A story I will never write
So I'm looking through some old, generic prompts today and stumble upon this one: Organize the books in your library. Write a story using characters from five of them.
Since my library is organized, on a whim I simply glanced around and jotted down the first things I spotted, eliminated a few as not quite suited to the exercise (it's a fun book but Chocolate: A Consuming Passion doesn't offer much in the way of character possibilities) and came up with:
1. Sherlock Holmes (collected works)
2. Dracula
3. The Long Goodbye
4. Rebecca
5. Gone With the Wind
And then, because nutty stuff like this can sometimes be a good way to clear the mind, I worked out this scenario:
Philip Marlowe, post-The Long Goodbye and Terry Lennox, is waiting for his new client. She walks in the door and sits down--tall, slim brunette oozing femme fatale--and says her name is Rebecca De Winter and she wants to hire him because she's being stalked by this woman named Scarlett O'Hara. Oh, she says, there may have been an affair with the woman's husband, Rhett. She's over him; Scarlett needs to move on too. Marlowe investigates, discovers more to the story. There's Rebecca's companion, for instance, Professor James Moriarty, and how it turns out that back in the day Dracula turned Moriarty, at the latter's request--in gratitude, Moriarty staked the vampire and built up a truly untouchable criminal empire. He and Rebecca hit it off at once and happily reign over their dark empire.
Just another day in Booksville, muses Marlowe at the end. The stories don't stop, we don't fade away, just because you close the book and tuck it away on a shelf.
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And I shall now return to stories I do intend to write.
Since my library is organized, on a whim I simply glanced around and jotted down the first things I spotted, eliminated a few as not quite suited to the exercise (it's a fun book but Chocolate: A Consuming Passion doesn't offer much in the way of character possibilities) and came up with:
1. Sherlock Holmes (collected works)
2. Dracula
3. The Long Goodbye
4. Rebecca
5. Gone With the Wind
And then, because nutty stuff like this can sometimes be a good way to clear the mind, I worked out this scenario:
Philip Marlowe, post-The Long Goodbye and Terry Lennox, is waiting for his new client. She walks in the door and sits down--tall, slim brunette oozing femme fatale--and says her name is Rebecca De Winter and she wants to hire him because she's being stalked by this woman named Scarlett O'Hara. Oh, she says, there may have been an affair with the woman's husband, Rhett. She's over him; Scarlett needs to move on too. Marlowe investigates, discovers more to the story. There's Rebecca's companion, for instance, Professor James Moriarty, and how it turns out that back in the day Dracula turned Moriarty, at the latter's request--in gratitude, Moriarty staked the vampire and built up a truly untouchable criminal empire. He and Rebecca hit it off at once and happily reign over their dark empire.
Just another day in Booksville, muses Marlowe at the end. The stories don't stop, we don't fade away, just because you close the book and tuck it away on a shelf.
====
And I shall now return to stories I do intend to write.