Writing Prompts – Creative Copy Challenge #334
Posted: May 20, 2013 Filed under: Copy Challenges | Tags: writing prompts 17 CommentsThis is a writing prompt. Bet you can’t do it! Take the 10 random words below and crush writer’s block by creating a cohesive, creative short story! And remember: after (if) you finish entering your submission into the comment field, 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.) NOTE: Our bolding plugin is gone, so you’ll have to put <b> and </b> around each of your words if you want them to stand out, but NOT REQUIRED THOUGH.
- Vengeance
- Interest
- Gas
- Improvement
- Lynch
- Adjacent
- Nationwide
- Torch
- Employment
- Sleigh
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.)
Writing Prompts - Creative Copy Challenge 
Santa was in a foul mood. The warm weather applied a torch to his already-rosy cheeks, in addition to stoking his ire at his current employment status. He threw the financial pages on the floor and shuffled around for the comics. Perhaps those would offer some salve to his demeanor.
Etta Claus waddled into the kitchen. “Gosh, darn, Santa. If I have to keep picking up after you …” She expelled an unladylike grunt as she bent over to retrieve the paper.
“Sorry, Mrs. Claus. Say, what happened to Bijou Funnies?” Santa was flipping back and forth in vain – the comic strip of his hero, Jay Lynch, apparently had suffered an eponymous event.
“Didn’t it go into nationwide syndication last year? We gave it to him as a present, remember?” Etta was cleaning the stovetop with the vengeance of an under-appreciated chef. So, she missed the dark cloud that passed over her husband’s face when she touched that raw nerve.
“Presents, schmesents. I’ll be damned if I gas up the sleigh this year, Mrs. Claus. I would get more money by claiming disability. I’m getting to old for this …”
“Santa! You mustn’t talk like that! Think of all the elves!”
Santa cast a gimlet eye toward the workshop. He no longer had any interest in subsidizing those pint-sized freeloaders. He snapped the funny pages, grabbed a handful of uncommonly good Vienna fingers and ho-ho-ho’ed at the exploits of Lil Abner’s Fearless Fosdick.
Eventually, the confluence of syncronicity and cookies brought about an improvement in Santa’s outlook. In the adjacent room, the elves breathed a sigh of relief.
Santa needs the Cartoon Network!
Etta Claus banned television from the North Pole. She was famously quoted thusly:
“You want to watch something, go look at Aurora Borealis”.
Santa got into trouble because he thought she was describing a porn channel.
Cheers,
Mitch
I see… he should be on naughty list…. Have you seen Rise of the Guardians? Awesome how they portrait him
No, I haven’t. I’ll have to put it on my list, check it twice…
Whoa! My wife has it. LOL CGI Friday’s
Cheers,
Mitch
[…] CCC#334 […]
Chapter 7
http://lissthomas.com/in-too-deep/
Nice continuation. The words didn’t slow you down at all. Seahorses and sleighs. 🙂
Cheers,
Mitch
But they do alter the story. I had to invent that last part but it worked better than my original idea
Liss, for the record, Shane has always reminded us that we can pause a story if the words don’t fit. I’ve been playing a mini-game with you folks and in a few weeks, if Shane hasn’t kicked me out of the kingdom, I GUARANTEE you the words will not fit your ongoing storyline. Mwhahahahaha
Cheers,
Mitch
Evil Miniacle laughs don’t scare me!…….Much!
While King Shane is off on a crusade, Prince Mitch is raising the taxes!
It shone like the scorned eyes of a lover taking vengeance. It was of great worth and of immense interest to me. I lent over and picked it up. It was soft, but as heavy as Lynch Law. Adjacent to it was a smaller metal sleigh, with the torch still perfectly intact. I immediately dated it… Greek. My employment as an archaeologist for the Royal British Museum had finally paid off. I saw my career exploding like a match to gas. My name was going to be nationwide headline… an improvement my boring life so desperately needed.
And if that doesn’t pan out, this submission ensures your future success as a writer. 🙂
Cheers,
Mitch
Fantastic!
She stared into the eyes of the dying man barely standing upright. Before this moment she had felt nothing but resentment for the man in front of her, but now staring into his surprised blue eyes that feeling of vengeance had disappeared. She couldn’t understand how that strong feeling of hatred that had burned brighter than any torch had just vanished in a mere moment. What had happened to her impulse to have him lynched for all the pain he had caused the world?
Instead she gently laid his dying form on the bench seat of the sleigh, as it began to snow. She knew she shouldn’t be feeling any sorrow or guilt for this man; she had been warned to keep her interest in him just that: an interest. Now staring into his dimming, once bright blue eyes she couldn’t see the man that was a nationwide criminal. No, instead she saw a pitiful man that had been deceived by a woman that he had thought he loved. She should find his pitiful state quite an improvement compared to his normally over bloated ego, but she didn’t find that she liked how he looked now. In fact, she felt sick with guilt about what she had done. If not for her current place of employment, she would never have met him nor would she be in this situation either.
“You know, Holly,” he mused, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth, “out of all lies you’ve told me, ‘I love you’ was my favorite by far.”
As soon as the words had passed from his lips, he began to hack up blood and shake uncontrollably. She quickly smoothed back his brown hair, as she kneeled adjacent to him lying on the bench seat.
“Shh,” she whispered.
He finally stopped coughing as the light that had lit his eyes so brightly left his eyes. The man before her was dead. Standing from her kneeling position, she quickly cut the horses loose from the sleigh before grabbing the gas cans hidden in the shrubbery a couple feet away. Dumping the flammable liquid all over the sleigh, she took a lighter out of her pocket and lit the sleigh on fire. The roar of the fire spooked the horses, causing them to flee the area.
She watched the fire in silence, but couldn’t stop herself from saying the words she had wanted to say to him before he had died. “Out of everything I told you, the only thing that I told you that was the truth was ‘I love you’.”
Her phone ringing in her pocket quickly drew her out of her melancholy thoughts.
Flipping open her phone, she answered automatically, “Valentine.”
“Is it done?” The question came almost before she finished saying her name.
Glancing at the raging fire before her, she said, “Yeah, it’s done.”
“Good,” her employer said. “A chopper will come pick you up in fifteen minutes. Good work, Valentine.”
The call abruptly ended, leaving her to stare at the burning fire and wait for the helicopter to arrive.
Nice scene, Ashley. This would make either a gripping intro or a bombshell climax.
Cheers,
Mitch
You know, I think your right. Maybe I should start a story with this. Well we’ll see. Thanks for your compliments.