Doing this every week is revealing, to say the least. The first thing it’s teaching me is how shallow my understanding of various genres really is. My writing is more of a parody of a stereotype of romance—to take this week’s exercise as an example—than it is actually evoking the genre.
On the other hand, it’s proving that I actually can bring a story to completion under time pressure, if I’m given enough structure. I have not once had an idea of how any of these stories would end. But I’m able to find an ending in the roughly twenty minutes of actual writing. They’re kinda clichéd and lame (today, I had two endings, and I decided on this one; I’ll put the alternate ending in the comments), but they’re endings that wrap up the story. That’s honestly more than I thought I could do on a regular basis.
As always, we’d love to see your take on these prompts in the comments. Or just poke fun at our attempts!
Character: Father
Object: Ottoman
Genre/Tone: Romance
The last time she had seen him, he’d had his feet propped up on the embroidered ottoman, a cocktail in his hand, and pince-nez in the other, surrounded by the books that made up his life. He had stared at her long enough for her heart to start beating again and her eyes to blink and her breath to catch in her throat. Now, although the scent of bookdust in the air and the shafts of light through the window were the same, his eyes were entirely different, and that made the whole room different.
“Come with me,” she said. “You know it’s the best thing for everyone.”
He stood and turned toward the window, the sun glistening on his ebony hair. “But your father…”
“You’re the only one who’s ever cared about my father!”
He spun back toward her. His eyes had hardened like opals. “Of course I care about your father. And you should too.”
She threw her hands up in exasperation. “I’m not going to let him control my life. Listen, I know I’m asking a lot, I know his writings have changed your life.”
“They have defined my life.”
She stepped toward him, but he backed off, so she settled for standing her ground. “They have defined it so much that you have no life except what he’s written. And you are more than words my father scribbled in his drunken stupors.”
“I don’t want to be more.” He lowered his eyes.
“I used to believe that,” she said. Coming directly at him simply pushed him back. So she turned to the side, and meandered around the side table where his lamp and stack of books stood. She let her fingers drag through the dust on the tabletop as she circled it and approached him from the side. “Then I left myself. Do you remember?”
“I remember.” He looked up, a tear of memory in his eyes. He took a breath, and the curve of his chest swelled under his cardigan. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
She stepped closer, close enough to reach out to him, though she refrained from actually touching his shoulder. “Yet here I am.”
He turned and looked at her. “Yet here you are.”
“I don’t want to define your life,” she said. “I only want to be part of it. And for you to be part of mine.”
The sun behind him cast a mandorla around him, leaving his face in shadow. But the tear still glistened in his eye, and the coffee scent of his breath reached her as he exhaled so, so slowly.
“Come with me,” she said again. “Join the wider world.”
The silhouette of his face shifted just a little, a thin smiling expanding from his lips to his cheeks, and to the corners of his eyes.
She turned and he stepped up beside her. Together, they crossed the patterned carpet and passed through the high oaken doors, out of the library, out of the house altogether, into the dusky sunlight, and the fresh air of a new life. And as sun set, he reached out and took her hand.