Today’s words come to us from Karetha.
BET YOU CAN’T do this writing prompt. Take the 10 random words below and, in the comments, crush writer’s block by creating a cohesive, creative short story tying all of them together! And remember: after (if) you finish, highlight your words and click the bold button to make them stand out and help you determine if you forgot any words. (If you’ve missed previous writing prompts, we BET YOU CAN’T do those, either.)
- Construct
- Tepid
- Damp
- Palpable
- Edible
- Eunuch
- Heartbeat
- Transform
- Marvel
- Lame
NOTE: Don’t copy and paste from MS Word. Use a program like notepad that removes formatting or just type in the comment field itself. Also, finish your submission, THEN bold the words. Thanks. (And don’t forget to tweet this and share it with your friends.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Resources you should check out:
Thesis: Best Damn Theme on the Web
Collective Ink Well: Personalize Your Thesis Theme
Third Tribe Marketing: Marketing done the right way
Story Structure Demystified: Best damn writing book out there
{ 1 trackback }
{ 60 comments… read them below or add one }
programming note
I’m behind on comments and today is crazy. Power outages and other craziness. I’ll catch up soon.
No special order this time, just what happened to flow into my admittedly strange mind:
It was a marvel that the lame eunuch was able to construct anything edible from the palpable fruit found in the damp and tepid swamp.
In a heartbeat, he was able to transform the swamp cabbage (the heart of the sabal palm) into a delicious and nutritious side dish for the meal.
Moral:
Don’t let a weird sounding food keep you from trying something new to eat.
Also, don’t hold a person’s disabilities against them.
@Steve: That was creative, cool, and funny. Well done.
I’m currently looking for a list of all edible plants and vegetation in the Maryland area.
Can’t help you there, have only ever passed through Maryland. Don’t even know all of them for South Florida but, the swamp cabbage is what came to mind from the prompts.
@sefeug-very creative & funny!
I like
The new restaurant they chose to construct was a rather lame attempt at nouveu trendy cuisine. Though the sautee’ of pigeon eyeballs and portobello mushrooms was visually unique, it was bland and tepid upon tasting.
It was a marvel that “lovers’ stew” had palpable praying mantis hearts, tiny as they were. You could actually still hear the far off miniscule heartbeats emanating from the surrounding pearl onions and tomatoes.
And no matter what they did, they simply could not make those “sweetbreads” in marsala sauce, made from the best of Italy’s Eunuchs even remotely edible!
I don’t understand why pretentious chefs these days try so hard to transform normal, everyday food into weird delicacies. Give me a dripping old-fashioned chili burger and a damp rag and I’m good to go!!!
And I thought my mind was strange.
LOL,….you’re not the only one with a scary mind, Steve! We worship at the shrine of Tim Burton.
Not quite that strange I don’t think.
Have you visited his site http://www.timburton.com/ ?
WOW!!!! amazingly fucking awesome!!! thank you for sharing, Steve…thoroughly enjoyed the tour! the guy is a genius. (now I’ve got to go play a little oingo boingo “dead man’s party”!!
@sefcug thanks for the link! Love Tim Burton!
@Ma: I’m getting ready to eat a peanutbutter and mayo sandwich!
Add some bananas, fry it in butter and you’ve got the Elvis special!
blech… I think I’ll pass on the Elvis special
Hi Kool Aid…I used to see your name on my son, Sean’s, site all the time…tell him he has to stop being busy with work and write fun stuff again!
I’ve tried, Ma Margaret, but he’s not listening to me
I’d like to see him here again, too. Ah, well, something has to pay the bills, right?
Harumph!!!
@Margaret-ewww…remind me not to eat with you – or Steve!
I wanted one constructed with the finest, non-edible plastics.
I was unhappy with lame, tepid responses.
Like a damp rag, it hung there with palpable lackluster.
I was a frustrated heartbeat away from choking it like it owed me money.
I wanted a one-of-a-kind, marvel-enducing transformation.
So, I was shocked when I woke up from my penis-enlargement surgery to learn my doctor removed it’s two neighbors.
With rage in my eyes, I yelled, “I wanted to be unique too, not an endowed eunuch-minus-two, you deaf son of a bitch.”
Sounds like the day’s problems are getting to you. A lot of rage there.
@Steve: Can’t have rage with Low T
that was a really ballsy post, Shane!
@Ma: You said Ballsy!!!
@Shane-LOL! Fascinating how your mind works!
good as usual. love the ending
Great words!! Something different from me, decided to go more with poetry this time than prose…
**********************************************************************
I marvel:
at tepid politician’s lame excuses for no accountability
Eunuch‘s they are!!
something lackluster
I marvel:
at the struggling but palpable heartbeat of the constructs of society
Dampened it is!
something in need
I marvel:
at the transformation of a seed into delightful edibility
Astonishing it is!
something supernatural.
Excelent! I marvel
great write, Evelyn….true words.
@Evelyn- Marvelous!
Thanks for reading and commenting!!
Astonishing!
@Evelyn: Don’t know where my comment went. Weird.
This is wonderful. Loved the flow. Write on.
It had become a less-than-torrid love affair, tepid actually, one might say. Romantic picnics by moonlight had deteriorated into lame dinner outings, hot nights in Hawaii into boring camping trips spent in damp, smelly tents. Her dissatisfaction with him had become palpable to all those around her.
Even their sex life, once so fresh and exciting, was now little more than routine, that is if it happened at all. Most of the time he displayed the enthusiasm of a eunuch, a poorly compensated one at that. She had to marvel at his indifference toward their certain breakup that was looming in the very near future.
At a loss for other ideas, she finally presented him with an ultimatum, one that would either transform him into the lover he used to be or end their relationship in a heartbeat.
And here was his answer. A note stuck to the refrigerator. “Meet me at the construction site at the corner. At midnight. And wear those edible panties.”
@Sylvia–that was very entertaining!
@sylvia – I enjoyed this! Made me smile.
Thanks so much! I am really enjoying this, even more than I thought I would. My new addiction.
Thank you! I am having a lot of fun and it is excellent exercise for any writer.
@Sylvia: Shazamm! That was hot. Give us more of this.
programming note:
Still crazy on my end. Power’s still out on the homestead. Just checkin’ in real quick.
I’ll get up to speed as soon as I can.
Have a great weekend.
I’ve tried to construct something that isn’t lame,
something palpable and not tepid
but I’ve only been able to transform this prose into a damp eunuch
drenched in sweat,
a heartbeat away
from certain death.
Marvel at the mediocrity;
this food for thought is not edible.
I hope you make your living writing professionally because you are very, very good!
@sylvia ~ Thank you! I actually don’t. I’m a SAHM and work part time taking care of children at a local gym. I sometimes wonder, though, if I could make a go of it.
I do believe you could, and what’s more, you can do it from home if you pick the right thing.
@Kool Aid-very cool indeed!
@Kool Aid: That has a flawless cadence to it. Super write.
I marvel, with one exception, at Victor Frankenstein’s palpable skillfulness to construct a creature from an assortment of human body parts, not withstanding, in the dark, damp dungeon of a castle.
How and where he collected these body parts is not known, however, common sense tells us that they must have been tepid in order for him to assemble and transform a hodgepodge of cold cuts into a eight foot hoagie with a heartbeat.
My one disappointing exception is that Frankenstein’s Irish Wolfhound, playfully named, “Lame,” was trained to retrieve balls. Unbeknownst to Victor, Lame retrieved two that were edible. Thus, the shortage caused the eight foot hoagie to be a eunuch.
All right, then!!!! Witty.
@A–love it-you knew this was going to be an interesting one when eunuch was thrown into the mix.
thanks y’all, Eunuch stories drive me nuts.
HaHa….A said “nuts”!
@A: Super creative write. I love reading something that I know the author loved when they finished writing it.
Scott’s face crinkled with concentration; his tongue escaping from his lips. It was up to him to construct the power. He knew this was serious. The magnitude of his task evoked much more than a tepid response. His damp hands were proof of that.
There was a palpable wave of tension. Scott chewed on his lower lip as though it held an edible solution. His hands shook as he questioned his next move. He felt as powerless as a eunuch in a room full of beautiful women – if he actually knew what that meant.
His heartbeat quickened, ready to transform the world.
“I did it,” he shouted. “I helped Hulk defeat all evil. I won Smashdown Central! I am the ruler of Marvel games everywhere!”
“Man, that is so lame,” whined Scott’s nine-year-old buddy, Mark.
“I want a rematch.”
Hahaha! Great surprise ending.
@Cathy: Cute, very cute.
nice switch. I want a rematch.
Creative, Cathy…I really like “edible solution” and “powerless as a eunuch………”.(that’s pretty damn powerless!!!)
RIKKA’S SONG
Daily, she was surrounded by eunuchs who clung to her for money and reflected glow, bowing to her every whim. Between those yes-men and the demands of the public, Rikka found it difficult to maintain perspective anymore.
Tough to complain, though. She was just a kid from nowhere, singing her heart out in dives and hearing the same tepid responses every night, living for free drinks and $25 prizes, when Joe Angelo found her and signed her to his label. Even Joe must have marvelled when that first single went through the roof. That was hard to recall now, when it seemed with each new release that Rikka could do no wrong. She’d been transformed into an object for her fans, who seemed to believe that every word from her was edible. The pressure was immense. In truth, it sometimes felt that they’d nearly swallowed her whole. After three years they were at the point when a mere gold record would seem lame.
Sitting in a half-empty bar between sets back in 2007, did she see it coming? No, she couldn’t have constructed a more impossible trajectory in her dreams. Wouldn’t have dared.
Now, this little sailboat Joe had bought for her was the only place she had room to think, much less to dream. Couldn’t hold more than Rikka and a friend… if she could recognize one of those through the haze. Anyway, she’d rather have the boat to herself. She loved the damp, she loved the work; she loved how out-of-sync sailing a boat to nowhere was, when she’d spent so much of her life clawing to get somewhere.
Rikka pulled in the sail for the night and grabbed a blanket to lie with on the deck. She was glad to be alone in spite of her loneliness, palpable even in the midst of the crowds that constantly surrounded her. Maybe she’d dream of erasing that pain. Maybe she’d sway on these quiet waves, let her heartbeats thump out the beat, and sing herself a lullaby about being a kid from nowhere again.
@Kelly: Wonderful. Just wonderful.
This reminds me of one of my all time favorite shows. Behind The Music.
Shane,
Sometimes I can almost see the characters, even in short stories. I could picture this one. It was fun to write it.
P.S. If you ever see the name “Rikka” on BTM, somebody owes me royalties.