Category Archives: writing

Writing prompt: A door that goes anywhere

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Time: 10 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“You discover a door in your house/apartment that will lead to any door in the world that you want it to.” (I found this writing prompt through the Reddit Writing Prompts sub forum. Check it out for hundred of writing prompts on all kinds of topics, including this one.)

It was strange coming back to my childhood home after so many years, but probably not so strange as living with my parents after I’d gone forth into the world, expecting my obvious greatness to be recognized. Instead, I was 30, in debt, and back with the folks in rural Missouri. It was humiliating. What I wouldn’t give to be back in Belgium at the chocolate shop or in New York in central park. But most of all, I thought, I’d like to be away from people—Moab. But I didn’t have money, so these thoughts stayed dreams.

In the five years since I’d returned home, mom had redone the kitchen and redecorated my bedroom into a hobby room and dad had given away a good portion of my toys to cousins kids. I don’t think they were thrilled to have me back either. The heavy bookcases of the living room were gone, and I realized I’d never seen that wall. The old wallpaper behind where they had stood was brighter, showing their outline.

Hold on, I thought to myself, noticing another line in the wallpaper. I went closer. It was a seam in the paper, about 7 feet high and 3 feet wide. A door? There was a dent at about the right place for a handle. I pushed, tentatively at first, but when I felt give, I pushed harder.

The door popped open. Moab’s grand orange arch stood in front of me, the blazing hot and dry summer air pouring through the door. I stood and gawked, and several dozen tourists turned and snapped my picture, looking delighted. I pulled the door shut with a slam. Why was there a door to Moab in my childhood home?

The whole front of my body still seared. I could feel the beads of sweat form, half from apprehension I think. I pushed the door open again, bracing myself for the heat. Instead, a rocky coast full of fog and mist stretched before me. Canon Beach in Oregon. The air was refreshingly cool, and then it occurred to me that the door was taking me where I wanted to go. I closed the door.

“Prague, Wenceslas Square,” I said, and opened it again. The square stretched before me, with tinges of twilight falling over it and the National Museum and the Jan Palach memorial. I shut the door again.

“Gabriel, what are you doing in there?” My mother rushed in. “Get away from that wall!”

Writing prompt: Feeling spooked while camping

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Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“Feeling spooked while camping”

I’m not really a camper. But still, I couldn’t turn down an invite from a friend to go camping in the newly opened Blue Ridge preservation area. Even with trees designed to sequester radiation, no one but researchers and workers had been allowed in for nearly 200 years, after the one that missed DC. Now my researcher friend had passes for the soft opening, and what could I say? The Appalachian Mountains were nearly 500 million years old, and I’d never seen them except in pictures of spooky decaying ruins—Monticello falling into the Earth and the old Blue Ridge Parkway cracked beyond recognition in some vids online.

Jaden set up the tent. He’d camped before, but not in this area of course. Tonight and this week, 500 people tested the park, carrying dosimeters and basically giving things one last look-over. I helped Jaden build the fire that night, and I imagined eyes watched us from the trees. I’m sure they weren’t, and I focused instead on what a tricky cooking medium fire and charcoal could be. I couldn’t even tell the cooking temperature.

Insects began as twilight grew deeper, unnerving and yet exciting. These must be the eyes I imagined watching me.

Writing prompt: Invent a pivotal historical person

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Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“Invent a fictional person who played a pivotal but unknown role in history” [Note: For my historical event, I chose the marathon of the 1904 Olympics in St. Louis, which as you can read here, went farcically badly. The whole Wikipedia page is actually worth a read, with gems like this one: “One of the most remarkable athletes was the American gymnast George Eyser, who won six medals even though his left leg was made of wood.”]

I might not be able to win the marathon. But I could ruin it. The damned heavy cast slowed my walking. The bone was nearly mended, but it was too late now. Even if I sawed it off, my leg would be weak, and I could never run so many miles.

It was so hot. I felt the sweat dribble down my leg, itchy and utterly inaccessible. I drove my car along the route while the runners ran. One looked very sweaty and red in the face.

“Sir, you’re only nine miles in,” I said. “If you’re struggling like this now, you’ll never make it.”

The man ignored me for a time, but his pace slowed. Finally he stopped. “Sir, I have no thanks to offer for your discouragement. But I’ve left my clothes in the stadium. Would you make up the injustice by driving me?”

He was right, and I told him to get in. Ten miles in, though, the car broke. I left it, hobbling slowly. Several angry dogs barked in a yard along the path. With my crutch, I unlatched it and kept on moving before the dogs noticed.

I set my crutches across the road now. In the dust, and with the fatigue of the athletes by this point, they might miss it. I laughed, and turned to the man for whom I’d provided a ride. He was gone. He’d started running again. Oh, well, perhaps a sham winner was better than any idea I could concoct.

Writing prompt: What if there was no Bering Land Bridge?

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Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

This new world is an untamed wilderness, with not a man in sight. What are in sight, or at least in mind, are the terrible beasts that roam the wilderness. They are easily killed by daylight, but at night, we are the quarry. The cheetahs and the lions are the most fearsome. We see nothing, we hear nothing, but in the morning there are paw prints, and another man or horse is gone.

Michael says he hears spirits in the hills. He says that where there are no men, the ghosts of men must roam, that perhaps we have sailed to purgatory or something like it. I didn’t believe him. But then we saw a group of dark-skinned men in boats. They have no villages, and they sow no crops. They seem lost, like us or like spirits. Maybe we are dead too.

I don’t know if these are good spirits or evil spirits, but Michael says they are low and savage either way. He says that we should claim this land for the crown.

I don’t see much to claim, besides forests and beasts. We don’t know what to eat, we have not yet found gold or spice or empire. There is space to settle, but such a prospect seems daunting indeed. Perhaps we must take it, if only to rid it of evil spirits and the Dutch.

Writing prompt: the newt and the cat

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Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“The newt and the cat” (This prompt inspired by my highly predatious cat, Erg, who happened upon a very unlucky blue-tailed skink in the house. I helped the skink to escape, more or less intact, but Erg was inconsolable.)

I collapsed onto the chair inside the door. Summer was here, and wow, I was sweaty. I looked over and noticed that the door of the cage was open.

“Oh no oh no oh no,” I muttered to myself and I bolted upright. I wasn’t supposed to have brought the newt home in the first place, but I’d gotten attached to it. I wanted to see how a super intelligent newt would react to a new environment, and maybe I had become a little too emotionally invested.

I heard a clatter from the dining room.

Jaws stood, body absolutely taut, staring between two stacks of books.

“Bad kitty!” I shouted. Newton looked up at me, both terrified and accusing. In that moment, Jaws decided to lunge, and the stacks of books collapsed into chaos. Newton shot out from the pile and behind a pile of papers. I chased after Jaws, but under the furniture I was no match in speed for him or Newton.

Jaws pounced again, and Newton darted to another stack of debris. For once, I was thankful for my shabby bachelor digs and cleaning regimen. I went and got the compressed air, Jaws’ arch nemesis. I sprayed and him and he ballooned into a fluff of fur, but he would not abandon the hunt, and evaded any attempts I made to contain him.

I would be finding out just how smart my modified newt had become.

Writing prompt: The Shortcut

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Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“the shortcut”

Angie knew all the steam tunnels under campus. They were for maintenance, and students weren’t supposed to use them, but Angie did anyways. She used them because they were convenient and because they didn’t pile with snow and mostly because they made her feel special. She didn’t always make as many friends or attend as many parties as her classmates, but she understood the university and the campus in a way that they didn’t. It was their college experience, not hers, that was stunted.

She first discovered the tunnels by accident her freshman year. A door leading into a hillside, normally a nondescript metal thing, stood wide open. She went inside. And found a secret world coexisting with the world above, with scrawls upon the wall and interesting pipes and strange words. She’d begun to draw maps of the pipes, as well as she could work them out in her head.

Today she wasn’t here to get to class quicker or avoid the rain. Today she was here because a door in the north tunnel and a door in the south tunnel looked strangely similar and very old, with marks and carvings like she’d occasionally seen elsewhere in the tunnels. And if they connected, they would take her to an unexplored area. And they would make an awesome shortcut from chemistry to econ. She pulled the door, and with a great squeal, it came open.

She heard chanting. Did others know of the tunnel? She didn’t know if she was jealous or if she’d just found a group of people to whom she could truly belong.

Heroes, Villains, Anti-Heroes, and Sadsacks

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Heroes and villains populate our fiction and our imaginations: Batman and the joker, cops and robbers, the Allies and the Nazis. Not every central character fits the standard hero or the standard villain, though; the anti-hero shows up too, with the BBC’s Sherlock or Yossarian from Catch-22.

Last weekend at Ravencon, I went to a panel called “writing believable villains” with T. Eric Bakutis, Tim Burke, Andy Beane, Kate Paulk and Gregory Smith. One of the panelists briefly summarized anti-heroes and villains: the anti-hero does the right thing for the wrong reason, and the villain does the wrong thing for the right reason.

That is, the anti-hero does things we would consider good, but not for altruistic reasons. Han Solo transports Luke and Obi-Wan from Tatooine because he is paid, not because he is trying to help them or take a stand against the Empire. Conversely, a satisfying villain does things we consider bad, but motivated by ethics or values of his own. Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest does horrible things, motivated by her belief in order and conformity. The villain in the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall, is motivated by his obsession with M.

We often disagree with the villain’s ethics, but they are present, and can make them even more dangerous. Hitler wasn’t so damaging because he wanted to kill millions of people; he was dangerous because the mythos he used to support that goal drew others in.

Clearly, then, the hero is a character who does the right things for the right reasons, like Luke Skywalker or Superman or Frodo. The boundaries between each character type is complex, and these categories are more food for discussion than iron-clad designations. One story’s hero is another’s villain.

Still, I thought that the anti-hero/villain comparison above invited a fourth category: the sadsack. The sadsack does the wrong things for the wrong reasons. We are emotionally compelled to root against the sadsack, and feel a sense of satisfaction when they fail or face justice. A lot of newer characters fall in this mold for me: basically every character from “It’s always sunny in Philadelphia”, Lester Nygaard in the new “Fargo” TV series, as well as the main character in “Being John Malkovich.”

What do you think? What are some other examples of good villains, anti-heroes, and sadsacks?

Workbook2

Writing prompt: The rain man

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Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“the rain man”

I rolled into Pittsburgh around 3 PM; by 5, the rain had begun. I can travel at 400 miles an hour 30,000 feet above the ground—it’s called a jet airplane. Those hours gazing out the window at the blue sky and the bright sun, and those first few minutes on the ground in a new place, the beams of sun warming my skin and the green leaves of trees shining—those are rare and special moments in my life. Because where ever I go, the rain follows me. At the least, the clouds follow.

The rain followed my father too. He told me that we have an obligation to keep to the road. He was a travelling salesman, and I didn’t see him too often. I didn’t understand at the time what he meant. Now I do, and I travel and sell too. He said there were other people of the rain, that we were the origin of rain dances, special men who, more attuned to nature, could turn the rain on and off with a focus of concentration and desire.

I wonder if maybe everybody’s got it, and maybe my switch just won’t turn off. Dad said his father learned to control his own curse, over many years, or maybe his curse just weakened with age. Dad died last year in a flash flood outside Las Vegas. He probably thought he was safe there. I’m so tired and I’m so alone, and more than anything, I want to stop running.

Writing prompt: The dream weaver

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Time: 7 minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“the dream weaver”

I slipped the electrodes onto the ports behind my ears and at my hairline, shuddering slightly at the slight tingling. I leaned back into the bean bag chair and set the timer to 30 minutes. No, it was already 2 AM. I dialed it back to 20 minutes. I had six hours and desperately needed to come up with an idea and fully develop it in that time. I positioned myself so that nothing would go numb or fall awkwardly, and I pressed the remote control and I entered the dream weaver.

The first thing I always dream about is heights, damn them. Each time I have to cross a bottomless canyon or climb a tree or something like that. I can’t decide if my fear is growing stronger or weaker with these constant reminders. I need an idea. I remember the words of my instructor, to try to visualize the landscape. I see the glow on the horizon of idea. I walk in that direction.

Once I read a story about a woman who went mad using a dream weaver—she had to face the things that frightened her most, and when she couldn’t, she simply shorted out. I sometimes wonder if it was true. Maybe it was something that someone thought up using a weaver. On a distant hill, I see a man with a strange intensity to his eyes. He holds a knife. I suppress unease, and I walk toward him; this is the focal point for today. They can’t all be comfortable.

Writing prompt with edit: preparing for a long trip

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Time: 7 minutes. I then set it aside for about 30 minutes, and then edited the piece for ten minutes. Click here to go to my list of prompts.

“preparing for a long trip”

The first run: 7 minutes.

Dale looked at the empty suitcase. It wasn’t the one that would accompany him on his journey, but it was the same size. That suitcase was in a sterile environment, and everything that would eventually go into it would have to be sterilized as well. He would have to be scrubbed and cleaned up as well. But looking at this empty suitcase, not even the one that he would take, lent an air of finality. Whatever in the world that was his from now on would fit in this small space. Any memory, and hobby, any cherished treasure would go into this space or he would never see it again. This said nothing about all the people that wouldn’t fit into the box.

Lily panted in the doorway. She seemed to sense her master’s discomfort, but feared suitcases and other boxes for reasons Dale still couldn’t fully explain. Lily would be going to his sister. She might send letters with Lily’s picture, but one can’t do much with the picture of a dog. The picture of a dog can’t startle you with its wet cold nose, or rest its rest in your lap when the day was nearly too much. He couldn’t look at her, and he couldn’t look at the suitcase. After a few years, the letters would grow sparser as the separation from Earth grew. If Lily was even alive by then.

He tried to tell himself what an opportunity lie ahead. But it was hard not to feel the weight of all the opportunities closing behind him. Many a master lost a beloved pet. But where he was going, there would never be a Lily ever again. Soft fur brushed against the back of his bare leg. Lily whimpered. It was time to go for a walk, but Dale fancied some deeper sensibility.

The edit: 10 minutes. I tried to eliminate unnecessary text while still preserving Dale’s emotions. I removed scifi-ish stuff that didn’t seem to contribute to that end, regarding the suitcase, and tried to give more time to Lily and Dale, which to me ended up being the best part of my first run.

Dale looked at the empty suitcase. It had an air of finality. This space would encompass his life until this point. Any memory, and hobby, any cherished treasure would go into this space or he would never see it again.

Lily panted in the doorway, unable to come closer due to a fear of suitcases and other boxes that Dale still couldn’t fully explain. Lily would be going to his sister, Eva. Eva might send letters with Lily’s picture, but one can’t do much with the picture of a dog. The picture of a dog can’t startle you with its wet cold nose, or rest its rest in your lap when the day was nearly too much. After a few years, the letters would grow sparser as the separation from Earth grew. If Lily was even alive by then.

Dale could not deny his excitement for his future, the opportunity of a lifetime. But it was hard not to feel the weight of the opportunities closing behind him. Where he was going, there would never be a Lily ever again, never a new puppy, never an old companion. His eyes burned.

Soft fur brushed against the back of his bare leg. Lily whimpered, her eyes uneasily fixed upon the suitcase, but determined to be near him. It was time to go for a walk, but Dale fancied some deeper sensibility. He grabbed two tennis balls. One he put into the suitcase; hopefully the decontamination process wouldn’t destroy the scent of dog drool. The other he kept in his hand as he and Lily walked toward the door.