by Mayumi-H | May 16, 2012 | Short Stories
The prompt for this week’s 100-Word Challenge for Grown-Ups (week 42):
You are to write a piece with these words in it:
LIBERTY EMPIRE APPLE YELLOW ENORMOUS
I’ve been trying to stretch my writing muscles with these, lately, so I decided to see if I could write a bit of action, this time around.
“Liberty and Death”
Fin shoved her ahead, and Cora slipped, across mossy stones slick as rotted apple pulp. But still she ran, the clangor of metal and voices chasing after:
“Retrieve the princess! Death to the Empire!”
Until, suddenly, there was no passageway left.
She spun, but her warning died in her throat. For spilling at her feet was Fin, broken and bloodied, his spear clattering beside.
Cora’s body shuddered.
Her pursuers were ready for a girl, a monarch’s delicate daughter. They weren’t ready for the angry, yellow-eyed monster that rose, enormous, before them.
“Here is your liberty!” it bellowed, spewing liquid fire.
Do not piss this girl off.
For some reason, this prompt made me think of revolutionaries and rebels. The problem with revisionist history, though, is that, most of the time, you don’t get to see the other party’s point of view.
This doesn’t necessarily follow any kind of conceived timeline or history for the Fin and Cora characters, by the way. I’m just spitballing ideas, here, seeing what – if anything – works.
How did you fulfill this week’s prompt?
by Mayumi-H | May 13, 2012 | Fearless, Short Stories
Not prompted by any challenge, but I wanted to write something in honor of Mother’s Day over here.
Her Motherly Reason
Maggie stared at the clock. Six sixteen, three hours since the shot had sounded, calling Jim away. She knew it was selfish (the crew needed their coxswain), but today was Mother’s Day!
She sighed. Mother’s Day without her husband. Rubbish.
The door creaked; she sat up. “Jimmy?”
“…Mummy?”
Maggie blinked. “Ross? What are you doing up?”
Carrying the tea tray, he padded in, his grin showing off a gap of lost baby teeth. “I made you breakfatht!”
Cold cereal and water wasn’t quite the scrumptious breakfast she’d imagined for today. But she smiled anyway, and hugged him, her motherly reason.
A childhood friend’s mother told us this story. One Saturday, when Jenny was a little girl, she brought Mommy breakfast in bed: dry Boo Berry cereal and water. Mommy thanked Jenny for being so thoughtful, gave her a hug, and then sent her on her way to watch her cartoons. Then Mommy put the cereal and water under the bed, to clean up later.
Boo Berry Cereal. The type of breakfast only a child could love.
That story’s stuck with me for many years. There’s something very pure and charming about a child being so selfless and kind, to go to the trouble of making his or her mom breakfast in bed. Of course, a kid’s idea of a great breakfast is not necessarily the same as an adult’s, not to mention that a young’un usually can’t make much more than cold cereal. But the sweetness is there.
I decided to translate this little true story into backstory for my hero.
In my novel, the main character starts out the story being pretty selfish. His impetus for doing things in the first few chapters is to satisfy his own ego, or to get a modicum of revenge on a woman who spurned him. But, over the course of the story, he comes to understand that the world – and its wonders – are greater than himself. I didn’t think he could do that very well if he was a complete prick through and through; there has to be some compassion and selflessness already in him, even if it takes a trauma to make him remember that it’s there.
What about you? Do you like writing backstory for your characters?
by Mayumi-H | May 9, 2012 | Short Stories
We’re up to the 41st week in the 100-Word Challenge for Grown-Ups series! This week’s prompt is from the picture below. (Do be sure to check out some of the other entries, while you’re over there!)
Old bones exhibit in the National Museum of Scotland.
Photo by Julia Skinner
I have to admit that I originally took the prompt to be “bones,” and so wrote something a little bit different. But, with a modicum of tweaking, I think I was able to make this story fit. What do you think?
“One Last Leap”
Another doodle-y doodle
Tomorrow, the cloud prince would come. To take her away from the sea, the only life she’d ever known. And the only love.
With naked toes grasping the bluff’s edge, Cora shook her head. Tomorrow, she’d be dead.
A better fate than any mountain palace was the wave-tossed tomb below. There, in that watery hollow of forgotten bones, she’d first felt Fin’s forbidden kiss, and known she’d never love another. She wished him here, if only to feel him one last time.
But she couldn’t wait. Tomorrow was coming.
Closing her eyes, she stepped free…and heard him call her name.
Revisiting Cora and Fin, here, from another short fiction attempt. I changed Cauda’s name to Cora, because it, too, has a relation to water (in Scottish, it means “seething pool,” which is appropriate for her character). And, because it’s easier to pronounce. (I liked the look of “Cauda,” but even I had trouble keeping straight the pronunciation.)
I also don’t want to create a precedent for myself, adding drawings to these flash fiction stories, but I had to try my hand at an underwater moment, since I’m struck by the beauty of it so.
by Mayumi-H | May 2, 2012 | Short Stories
The prompt for this week’s 100-Word Challenge for Grown-Ups is “Ruby,” to celebrate the 40th week of this challenge.
We have 100 words to fulfill the prompt, and – while my idea is pretty cheesy – I hope that you enjoy my take. 🙂
“Precious Promises”
Amid riffling chiffon, she presses back against the door. It clicks, and she smiles.
He turns, tails flapping. “You shouldn’t be here-!”
Three strides, and she’s in his arms, silencing him with a kiss that makes him hum…and leaves a ruby smear across his lips.
“Sorry!” she laughs, and starts to thumb the smirch away.
He doesn’t laugh, though, but holds her tight. “Promise you’ll still kiss me like that after today?”
The question’s as important now as it will be in an hour. So is her answer. So she rises, seeking his smudged lips again, and whispers, “I do.”
“Precious Promises” by Mayumi-H
(I think I spent more time drawing this little doodle than I did writing this week’s prompt!)
I know that most of what I write with these 100-word challenges are fluff. But, I think, subconsciously, I need to be writing fluff, right now. I’m in the middle of a first draft novel that has a lot of heavy emotional drama in it, and I find these lighter-toned pieces of simple love and family life to be cathartic.
As for the doodle, I did a quick, small sketch in my pad during my train commute, and just had to flesh it out. It’s tiny, so there isn’t a tremendous amount of detail, which makes it quite cartoon-y. But I had much fun drawing and coloring something so simple with my Prismacolors.
So, how did you interpret this prompt? 🙂
by Mayumi-H | Apr 25, 2012 | Short Stories, Songbirds
The prompt for this week’s 100-Word Challenge for Grown-Ups (week 39) is, per Julia:
….I’m exhausted. Shut the door behind you….
So, to remind you of the rules you have an additional 100 words to complete your piece making 107 in total. Please make sure it is suitable for a PG certificate and please visit the other entries as that is where we can get ideas as well as support and challenge each other.
Julia always knows just when to remind me that I need to keep these to a PG rating! 😀 That said, I didn’t really have much trouble coming up with a flash fiction to fulfill this week’s prompt. Without further ado, I’ll let my Songbirds speak for themselves:
“These Nights Won’t Last”
Girls Playing Dress Up, by Isabella Kung
http://www.behance.net/isabellakung
It’s the girls’ excited shrieking as they play that makes Sally snap. She loves them, but the noise-! What happened to those lovely nights when they’d cuddle peacefully, dozing off to faery tales?
Sensing her tension, Larry eases her to the bedroom. “You all right?”
Sally sighs. “I’m exhausted. Shut the door behind you, please?” And she settles back, to relax amid the quiet, alone.
But, after a while, she realises: solitude isn’t what she wants. Because these nights won’t last, either. So, rather than waste it, she rises, to find her family snacking on biscuits while puzzling over a jigsaw.
She smiles. “Room for one more?”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pushed one of my girls away, desirous of peace and quiet and just a little bit of alone time…only to then call her back and let her play or cuddle, because my own guilt has gotten the better of me. 🙂
This one feels a bit short, to me, but it does clock in at 107 words, per instructions. Perhaps because, like my Sally, I simply find myself longing for those bygone, tiny baby days…!
They settle down, eventually. 🙂
by Mayumi-H | Apr 23, 2012 | Fearless, Persona 4 Fan Fiction, Short Stories, Uncategorized
My entry to the 200-word Flash Fiction Contest over at Joey Francisco’s Soul and Sweet Tea blog…which you should go and check out, because it’s chock-full of creative goodness! My only regret is that I’m only finding her site now, and so I have so much to catch up on!
I took my prompt from Ms. Francisco’s photograph of the watchtower at Fort Matanzas:
Fort Matanzas, photo by Joey Francisco. Used without permission.
Stone stairs and the blood of Landstanders foolish enough to raise arms against him disappear beneath Fin’s boots, as every step takes him closer to the top of this tall, windowed tower, and to the girl trapped within.
“Wavewalker!” a guard warns, but he’s silenced by metal tines already streaked red; it’s the same for his partner beside. And up Fin runs, never stopping.
His muscles ache, his lungs burn, but the door is just ahead, and suddenly he’s crying her name as his spear splinters the heavy wood:
“Cauda!”
He’s barely broken through when she rushes up, arms thrown around him. And though her eyes are wide and frightened, her voice drifts to him with such gentle love, like the dreamy sway of the coral among which they used to swim. “You came.”
Time is short – more Landstanders are surely already racing to reclaim their princess prize – but still he cups her face, so sea-pale and soft, and kisses her, for fear it will be the last thing he ever does.
He draws back at the taste of tears.
“There’s no way out,” she whispers.
The spear creaks in his fist. “There’s always a way.”
As per the instructions, I stayed within the 200-word limit (mine comes in at 198 words), and I didn’t think too much about plot or craft. I just wrote.
I don’t usually jump for contests. And, to be honest, it’s not really the contest that interested me, in this case. I’ve just been having such fun playing in the 100-Word Challenges for Grown-Ups over at Julia’s Place that, when this came up in my Twitter feed via @speechwriterguy, I had to see if I could write something a little bit different than what I’ve been doing with the 100-Word Challenges.
This fantasy conflict is actually one of the earliest plot ideas I had for what became Fearless, believe it or not. It never went further than a very basic and archetypal idea of princesses and warriors, of course, and the more realistic, personal love story between Ross and Amber won out for me, in the end. But it was quite a bit of fun to revisit, in a way, those original concepts, here. And, who knows? Maybe I will flesh out the conflict between the Wavewalkers and Landstanders, one day.
The prompt for this week’s 100-Word Challenge for Grown-Ups (week 42):
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