Write Club South is a semi-weekly craft exercise. All Litopians are welcome to join. A private thread will be opened to present results, and we can also hold a Zoom meeting at Huddle South time to discuss them. You are of course welcome to submit results even if you can't make the meeting. Or just do the exercise without submitting anything! 
Here's an exercise we've been working with over at the Ladies of Letters in Kota Kinabalu. To quote one member: I wanted to thank you for yesterday’s prompt because it seemed to have unlocked something in me and now the dam has broken and the words are gushing out!
Write five sentences, as follows:
Note: Try not to cherry-pick the book and movie line to create something you already have in mind. Be as random as possible. Perhaps find 'top ten book openings' and 'top ten movie lines' online and use a random number generator.
Here's one we came up with. It went off the rails almost immediately:
Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.
He would normally not have bothered, it not even being spring, but they would be here soon to collect, and he could not bear the thought of leaving his cosy home a mess.
But when collectors tarried, he went into his perfectly clean kitchen to bake, though his diabetes would not let him have it.
They did not knock on the door, but simply entered his home and went into his kitchen, where he rounded on them with a platter of Italian desserts, a lick of sweetened cream on his nose.
“Leave the gun,” he suggested. “Take the cannoli.”
Here's an exercise we've been working with over at the Ladies of Letters in Kota Kinabalu. To quote one member: I wanted to thank you for yesterday’s prompt because it seemed to have unlocked something in me and now the dam has broken and the words are gushing out!
The Frankenstory
Write five sentences, as follows:
- First sentence: The opening line of a book.
- Second sentence: Ground it by telling us who, where, what, etc.
- Third sentence: Introduce tension by telling us the problem.
- Fourth sentence: Escalate the scene. Make the problem worse.
- Fifth sentence: A random line of dialogue from a movie.
Note: Try not to cherry-pick the book and movie line to create something you already have in mind. Be as random as possible. Perhaps find 'top ten book openings' and 'top ten movie lines' online and use a random number generator.
Here's one we came up with. It went off the rails almost immediately:
Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.
He would normally not have bothered, it not even being spring, but they would be here soon to collect, and he could not bear the thought of leaving his cosy home a mess.
But when collectors tarried, he went into his perfectly clean kitchen to bake, though his diabetes would not let him have it.
They did not knock on the door, but simply entered his home and went into his kitchen, where he rounded on them with a platter of Italian desserts, a lick of sweetened cream on his nose.
“Leave the gun,” he suggested. “Take the cannoli.”
