Friday Fiction: Consequences
Everything is connected
Here’s a Friday Fiction, something different.
On Wednesday I taught one of my WRITE! classes. This one was about collaborative writing, and also reversals in stories. As ever, the interactions with attendees were the highlight.
I often play word games as a warm up. On Wednesday we began with Fortunately/Unfortunately (collaborative storytelling that practices extreme reversals), and also Consequences. As ever the results were surreal, and yet – even though no one could see the previous lines or context – some of them made a strange kind of sense, or unknowingly responded to previous lines. Other times non-sequiturs become somehow believable and intriguing. I think this is a fun way to generate ideas that can sometimes spark the imagination enough to act as the seed for a story. So do play a game of it with your friends next time you get together. Here are a few of the ones we ended up with in the session, tweaked by me for context, detail, and narrative.
WRITE! Consequences
Bob met Pauline at the Cow Parade take-out restaurant. The fry station stunk of sizzling fat.
“Double cheeseburger and fries?” he asked.
But Pauline gazed out of the window. “I really don’t like Scotland.”
It was the final straw. He stripped naked, throwing his clothes into the deep-fat fryers and standing on the counter, proud and wobbly.
Pauline glanced at his bits, then declared her independence.
Yet, despite it all, neither of them knew where Amanda’s body was.
Lee Won met Katherina at the train station, as arranged.
He told her, in an excited tone, “We must crack the whip!”
She said, “Thank you for your nice compliment.”
But he was having none of it. “I’m going to learn to use that gun, and then – watch out!”
She grabbed her phone and started taking selfies, with the train station in the background.
That was how they fell out of love.
The late Phantom Flan Flinger met the vaporous ghost of Maggie Mature in a graveyard. That particular realm of headstones and mist was situated in a southern city which exists as the coffin of the UK.
He said, “Wow, you look amazing.”
“I’ve got the munchies,” she replied.
He sprinted to a nearby parked car and jumped in.
She looked disgusted.
Consequently, she emigrated to France.