,000 word stories in NaNoWriMo. I write on Vocal/Medium daily.
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Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What if? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers prompts — The Exercise - On each of five 3x5 index cards, print a vocational label, for example, dentist, truck driver, or fashion model. On each of a second set of index cards, write a mildly strange or unusual behavior. The mistakes here are to be too mundane (brush teeth, clear car) or to be too melodramatic (strangled her lover, drove his flaming truck through the prison walls). Somewhere between lies the quirk of the odd that is interesting: set free the parakeet, pick lose the tennis racket strings, or sew closed his sweater sleeves. Some writers will keep their cards filed for use again and again, and will add to the original pack over time as interesting vocations or actions suggest themselves. Shuffle each pack of cards (not together) and turn over the first pair. The writer may now ask the following question: "Why did Card A do Card B?" Why did the dentist set free the parakeet?" "Why did the fashion model pick loose the tennis racket strings?" The writer may continue flipping cards until a satisfactory pairing is discovered. If no satisfactory pair develops, reshuffle the cards and repeat the procedure. If you have ten cards in each pack you will have 100 possible pairings; twelve cards per pack will yield 144 pairings. Bear in mind that the event suggested by the Story Machine should be thought of as the last scene of a story. Supply motive for the odd behavior. Supply a conflict that might be resolved by this behavior. Imagine a scene prior to the final scene that demonstrates the severity of the conflict. Imagine a scene that demonstrates the initial difficulty. This exercise may easily be adapted for a class. Instead of shuffling, students pass cards one way and then another so that no student is left with any of her original cards. The liberating outcome is that if the new pair lacks all resonance for a student, the student has no emotional investment in the product of the Story Machine. No one has made a mistake or performed badly, just some bad luck has occured. Class discussions of motive and structure can be lively. The Objective - Retrograde plotting is often a revelation to the beginning writer who has again and again found herself staring off into the space above the typewriter and asking, "Now what happens?" Writing toward a conclusion for some writers is easier than exploring the consequences of an imagined premise. One more easily discovers the beginnings of things if one knows the ending. That the Story Machine requires vocational labels gives students insight to the rudiments of characterization, as such labels suggest education levels and socioeconomic status.
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Comments (5)
Very nicely done, Denise. You nailed the challenge. All so different, but with the common element of getting to school. Each story stood alone in its own right. Loved it!
What a fun collection! It’s amazing how one situation opens the door to so many unique characters and twists.
Oh wow, what a plot twist with the spider being Becky's pet! That was my most favourite story!
I liked all of these stories. A+ for them all for I think they also gave me some ideas to write.
I liked the one with the school bus the best - I can see the kids marching along with the teacher, singing their little ditty. In the one about Glen and Rose, a couple of times you changed Glen to George...