Wild Card Wednesday – Play It Again, Sam
Welcome to Wild Card Wednesdays, where there aren’t really any rules as to what I can blog about, though I’ll tend to focus on something to do with writing. Sometimes I’ll blog about what I’m working on. Sometimes I’ll blog about the business of writing. Sometimes I’ll ask you what you want me to blog about. And sometimes, I’m just going to be plain lazy and regurgitate a post for old times sake. And this is one of those times.
In September of 2008, I posted an entry about my now defunct Tuesday night writers group. We would start off each workshop with a 5-10 minute writing exercise that would change from meeting to meeting. Sometimes it would be on a certain subject. Sometimes it would be a certain setting. Sometimes it would focus on character development or dialogue or description.
At this workshop, the exercise was to write the opening to a story that incorporated five different elements:
A setting. An musical instrument. A profession. An animal. And a mythical creature.
I asked each of the other five members in attendance to provide a suggestion for one of the elements above. Those elements turned out to be:
A hair salon. A sousaphone. A nurse. A gerbil. And a leprechaun.
We all wrote our own story openings using those elements. Below is what I came up with for my opening scene:
One day at the hair salon, I’m giving a simple cut and wash to my third Thursday three o’clock, when in walks a leprechaun with a sousaphone.
“Mind if I play?” says the leprechaun.
I look at the leprechaun, all three feet of him, staring up at me over the lip of the tuba, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a bad idea to say “no.”
“Sure, whatever,” I say, figuring it’s better to be safe than sorry.
The woman in the chair, my third Thursday three o’clock, looks at me in the mirror and says, “That’s strange.”
I figure she’s talking about the leprechaun, who’s standing by the hair driers playing the opening notes of “The Girl From Ipanema,” when in walks a nurse with a gerbil on a leash.
And I’m thinking that this looks like trouble…
Next post: Fiction Friday – The History of Love
