One Story Below Is True

Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter — What If? Writing Exercise for Fiction Writers prompts

The Exercise — In two or three sentences, write down three unusual, startling, or amusing things you did or that happened to you. One thing must be true; the other two must be lies. Use details.

Read them to a group, and they may ask questions to help them guess which one is and which ones are not.

The Objective - To understand how we can exaggerate events in our lives, appropriate the lives of others - friends, enemies, strangers - or just plain out and out lie. All these are ways of using what we see and experience to produce fiction.

First story:

Because my siblings and I are in our seventies, I thought it would be a good idea to get together and talk about what happens if... I drove to my sister's house in Tennessee and thought we could go to our brothers in North Carolina, once their weather cleared up.

They were having freezing rain and snow, and no one knew how to maneuver in that weather.

When I called my brother from my sister's to say we would be driving over to see him, he said it was not a good time. He mentioned how his son (50 years old) had to have a colonoscopy and how he had a dentist appointment. I drove from Minnesota to have this visit with my siblings.

Second story:

When I was a kid, they used to sell phonograph records in the Holiday Station Store. I would pick out the ones I liked, stick them in my windbreaker, and walk out of the store. I never got caught.

When I got into recovery from drugs and alcohol, I paid the Holiday Station Store back by only buying gas and snacks from them. When they went bankrupt recently, I thought, could my behavior have impacted that business?

Third Story:

When I was a young woman, I would go up to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) alone and canoe, camp, canoe, portage, and camp. And I would take a week, sometimes two weeks, to do loops up there.

I would get back to my car with no food, but a nice tan and relaxation from the real world. It was so much fun, and I will never forget how I felt being all alone in the wilderness with the wildlife and no cell phones.

~~~~

Author's Note: Please pick the one that is the true story!