Many folk with or without you have asked how do you tom write a 100 word story
I saw this ad in the newspaper looking for writers who could write in the style of Hemingway, Heller, and Joyce. I thought how hard could that be? So I sent in my resume and three examples. I got an interview on Monday. I get a call back on Thursday asking if I can start work next week. That’s my desk over there under the piles of greeting cards. I work for subsidiary of Hallmark. I write 100 word greeting cards. A Hemingway valentine, a Heller mother’s day card, a Joyce birthday card. I’m working on a Steinbeck Christmas card.
I’d like to make tacos for dinner tonight.
I have everything I need for them:
Beef
Lettuce
Cheese
Sour Cream
Salsa
Onions
and Seasoning
But I have no taco shells. Nor do I have tortillas.
I can go either way in the eternal soft taco hard taco debate.
I remember back to my Debate Team days in school when I magnificently debated both sides of the issue and took home the trophy.
And stopped on the way home for tacos.
Today, without either shells or tortillas, I must make a third choice:
Kleenex.
(It was either that or toilet paper.)
Many folk with a song in their heart have asked how do you tom write a 100 word story
When you only have 100 word its useful to utilize cultural icon that carry with their introduction vase amount of back story. It’s sort of a reverse personification process. We offer symbols in the place of running narrative. We place symbols to capture an instance hook into a common gestalt. Descript the land as dantesque all the loathsome descriptions of hell pours out. Descript someone as a superman or being like Tarzan we are able to conger up larger than life figures. 100 word stories are littered with archetypes. The symbolic pillars of the challenge are monkeys, midgets, and zombies.
She was the girl of my dreams.
Every time I’d go to sleep, I’d dream of her.
Adventure.
Romance.
Excitement.
I’d rescue her from all kinds of dangerous predicaments.
Then. when I woke up, she was gone.
“I’ve got to find her,” I said.
So, I looked. Everywhere.
I spent all I had on detectives to search the world for her.
When I found her, she attacked me with a knife.
“Why?” I groaned. “Why did you attack me?”
“You,” she said. “You’re the man from all my nightmares. Whenever you appear, bad always happens.”
And she stabbed me again.
Many folk without any visible means of support have asked how do you Tom write a 100 word story
Anthropomorphizing is good. What better way to get your hero on his hero quest then a talking rock. Or sing sword, magic mirror. Even low level attributes work well. The River rises up or lowers down as needed. A hyper living world is the writes friend gets you out the damnest plot dead ends. It softens up the skeptical monkey mind so you can lay in some major improbable plot lines. Take Lord of the Rings if it hadn’t been for talking eagles you would have had one downer of a story. Come follow the white rabbit down the hole.
Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Fifty-Seven, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was Tunnel Vision
Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
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Tom
When Lenny was a kid TV was littered with cheesy SciFi. His favorite was The Time Tunnel. They had time tunnel vision passive and active. A projection from within the tunnel showed the control room staff the dire straights our lads had landed themselves. It had that TV within TV thing going you got on the Burns and Allen Show sans George. Active time tunnel vision happened at the stroke of 55 when the control room ripped them out of time; our heroes swirled around in time goo. Even at the time it look like guppies in a toilet bowl
Terazzabyte
“You couldn’t hit the side of Deathstar with Jawa Ion Blaster”, said Luke.
“Oh yeah”, replied Darth. “I bet you can’t even do an invisible death grip on a Dagobah dung beetle.”
Can to…
Cannot…
Luke thinks for a minute and tells Darth to look to the side. Just as Darth turns his head, Luke throws a rock at his helmet.
“HEY! What was that for?”
“To show you how stupid that helmet is for any type of combat. You have so much tunnel vision in that thing that you can’t even tell if your Imperial fly is down.”
AM Earley
Depression sucks. Not clinical depression that is an actual medical problem, but feeling suddenly unhappy. I can get twenty compliments in one day, and still focus solely on the one negative comment. I totally tunnel vision upon one comment going over in my head like a broken record. And it’s that he thinks one habit I have is annoying. I am not a bad person. He feels annoyed. I know I can do nothing to change his mind. It is his problem, not mine.
I’m still stuck in the tunnel.
I need to change the mental radio station in here.
Zackmann
We have been trying to find new ways to see in our tunnels. Yes, we did find a use for those
solar powered miner’s helmets? When we had them redesigned to have batteries. They are
taken to the sun room and can be used for half of the night cycle. We can have families move
in when we have mined the valuable minerals using concrete made from the rocks like Walmart
does with old stores back on earth. We are happy living on the moon and in fact we have a
bright future and a vision for our tunnels.
Todd/Luke
I punch 122 on the remote and settle in to Imagine Greater.
I hear “We need to talk.” off to my right.
“Klingon Bird of Prey decloaking off the starboard bow.” said Mr. Sulu.
“Red alert! Shields up, evasive maneuvers!”
She moves to stand in front of the TV.
“Did you forget what we talked about last night?”
“Computer, access all communications in the past 24 hours.”
“Command functions are offline.”
“Damn. Mr. Sulu, activate tunnel vision.”
“Tunnel vision, aye.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“Are you even listening to me? Fine, I’m going shopping”
Whew, that was a close one.
Chris
My name is Silvermoon and I have what is called tunnel sight.
“I was in my cave sleeping when I awoke to a little human boy! And it
was running around me! I hate humans. They only care about
themselves.”
“What did you do Silvermoon, I bet you shredded the little vermin?”
Asked a werewolf named Black Stripe.
“Hold on I’m getting to that part. Well it kept running until it
tripped and fell. I got up and picked the thing up and then-‘ I paused
for effect.
“What?” Asked Black Stripe.
“I shredded it.”
TJ
Feelin’ down and dirty, feelin’ kinda mean
Down in this mine, lord I’ll never get clean
Crew just pulled a caper, don’t think it’ll work
I’m triple-crossin’ those double-crossin’ jerks
Fill my eyes that tunnel vision
No disguisin’, that tunnel vision
Oo, when they roped me in, for to commit their sin
Tunnel vision, oh it seems to get the best of them.
Gun pulled on the foreman, payroll out the door
Bombs in one bag, the money in the o’er
Gimme the explosives, hide out in the mine
They pull the switch, and that really blows their mind
Refrain.
Steven
Consciousness returns. Slowly. Stickily.
I don’t want to open my eyes.
Trickles of memory seep back. Finding the old box, the curved horn inside.
Something pushes against my mind. My eyelids open.
My daughter is on the couch. On the floor. In the hall.
My head wobbles, unbalanced by the single horn. Runes crawl
underneath my skin. No time to think — it’s coming back.
Stumble over my wife’s shattered corpse to the closet. Pentagrams
flare on my flesh. I get the .45.
Finger on the trigger. Barrel to my eyes.
This demon’s gonna have one bad case of tunnel vision.
Danny
Once upon a time in the sad, pathetic state of Florida, while walking down a long, dark tunnel, along a set of abandoned high speed rail tracks, my friend suddenly spots a light and hears train noises. My friend screams, “It must be an oncoming train!” “No, it can’t be,” I tersely replied, “Governor Scott turned down all the federal funding for high speed rail.” Upon closer inspection, the light was actually just a flashlight carried by a hobo running down the tracks towards us, making train noises with his mouth. “Wow,” my friend states, “he really must have tunnel vision.”
Norval Joe
Sir Mugwort knelt before his king. His robes were a tattered remnant of their former resplendence, his armor dented and tarnished. “My Liege,” he rasped. “My life I have dedicated unwaveringly to this search for the grail. I have never lost sight of this goal. Indeed, in the mines below the White Mountains, The Virgin Mother appeared before me in the passage and urged me on. And yet I have failed thee.” “Despair not, good knight. Focussed vision alone will not win you a prize,” the youthful but wise king said and raised his golden goblet to toast the knight.
Planet Z
The sages told Prince Blovdor of their vision:
A champion would swim up the River Sop into Mount Dammit to face Baron Von Dwarfenstein in his deadly tunnels of feargems.
Blovdor pointed out that swimming the Sop upriver is a challenge enough, but to face Dwarfenstein afterwards?
No armor.
Maybe a dagger tied to his calf.
“Perhaps you can best him in a contest of riddles?” said a sage.
“I’m not good at riddles,” said Blovdor. Then, he grinned. “But you old farts are.”
One by one, the sages swam the river. And, later, each decapitated, mauled corpse floated back.
I’m awake.
Did what I think happened happen?
No. It couldn’t have.
I look around the room.
There’s blood on the walls.
Blood on the ceiling.
Blood on my hands.
Blood on the sheets of the bed.
I don’t want to look at them.
I don’t want to see her under there.
I stumble to the bathroom and throw up in the sink.
Looking in the mirror, I’m covered with blood splatters… it’s on my face, in my hair…
I hear a moan coming from the bed.
Wait.
She… she’s alive?
After all that?
“Try harder,” she groans. “Kill me.”
Many folk with way too much spare time have asked how do you Tom write a 100 word story
If I can I real real want to write a time travel story. I can already hear the ghost of Scott Sigler “Same old crap, you go back in time, become your grandfather, blah blah ” A good time story shows the futility of change events, yet at the same time your protagonist is doomed to try and beat the steam of destiny. Nine times out of ten it’s over a girl. A good time story lays all the cards on the table and at the end of the tale you never saw it coming, what ever the it was.
Many folk with stars in their eyes have asked how do you Tom write a 100 word story
It’s kind of cheesy, but it is profitable in a packaging/marketing sense: Write your story as a movie script. Late in his career Michael Crichton followed this model and damn he made Forbes listed of “Top-Earning Dead Celebrities” Tenth place he was in its list of 2009. So you can’t argue with that. Of course the difference between 60000 words and 100 does demand a fare amount of scoping. Here’s how it works: ten times in row type the phrase: And Then What Happens? Answer each question with as string of semi-realist events. Remember to end with a happy ending
Have you ever heard of a sentient asteroid? Then you haven’t heard of Astrid. She was the size of a basketball pure galanium. She came straight out of Orion’s belt and was looking for someone to play with. For a billion years the only taker was a proto gas cloud named Bruce. Now she had her sights on a tiny blue dot. Earth never saw her coming. The impact sent up a cloud of dust that pretty much took out 80% of the species. The exit wound pretty much took out France. Astrid waved goodbye and sailed toward Alpha Centauri