SEVERANCE PIECE
(Prompt: There is a theory that after a person is decapitated, they are not only still capable of thought and feeling, but they can think up to 160 words a minute. They can do this for about one and a half minutes after their decapitation. Write what you think you would be thinking/feeling just after your decapitation.)
He takes my hand, the man with black hair and wild eyes and he pulls me up and I leave myself behind and we’re alone, and no one can hurt me now so I feel nothing but joy and in this black castle, with shimmering ice for windows we look at what we’ve created and I laugh, this is all I wanted, pure beauty, a world of art and creation, with my angel by my side
But when I look down I see a boy with hazel eyes, and a girl with a pocketwatch around her neck
And the boy looks up to me and suddenly I want to be in his arms, because I never felt him hold me
And I have magic now, but all the magic in the world and I still can’t take him back
He never held me, I’ll never touch him again
The girl, I’ll never tell her again that I admire her, that I wanted to be just like her
And they are looking for me but they will never find me, I’ll never come home to them again, I’ll never feel him hold me and I’ll never see if she becomes a famous poet
And I realize the only angels I ever needed, I left behind
I just wish I could tell them I love them, tell them
Stay strong, stay strong, stay strong…
INVASION PIECE
(Prompt: Write about an invasion of any kind of fantasy creature, about wishing to become a fantasy creature such as a werewolf, the creation of a real-life zombie by a witch doctor, or a diary-style invasion of fantasy creatures like one read in class.)
“Gotta love the local news: The one time their sky-is-falling, apocalypse-evident alarmist report would be right, they’re too busy being turned into cotton candy to go on air.”
After three days of hiding in an edit suite, living on decades-old candy that has probably been in my backpack since summer camp, trying for the life of me to protect my best friend, this is all that I can say. Well, actually, I can say quite a bit more than that, but I don’t want to because I know I’ll scare him, and trust me, neither one of us needs to be scared right now…well, not more than we already are, anyway.
Three days ago, aliens landed on our campus. DON’T LAUGH, I swear to God it’s true. They landed in a spaceship shaped like a circus tent, armed with guns that shot popcorn-like bullets and rays that turned people into cotton candy. Following them were little green guys with huge brains, and ray guns that could incinerate us. And the weirdest thing—they’re only attacking Interlochen. I’ve been looking online for days now—when I’m not hiding under the desk from huge, creepy clown aliens—and no one else has been hit. I don’t know why. All I know is, I’m scared.
When I whisper to my best friend about the reporters being turned into cotton candy he laughs shakily. I smile and reach over to squeeze his hand. “It’s going to be okay,” I assure him.
Yesterday, just before my phone battery died, I called 9-1-1. I doubt they believed me—but maybe after enough of those calls come in from Interlochen students, just before they are incinerated or turned to cotton candy, the operators will believe someone, and come to the rescue.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed. For him, at least. Honestly, I don’t have much to lose, here; after a few more weeks I’d probably have been expelled anyway. But if he gets killed—if he’s turned into pink fluff or shot with popcorn bullets or incinerated, and no one ever finds out what happened to him—if those stupid aliens drag him back to their ship to experiment on him—and if I’m saved, and he’s not—it’ll be my fault. My fault, because I couldn’t protect him. Because I made him laugh at the wrong moment, when aliens were outside our door. Because we didn’t hide in time. Because 9-1-1 didn’t believe me.
“It’s going to be okay,” I tell him again, and then we hear footsteps outside the door and we pull ourselves under the desk as quickly as we can. I hold my breath. The door opens…
“Is anyone in here?” a male voice calls, and I nearly cry in relief. It’s a policeman, a state trooper, someone who can save us.
“We’re here,” I say, pushing myself out from under the desk—
—just in time to see the man hit with a ray that melts him into a sticky, fluffy ball of cotton candy.
We’re screwed.
VIOLENCE PIECE
(Prompt: Write a scene in which violence is implied, but not explicitly stated.)
After the seventh time he comes to school looking like a train hit him, it’s abundantly clear that the injuries are not occurring at soccer practice. Hell, I don’t even think he plays soccer.
The first time he told me he fell down the stairs, the second time, he told me he had a rollerblading accident. The third time he tried to distract me by joking—told me that aliens had kidnapped him and used him for experiments. I let it go then, but now I know better.
On Thursday he edges into school with a black eye, limping on an ankle that is visibly swollen (those high-top Converse don’t fool anyone; I don’t know who he thinks he’s kidding), and I don’t have to look to know that he’s been hit with a belt or burned with a cigarette or something so horribly cliché it would be laughable if it were a Lifetime movie. Unfortunately, this is not a lifetime movie; it’s just plain lifetime.
We settle into our routine. The lunch bell rings and we meet in the student commons. I steal a paper towel from the bathroom and a handful of ice from the lunchroom, and we go into the courtyard. We sit down on one of the stone benches and brace ourselves—he braces himself for the pain; I brace myself for the sight of my best friend covered in burns, bruises or whatever—and I lift his t-shirt.
Today it’s burns, and I cringe at the thought of what caused those burns. Not a cigarette, that’s for sure. An iron, perhaps? No, they’re the wrong shape. Burned wood? No…that can’t be it. I don’t want to think about it, but I keep guessing. What was the instrument of torture, and what did he do that allegedly earned him these burns?
Finally, when I can stand it no longer, I ask him: “What happened?”
He doesn’t look at me. I continue applying the ice and wait for him to answer. Finally he inhales sharply and tells me, voice flat and emotionless, “I failed the history test on Monday…the one we got the grades for yesterday.”
BAD WAR WRITING
(Prompt: List the challenges of writing about war, and then write a "bad" war story based on those challenges.)
Challenges of writing war stories:
• lack of realism
• inexperience
• offensiveness
• inconsistency
• too subtle or not subtle enough
• cliché
• too vague
• too explicit
Example of a "bad" war story:
During the harsh battles of World War II, many young men were killed. One young man, Jim, left behind his sweetheart Amy to fight for his country. When he went into battle, he always carried her picture with him for strength. Meanwhile, she waited for him on the home front, growing her Victory Garden and hosting scrap drives, praying every day that he would come back for her.
The war was half-over when Amy met a man named Ted and began to fall in love with him. On the other side of the world, Jim struggled through battles with her picture in his pocket, believing that she would never abandon him. But the trials of war were starting to catch up to him, and he was caught off-guard one day and thrown into a prison camp.
Prison camps were terrible, but in different ways than people can possibly imagine. Men died of starvation because prisoners were either ignored or tortured. Jim was one of the men beaten for information, which he refused to give. When they beat him he thought of Amy, and of her beautiful eyes, and how gentle and how sweet she was, and how he was suffering for her, to protect the country that she lived in.
Meanwhile, back in America, Amy was engaged to marry Ted after six months of secretly seeing him. She wrote Jim a classic “Dear John” letter, telling him that she had found someone else. In prison camp, life was terrible enough—but when a man got a letter saying, “Sorry, darling, but I don’t love you anymore,” it was downright unlivable.
The camp was invaded by Americans and liberated less than a month after Jim received that letter. But those twenty-five days were the worst of his life. When the jailers beat him he had nothing to think about, no woman to live for. He screamed when the men beat him, rather than stay silent and strong. He never betrayed information about the American army, but he had no reason to maintain the cold dignity that behooved a soldier.
When the prisoners were freed most of them went home to their sweethearts or wives. Jim had nowhere to go, and so he threw himself back into army life. The war was nearly over when he was killed in battle. Amy heard of this and felt a deep sense of regret—how could she have done this to him? How could she have kissed him off like that? Now she realized she had never loved Ted, now her husband, and she would never see the man she loved again, even if he had been alive he would never have wanted her after the way she treated him.
Jim’s family and friends were devastated, but none more so than Amy. Every day she wondered, What if I had waited? and was forced to live without her question ever getting answered.
PAIN PIECE
(Prompt: Write about pain without using cliché language or hackneyed metaphors.)
Walk to school. Limp. Ignore the throb in your ankle; it’s not that bad, you’ve had worse. Ignore. Walk. Ignore. Already lies are forming in your head: I fell down the stairs. I slipped on a wet floor. I walked into a door. I crashed my bike into a tree.
Limp to your classroom and carefully ease yourself into the seat. Your teacher is clueless. You start to lean back in the seat but when your back touches the chair, heat sears across your skin. Quickly you sit up straight, your sore muscles protesting.
Come on now, get it together, you sternly order your body, we can get through this, we do every day.
You press it out of your mind and force yourself to concentrate on the teacher. Block out the memory of the curling iron burning through your t-shirt, your skin blistering, the smell of smoking clothing, the sound of your step-mother telling you that you will go to hell. You can’t block out the pain, but you can block out the memory.
Your ankle is swelling inside your shoe. It feels like someone is slowly blowing up a balloon that will never pop, it’ll just keep getting bigger until it overwhelms everything around it. You wish you’d worn low-tops today. Between classes you go into the bathroom and take off your sneaker. Your ankle looks like the work of a tortured artist—red, purple, black, gray—swollen, pulsing. The pain shifts, from a dull, almost numb ache to a stabbing throb. When you lift your foot to the toilet seat for a better look, the pain turns to a warning, a notice that the balloon will pop if you’re not careful. You fold the sneaker top over and retie your laces. Thank God your pants cover the bruising.
Someone sees you limping, sees the scratches on your face. Hey, man, what happened?
I crashed my bike yesterday. You wait. Will he catch the lie?
Oh, that sucks. He doesn’t, and you move on.
At lunchtime you escape outside. Technically you are not allowed outside the lunchroom, but no one will look for you in the courtyard. Your best friend follows you, paper towels and ice stolen from the lunchroom in hand. “Let’s see it,” she sighs. You sit very still, bracing for impact.
When she slides your shirt up it doesn’t hurt, but when she touches the ice-filled towel to the burn—that hurts. You know you should feel relief from the ice but all you feel is pain, you feel the burn of the curling iron, yesterday, and now you feel the sting of the ice, and now you can’t hold on any longer.
You forget who you are, and where you are, and the identity of the girl trying to help you. You forget how you got burned, how you tripped when you were trying to escape. All you can think about is the pain, and the sensation that your skin is about to peel off and the balloon—the swollen, twisted ankle—is about to burst.
The ice doesn’t help. It makes it worse. Your lower back, your side, it’s going to peel away and you’ll bleed to death, it’s going to all come apart, you can’t stand it. The balloon is getting bigger and bigger and it’ll explode, you want it to explode, you want it to end. You will do anything, you will sell your soul—what’s left of it, anyway—if it will just make the pain go away.
You squeeze your eyes shut and, for the first time today, let out a tiny whimper, an almost inaudible noise of defeat. A hand curls around yours, trying to reassure you, trying to help you find your way back, but you can’t, you’ve gotten lost, and all you can do is tell yourself it’ll go away, it’ll stop, it’s not the worst thing to ever happen anyway.
POETIC WRITING EXERCISE
(Prompt: Think of something ordinarily seen as ugly or frightening, and write about it in a way that makes it seem beautiful.)
The sky is green, a strange, bronzy green, the color of dirty stained glass. Clouds the color of lima beans make a spiral over the dancing trees. The wind makes water leap out of our pool, but we can't see where the waves hit the already-soaked concrete. Sheets of rain seem to come from nowhere; it seems impossible that something so heavy and destructive can come from something as delicate and pretty as those pale-green clouds. And when the wind cuts through the sheets of rain it creates patterns, like a spiral galaxy, but instead of stars the glittering raindrops make the shape of a little girl's ringlets. And when the green clouds give in to the desperate wind they make a spiral too, and the rain joins the vortex and creates a symphony of violent weather.
TRENCH EXERCISE (In-class)
(Prompt: Write the thoughts of a soldier as he lies in a trench that is currently under attack. Mine was written from the point of view of a 17-year-old American soldier in World War II.)
Lying in the trench and hearing the sounds of the bombs making the world explode around me, I can only think of one regret: Enlisting in this damned army. I had another year before I could be drafted; I could be home with my family right now, I could be with my girlfriend or my friends from school, but instead I am here, lying in this trench, about to die.
Right now I could be at the movies with my girlfriend, or playing baseball with my friends, or helping my little sister with her homework, or listening to the radio with my parents. Back home it's dinnertime, and my mother is making spaghetti and my father is just getting home from work.
I can almost smell the tomato sauce, and hear the sound of my sister's footsteps on the stairs as she runs to greet my father. If I close my eyes and concentrate hard, I can feel the summer breeze as the door opens, I can hear my father's voice and feel him ruffling my hair, instead of hearing the bombs and feeling the ground shaking as the world seems to end.
And of course, we're going to follow all this serious business with some...
STOLEN DIALOGUE
"That's just taking a detour into What-the-F**k Land."
"Oprah Winfrey is the Justin Bieber of the grown-up world."
"I'm gonna get kicked really hard in the shins very soon."
"Target gives me a consumer boner."
Person one: If I knew you better, I'd poke you.
Person two: Poke me...where?
Person three: With what?
Person one: As a health nut, I really want to eat the placenta of a healthy person's baby someday.
Person two: As someone within earshot...what?
"As a non-theorist cow, I feel obligated to say...moo."
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