Weekly Short Stories Contest and Company! discussion
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A Random Paragraph from your "Story"
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Great examples, M.Terry didn't consider himself particularly unusual. Sure, he spent his teenage years as a willing and sometimes absurdly cheerful social outcast, upon adulthood immediately transitioned to playing side-kick to a magic-savvy private investigator, accidentally became the confidant of an apparently ageless time-traveler, and just recently declared war on a corporation widely recognized as one of the top ten charitable organizations in the world, but he figured most people had a few weird phases in their lives.
I like the wry humor! This is a fun paragraph, a summary of sorts of what one assumes is a novel (a particularly interesting one).
Thank you, M. I didn't do a terribly brilliant job explaining what I meant, but you seem to have understood my blundering words perfectly.Ha ha, nice, Edward.
"If you could go back...would you change what you had done?" her eyes searched his, relaxing when he shook his head. "No," he murmured, "Because then how could I have all the beauty this world holds?"
Actually, I more or less patterned it off of the Harry Potter series, when Rowling (or her editors) feel the need to recount exactly who Harry is in every book. Normally, this doesn't bug me since, for instance, someone could feasibly read any given Dresden Files book before Changes and thus a refresher on Dresden's character could be useful, but reading the Order of the Pheonix makes no sense without the preceeding books anyway, so why tell us about a character we've already known for 1,500 or so pages? More importantly, why is it always so bland?Anyway, that would be stuck in near the beginning of book four or five (but wouldn't be the opening paragraph or even in the opening chapter).
He strained his ears, but heard nothing.
Silence should be safe. Silence should tell him, even in the dark, that nothing approached him, that nothing nearby could hurt him. Nonetheless, he began to long for noise, especially for the noise of straight-forward confrontation. To fight an enemy directly would be a blessing compared to stumbling blind, searching for the voiceless, incoporeal monstrosity the already nearly destroyed him twice.
Edward and Alex, these are great! They convey a lot of the situation in one paragraph. This is the best I can do after a few sips of coffee:When at last he saw her, a Wednesday morning’s rain dripped from the maples, and what the sleepless nights had rehearsed flew out of his mind, leaving him empty and lost, as though part of his soul had been torn out and fashioned into the dark-haired woman who wore a raincoat and held an umbrella, who hesitated on the steps then slowly approached him, reading in his eyes the words he could never have found to say.
An hour and a few lines had passed, the wind picked up. I noticed the roll of dark clouds ahead and decided to pack up before I get caught in what looked like a heavy downpour. As I grabbed my guitar, I spotted a man, sitting a few meters away from me. I could have ignored him, but the smile on his face while his eyes were closed felt creepy.
Jeffrey fumbled his fingers atop the shelf, his legs straining and almost stumbling down the ladder. With urgent eyes Harriet with her flashlight begged her to finish what he was looking for. She knew that she must not speak because sound traveled far in this large but seemingly porous old room. Just then they heard feet shuffling and then two dark shapes appearing under the door. They both froze.
That sounds really cool! I'd read a book with that in it.
I used to think that rain was romantic. That it held possibility. It smells fresh and delicious and intoxicating and it whispers of new beginnings as it pounds against the ground. When it rained, you could imagine your car breaking down. You could imagine some hot guy stopping his car to help you out, the rain plastering his hair to his face and soaking you both. You could imagine leaning in closer to him with the roaring of the storm in your ears and smelling damp earth on him and kissing, with rain pattering relentlessly on top of the two of you, while the wind blew and you both froze. But it would be alright. Being cold doesn't matter half so much if you're cold with someone else.
I always thought rain was like that, so wonderful and fresh and exciting and romantic.
At least, up until I found my boyfriend dead on the pavement in the middle of a thunderstorm three days before my birthday.
That came out a lot grimmer than I meant it to be... :P
I used to think that rain was romantic. That it held possibility. It smells fresh and delicious and intoxicating and it whispers of new beginnings as it pounds against the ground. When it rained, you could imagine your car breaking down. You could imagine some hot guy stopping his car to help you out, the rain plastering his hair to his face and soaking you both. You could imagine leaning in closer to him with the roaring of the storm in your ears and smelling damp earth on him and kissing, with rain pattering relentlessly on top of the two of you, while the wind blew and you both froze. But it would be alright. Being cold doesn't matter half so much if you're cold with someone else.
I always thought rain was like that, so wonderful and fresh and exciting and romantic.
At least, up until I found my boyfriend dead on the pavement in the middle of a thunderstorm three days before my birthday.
That came out a lot grimmer than I meant it to be... :P
He didn’t like staring into the barrel of a big pistol. He didn’t like the looks of the tall man with the moustache. Something about the smug glint of satisfaction in his wife’s eyes as her finger caressed the trigger bothered him, as well.
Two young so-called "monks" were given over to another.Tsung seemed to give up on them.
"Take them. I 'cared' for them... but do what you will."
Suddenly the young guys freaked out.
"Umm, we don't want this..."
"Yeah. Tsung is messed up. We don't want whatever it is he is trying to put on us.... please. Save us."
Tsung takes off their robes. He sees them standing, bare, fortunately with white skivvies on.
The second one was creative enough to put red hearts on his underwear.
It made Tsung almost laugh at the sight. Yet like a sun seeping into darkness it was covered again by his hatred of the two he had to give away....
"Go. Leave this place."
They then shouted with exuberating joy.
Right behind them though were two people. They were who Tsung wanted to take. They would do nicely right in their place.
He smiled.
He knew one was 36 and the other is 42. Only six years apart.
Tsung knew what that meant.
"They measure quite well. You, you... both, put on your robes. Now...!"
--
(I had forgotten about this thread! I’m going to cheat. Instead of writing a paragraph, I’m going to use one from a story.)Lisa Brunswick taught chemistry first period. As she glanced over her lesson plan, then pulled from her satchel the mimeographed quiz, she noticed that several students were absent, among them two who made of point of perfect attendance. Several windows were open above the long, slate counter that ran the depth of the room and on which stood a row of microscopes.
(Great one, Alex! What a surprise ending! And now I’m really hungry.)
The woman holding Hal down by the shoulders looked in her late twenties and wore what appeared to be an expensively tailored costume. Hal looked deeply into her eyes. She had long, reddish-brown hair that slid like silk over his face as she bent to kiss him. Her lips tasted of mulled wine. A hungry alto moan escaped her.
Hal Morrow after the grueling train ride helplessly twitched, stinking of filth and collective sweat. He wanted out but they all like rats in a trap had to sit and wait for the door to open.By the time it had, a man carrying a strange sign on his shirt told them to halt. Two guards with guns stood nearby awaiting orders.
"You, you , you, come here. All wait or you will be shot on site. You got that, scum....??"
Hal Morrow was a rich Jewish man, unaffected by such a torn world that was taken out from under him and others.
Who would do such a horrid thing? Why was it not just people like he, why was it so many other people. A man he spoke to he wanted to give a hug to was a homosexual there was a kindly scared to speak up black man. All had been huddled together in this seeming "death car."
What kind of history was this? This wasn't in the "history books." This was this something he felt was unprecedented.
Soon they all left. His heart went out to two orphan Korean children. Why were they stolen from their house? Why were they being treated like they would die too...?
Whoops M I stole the first name you did last post. Did that unintentionally lol.
Al wrote: "He eats an appetizer (calamari, of course) sips on a fine Pino Grigio. He moves onto a salad decked out with full leafy veg, topped with shards of parmesan, crunchy croutons, spicy pepperoncinis, o..."Time to finish him off as well. Very well-written Al. ;)
She was wearing the embroidered shirt with the butterfly tails. He had put his hands on her waist and pulled her to him. As though she had sensed his hesitation, she had given him a questioning look. Then her arms slid around him. Their faces close, the tip of her nose nudged his cheek. The anticipation of kissing her tingled though him the way lightning dances along the spars of clipper ships.
Kat knelt and gingerly pulled up a leg of his pants. “Let me see.” There was a livid gash on his shin. When she touched it, pain went like lightning through his leg. She heard him gasp through his clenched teeth, then his hands were in her hair.
I want to know more about the “naked wet, sticky woman” Theo carries into his apartment! Why has she been shot, and what has happened to her clothes?
That in the end I refused to wait for her is the thing I couldn’t admit even to myself, and that marks the closing of a chapter in my youth I would dare to revisit only years afterward, when looking back on that time I realized that a beautiful part of my life was gone forever.
Alex wrote: “Also, I want to know more about the woman holding Hal down.”The story doesn’t explore her at all as a character. In the next instant she’s in a fight with a blonde, and that’s the last we see of her. It was a story based on the role playing game “Medieval Festival,” that took place in the fall of 2013.
Spades hesitated. There was something beautiful about the vampire girl, something hypnotic about her eyes, with their long lashes. He wanted to know about her, not destroy her. Then he heard Tavy’s voice in his mind, a voice calm and deliberate, almost like a memory from another lifetime: “Burn her, Spades.”
He sat in the deep dark night.Apparently there was only a torch in this world sitting atop a makeshift place to hold it on a wall he had just found out about.
Thinking. Pondering to fight or accept death. He held nothing. No weapons to fight the mystery outside.
And he was alone.
I'm watching a game online being played it looks amazing and seems to be set in a dark fantasy (like the project I am currently working on now!). I hope this pushes me to keep working on it, as there are only seven days left now...Seeing this game inspired me to write the post above.
Thank you, Alex!I think Father Conroy had better perform an exorcism. Mice can be the very devil!
----A man in the afternoon with older hands than before (though still felt as young as the dickens) was rocking in his chair.
He stopped to sip some tea with honey which was kept at a low tiny table just a couple of feet to his left. The warmth felt good on his lips and then trickled into his stomach. Mmm nothing is better than this. he felt.
Then he thought of a "man" with a huge white beard.
Such a silly thing that tv told about. How could such a person be true?
Then he thought of someone with deep compassion long ago. A time he could nearly forget if he wasn't careful. He sat and wondered unmoving.
An actually caring man! There weren't many or at all ones he could think of to take that mantle of kindness and care.
That person had had a white beard. Just so happened.
He sipped again while in that thought.
----
_
The woman seemed frightened, distracted as he watched her slowly head to the next room.He sat in her living room with a cup by the table, feeling unsure of what to do about any of this!
There was too much for him to handle in such a short burst of his adult life: He sees his mother at the funeral to say good-bye, trekking out in the middle of nowhere to see his girlfriend and their family though he doesn't even know anyone, and then before he knows it he is getting counseled by an unusual woman.
She called herself at the door his girl's "aunt" though he looked around and saw absolutely no relation. No pictures of anyone he saw at that apparent "reunion." No names on decorations. Nothing.
He spoke up as she got the tiny cookies. At the least he hoped for answers as she said she contacted a priest.
"Can the man, err-- the priest, please? I need to know, ma'am..."
He was haunted now three times from this ghost. The one his mom once tried to protect him from. He missed his mom.
Surely this ghost was nothing. He had defeated "her" before, he could do it again!
It would be easy.
He hears the old woman daintily pick up her phone up dials with the old rotary. Shck-shhhhck-shhhhck-shck
Getting up he walks towards the small kitchen area where the phone is on the pantry and peeks at her after putting down the cup of tea.
He smiles at her giving her possibly knowing comfort.
She looks and smiles back as if to say "Yes. Hi" then she fumbles with the cord trying to focus.
"Father. Father Borneo... so what is it that is happening? Is everything... good?"
The father is swift.
"I examined the photos and connected them with all the happenings in between the four years.
But what we might be dealing with is...."
Only she hears what the humble man says.
As he stares her smile drops like a sudden death from a new corpse.
The words had killed any joy she had in her life at that point.
"Are you serious....?"
Now he looks interested. He has a concerned look now.
"What we are dealing with is not a ghost. It has taken on the image of this.... girl but--
Oh God.
This is no longer Samara
but I believe is the actual devil itself...
Stacy removed the toothpick that pinned the remaining quarter of her sandwich. “You know,” she began with the hesitant tone of counsel that good conscience required be offered me, “if you fall in love with this girl you have created, she will always be holding her hand out for you to take it, to define her a little bit more.” She made small motions in the air with the toothpick, as if detailing eyes, mouth, and facial structure of a clay figure. “Eternally young, she will always be desirable, her potential limitless.”
I told him I had come to suspect that before language there had been a different kind of communication, something telepathic, that it survived vestigially as a feeling of foreboding, or as the sixth sense some mothers seem to have about their children. He had looked at me questioningly in the dusky atmosphere. I confided that it existed between me and a girl I had known in college and that we referred to it as the “old communication.” Closing his book, he asked who she was, and when I had finished talking the office was dark.
He was frustrating me but then I had it all spelled out on me.He was like a gentle giant friend but I myself had forgotten that he also had feelings too.
"Hey, why did you even say that? I am too much to handle? That is supposed to be coming from a 'best friend?'"
I realized my words as they were just so in my mind I was hurting a person I actually cared about.
"I--- I uh..."
"Did you really think that all those times we've hung out over the last few months were like a 'bother' to you?"
"No."
"Then what was that? Just because I like to hang with you and we've now gone on trips since we're buddies as you said... before this, at least. All of that was bothering you?"
I felt stung. Being confronted with my words made me uncomfortable. What made me act out this way?
"I don't know."
"I thought that we were close buds. You have a huge family of people who are in close friendship with each other, I don't even have parents. Why is it that you took me in as a person like family? You saying that is going to hurt me from now on..."
Unless I could apologize and stop this awful stuff brewing in our friendship. I wasn't used to stepping up. My dad always stepped up as a man of the household. I was not that kind of person, it seemed apparent.
Why don't I just say I'm sorry at least...? I was urging myself to do something mature. Come on!
"I noticed you felt bad about what I said. I was not meaning for you to get offended."
He shrugged me off by the huge waterfall. A vacation day. Now gone from my stupid brain and ability of not wanting to grow.
"Okay then... sure. Well you have your entire family. I'll find a way home then myself. I lived almost my whole friggin' life by myself I might as well never stop from now on. "
I wanted to say something but my mouth kept pulling open.
"See ya." he said as he pulled his backpack strap over his shoulder. He left me though I didn't know how to get home from where we just were.
And I felt maybe I would never see him again.
In this exercise, the idea is to write a paragraph that would be a random passage from a story. An effective paragraph is one that has unity (it isn’t a hodgepodge of things), focus (everything in the paragraph stacks up to the whatever-it-is the paragraph is about), and coherence (the content follows smoothly). For this exercise, the paragraph should be quick to read--say, not be more than 100 words long.
A paragraph needn’t be several sentences long, but might be only a sentence or two, or a single line of dialogue.
Or it could be a snippet of dialogue with narration:
She made an attempt to straighten her tawny hair. Her voice quavered with emotion. “You must be a very lonely man, Judge Seagrave.” Then she turned a gaze on him that might have ignited a rain-sodden haystack. “And I’m a lonely woman.”
It might be merely descriptive:
Lines of weeds criss-crossed the cracked parking lot of the Seashell Motor Courts. The flaking paint on the buildings had chalked to a pastel pink on walls covered with graffiti. Many of the windows had been smashed out. Where the sign had been, atop rusting steel posts, only the metal outline of a seashell remained.
It might have action but no dialogue:
It was Ms. Fitzhugh. She was walking fast. A strange expression crossed the faces of the students as they glanced toward the door and saw the principal go straight into the boys’ restroom. The footsteps stopped. There was a deep, throaty sound difficult to describe. Then came an eruption of shrill screaming and a rapid sound of heels. Moments later, Ms. Fitzhugh emerged, her eyes wild. Screaming, she skidded in the hall and headed toward the office.
It might be expository:
Above ground was the medieval settlement of Skaar’s Outpost, originally a fort to guard the cave entrance. Its inception as a town had been in the lodging and supply needs of explorers there to attempt the subterranean labyrinth when it had opened as a commercial venture. With the caverns’ flooding and subsequent closure, however, Skaar’s Outpost had declined into an agricultural community miles from any trade routes.
These are merely examples. Have fun!