Ah, alliteration. It's the biggest elephant in the room at the figurative language zoo. It's hard to miss, and not so hard to write. Today, write a paragraph, poem, or piece of dialogue using alliteration at least three different times, with three different letters.
Particularly pesky, parasites pose a peculiar problem for pandas. Early evaluation evidences an evolving variation of very virulent and sometimes venomous strains of several species of Pseudophyllidcestodes (order pseudophyllidea), frequently referred to as the flatworm.
Synecdoche. It's not just a new Charlie Kaufman movie. Or a hard to spell word.It is, in fact:a term denoting a part of something is used to refer to the whole thing, or a term denoting a thing (a "whole") is used to refer to part of it, or a term denoting a specific class of thing is used to refer to a larger, more general class, or a term denoting a general class of thing is used to refer to a smaller, more specific class, or a term denoting a material is used to refer to an object composed of that material.The use of synecdoche is a common way to emphasize an important aspect of a fictional character; for example, a character might be consistently described by a single body part, such as the eyes, which come to represent the character. This is often used when the main character does not know or care about the names of the characters that he/she is referring to. (for more info on the term and some examples, click here)Your turn. Write a short piece of fiction using synecdoche as a major component.
The Eye watched traffic pass as he stood on the curb waiting for The Car. Always late, The Car was never dependable enough to be counted on, but sometimes, rides were needed so he would have to do. Time passed and The Eye acknowledged him. Typical of Time, he was on the move and couldn't be stopped. It was no good calling him once he'd passed because nothing could turn him back. It's not like he stood still or waited for anyone. Once was Time was out, that was it. only The Mind knew how to occupy him long enough to get anything done. As for The Eye, he just took it all in as it happened around him.
The Car finally arrived, fifteen minutes late. -No problem, he said. I'll get us there.
The Eye didn't believe it. Suddenly The Car tore off and bolted down the street. He was speeding to make up for being late, so it wasn't much of a problem, they'd never been to this place before and The Eye was having a hard time reading the signs. It was time for small talk.
-What'd you do today? -Drove around...and you? -Watched a movie. -All day? -No. Then we went to eat. -We? Who'd you go with? -The Mouth. -Should've known.
And on it went. Sometimes The Eye couldn't see the point in all this. It seems trivial. But The Car, once he got going, he kept on and on. The Car could veer from one topic to another, turning on a dime. Road trips were the worst with him. He'd just run and run until he had to make a pit stop. Then, at the drop of a hat, he was off again. Tonight, The Eye tried to make a go of being engaging, but he was distracted and had trouble focusing.
It wasn't always like this. Before he came to depend on The Car so much, he and Legs, his roommate from Corpus, used to walk all over town. It was nicer then, 'cos Legs was much slower. The Eye could take everything in as they strolled through the city. He felt more in charge of his life because Legs invariably went wherever The Eye led. This pace suited The Eye just fine. And one thing they could both agree on was they hated trying to keep up with their other roommate, Hands. He was quicker than both of them when he wasn't busy being idle. He was so obnoxious that they thought about cutting him off, but that would have been as stupid as when they cut off The Nose, just to spite what's-his-face. What's-his-face didn't care since he spent more time in a mirror than showing up outside.
The were close now and The Eye suddenly realized he might run into someone he didn't want to see. -Dick's not gonna be there is he? -Probably not. -I hope not. The last time we were there, it was a regular Dick-fest. -It was his birthday. I wouldn't worry about it. He doesn't come too often. He and Hands usually stay home and play. -Play? -XBox. -Oh.
The Car turned into the lot and drove around looking for a space. He was anxious to meet The Girl. The Eye wasn't looking forward to all the bright lights and the cigarette smoke, but he did like standing by the dance floor and passing judgement. But he wasn't off the hook. -I told The Girl to bring a friend.
The Eye could suddenly see that this was a set up. Far from being irritated, he was open to the idea. -Good. The last thing I wanted was for The Girl to take off with you and leave me stranded. She cute? -Of course. She's in entertainment. -What's she do? -She works for a music video channel...She's a V.J. -Nice.
Oh my gosh, I totally suck. Write whatever you want today. I promise I will have my head in the game for the last week...
I have no water. Again. Everyday this week, at midday, the water has gone off as men in machines dig a hole in the parking lot of my apartment complex. Yesterday the power went out as well, so I guess I should count myself as lucky today. Today I just can't wash dishes. Or shower. Or boil noodles. Or clean produce. I'm hungry and I smell a little bit, so I'm cranky.
If this lasts more than another hour, I'll have to leave the airlock and venture outside. I've already left once today and I don't like to make a habit of it on the weekend. Especially since I have to leave later to take Mandy to the airport.
So, last night, 3 members of this group went to a little bar that used to be known as the Crazy Lady. Needless to say, there were plenty of crazy ladies in the room, most of whom were at our table.
Write a short bio about a crazy lady you know.
She walked around in bare feet. All year long, regardless of the weather. Palms up. Head tilted slightly upward. Eyes closed except when she needed them to navigate her way. She went around in constant communication with her Lord above. She murmured in earnest communion with an unseen presence that comforted her and charmed her and beguiled her. But mostly, it made her do things.
I was told she had been beautiful once. That must have been long before even my parents' day. No one could confuse her for beautiful anymore. Her hair was a tangle of knots. There were traces of burn scars on her lower face. She cared little for her actual appearance and often took to walking around town in a house dress, even in the rain. I can remember on several occasions, driving past as the cops had pulled up and were trying desperately to convince her to put on the coat they had brought for her. She just stood there with her serene smile in mute incomprehension. Mostly, it always ended with someone being called to claim responsibility for her.
The voice came to her when she was younger. I don't know when, but onset for this type of thing occurs in early adulthood. She was probably in her early twenties and the latest. Like the Maid Of Orleans, she would believe, for the remainder of her life, that she had been touched by the Divine hand. And like the French peasant girl, she was given purpose and meaning. She was given instructions. She was given orders. But, this was not the voice of Saint Michael inspiring a girl to reclaim a kingdom for Charles VII. This disembodiment had much more modest objectives.
She resisted at first. Anyone would have, even someone in such a compromised mental state. The voice was calm and reasoning. He explained his motives. He was sincere. At first, her sense of self preservation was too strong. But he was persistent and persuasive. She became more resolute. He became louder. In the end, she gave in.
She imagined herself as Abraham on Moriah. She imagined herself as Isaac, walking alongside his father, carrying his wooden pallet up the very same hill. They were one and the same, in her, playing out the storied drama of sacrifice and supplication. The father, prepared to sacrifice the thing he valued above all else. The son, willingly acquiescing to his father's decision. All in the name of faith. Til the very last, she truly believed that if her actions were sincere, if her fealty was true and she went forward with his command, an angel would appear. The Angel of God would stay her hand at the very last moment and she would be rewarded for her actions. This was the thought that gave her strength as she took the pot of water from the stove and put the rim to her lips. The roiling water and thick steam was almost too much to bear. Her hands was firm and resolute as the voice whispered in her ear about holiness and purification. The voice told her it was time to drink. She opened her mouth and tilted back the pot. The Angel of God never arrived.
When the end came, the real end, she had made the transformation from tragic figure to Bruja Morena. She was our Lechusa. Our BabaYaga. She was La Llorona. She was the thing that children dreaded in the night as they lay in the comfort and safety of their beds. The figure that would drive them screaming back to their homes. With false courage they would mock her as they rode by in the security of a passing car, only to regret it should they ever encounter her walking down the street alone. She was the personification of our nightmares. She was a sadly ill woman. To my knowledge, she never harmed anyone other than herself.
Conjecture can only fill in so much blank space so her ultimate motives will forever be in question. Perhaps she grew tired of the voice. Or perhaps the voice simply had one last request for one more show of faith. Maybe she was simply called home.
On a Friday in mid Autumn, she left the house where she lived with an extended family member and went for her walk. The air was still cool and humid from a rainstorm in the early morning and the day was quite pleasant. She made her way through town, taking her usual route past the County Courthouse and the Library and walked up the overpass located near the center of town. This was the path she walked everyday, but this time she stopped at the top. Passing traffic ignored her. Witnesses say she took her shoes off and laid them on the ground where she stood. She extended her arms, skyward, and stood up along the railing. By now, traffic had come to a stop and people left their cars to try to stop her. A few left their cars for a better look. Before anyone could pull her back, she simply let herself fall forward and dropped to the railroad tracks below. She landed on her head and died on impact.
I don't use her real name because this is a true story.
Sorry guys, but this is what happens when a drunken party girl tries to run a writer's workshop. Ah, beans. Such lovely legumes. The more you eat, the more you make fumes.In the tradition of raunchy child rhymes and fairy tales about giants, write a piece (poem, song, story, whatever) with the bean as your central focus.
Maggie Bean Weasley tore through town in a candy apple red Mustang. And a devil would follow. And by Mustang, I mean Mustang. A real one. '69. Not one of those steroid excuse for a cars that pass for Detroit engineering nowadays. This one had torque, it drank lots of gasoline and it went real fast. Not fast enough to outrun Penn, aka the Devil, but any distance she could put between him and her soul was at least a good head start. And she was gonna need at least that to get some thinking time in. By the time he started after her, she'd have at least four hours on him. That gave her about ten hours total before he found her again.
As she kept her foot on the pedal and one eye on the road, she kept stealing quick glances at the box on the passenger seat. Beautiful dark Mahogany with an ornate carving on the face. A Berbalang. A type of Filipino vampire. The relief on the face showed a Berbalang feasting on the entrails of a dead child. The detail on the box was fine enough that you could make out the ghoul's cat eyes and bird wings. You could also make out the smile on it's face. As Maggie Bean contemplated the box, she could feel the warm pulse and hear the quiet hum that came from inside it. She could also make out the fetid smell that it emitted. The devil on her shoulder tried it's best to convince her to open it, but she was too aware of the other devil, the one she left behind, to give in.
Not "The" Devil. "A" Devil. There were more than one. Oh, there was the big one. The Morning Star. The one who led in the war against creation. This wasn't him. This one was one of the others. That didn't make him any less...devilish. He called himself Penn. Maggie Bean knew that much. By now, she also knew that he wasn't a writer. Or rather, he didn't write for Scenic Review. He lied about that. He lied about having a son. He lied about working the program and having one dry year under his belt. God knows where he got the chip, but Maggie Bean suspected he probably stole that along with everything else from some bastard. Probably the one that rightfully owned the name Penn as well. She tried not to think about him, but kept remembering his smell. A faint trace of mothball and body odor. His sausage fingers always yellow from eating Cheetos and mustard. A perpetual stain on his shirt or trousers. He had the leer of an alligator floating in brackish water, contemplating an antelope. He'd just as soon eat you as let you pass if the mood suited him.
As Maggie Bean drove on, she was quite unaware of her speed. She knew she was hauling ass, but she just hadn't noticed how many horses she was using to haul the ass in question. Not that that would have slowed her down. It's always best to err on the side of caution when trying to outrun and 6000 year old Nabassu demon. The important thing was to keep moving. When this started, it had been about the box. As far as Maggie Bean was concerned, it was still about the box. That was what started this and if she was lucky, that would end it. But she also knew that Penn felt otherwise. She had pissed him off. For Penn, it was now about her. He could not keep going with his plan without the box, but he could always find the box later. He'd already waited 300 years, so patience was an attribute that had honed to a needle point. The box could wait. She would be the first item on his list. And when he found her, he would put his needle point patience to work and take his time with her.
She had almost made to the end of town and was coming up on the last light before the highway opened up again. She had managed to snake her way through most of lights without running a red, but her luck was about to run out. Up ahead, waiting on a light change, there were two cars, each taking up one of the two West bound lanes. She contemplated running the light by swerving into the turn lane when she noticed that the car in the outside lane was a powder blue Crown Victoria, the tell tale sign of an unmarked police car. The light turned green, but it was too late. Maggie Bean tried to reduce speed, but she was going far too fast. As the two cars ahead started to move forward, Maggie Bean's brakes locked and her car started to pivot left. The fact that the Crown Victoria and the Bonneville had started to move forward probably saved more than one life. If either car had been at a full stop when she hit, the impact alone would have killed her. She would have killed the cop as well. The driver of the Bonneville would have been fine. Instead, they had already started to move forward.
There was an instantly familiar high pitched squeal as the Mustang fishtailed and slammed into the back of both cars on it's passenger side. The sound of the crash was tremendous and brief. The force of impact was dissipated between the two forward moving cars, but it was an impact nonetheless. Maggie Bean was driven to her right, toward a wall of steel and a mangle of broken glass, but her seat belt mostly kept her in place. She stopped her trajectory with a snap and briefly had time to wonder if Penn would still follow her if she were dead.
The cop in the Crown Victoria was either unconscious or still stunned from the collision because he was not moving. The driver of the Bonneville staggered out of the car and fell to his hands and knees in the middle of the road. He coughed a few times and looked like he was trying to catch his breath. With slight difficulty, he straightened up and got on one knee. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Slowly, he placed his hands on his raised knee and pushed himself up on two unsteady legs. He opened his eyes and had started to shuffle toward Maggie Bean's car when he noticed that his trunk had been jarred open in the crash. He suddenly lunged forward, throwing all of his weight on the trunk and slammed it shut. He looked over at the still unmoving policeman, and then turned toward the Mustang. As he came around to the driver side door, Maggie noticed that he was quite handsome. Disarmingly so. As leaned in through the window, he smiled and Maggie Bean suddenly felt comforted in spite of the taste of blood in her mouth and the rancid smell in the air.
"You're going to be okay, Alice..." he said.
Maggie was about to correct him, to tell him that her name wasn't Alice, when she noticed something on the floorboard of the passenger side.
Words can be just as powerful at evoking strong physical reactions as images or smells. Use your words to truly gross out a reader. You can write about an experience from your past or just create something. It just needs to be really, really disgusting.
1. His soft piglet flesh smelled like softness and flowers. Just like babies are supposed to. That part never changed. The taste, however, was different every time. It always depended on the age. A newborn was always the most tender and was also the sweetest. Like honey glazed ham. With every month that passed though, the meat got less and less tender. By the time they were toddlers, it almost wasn't worth the time it took to snatch them. But if they were fresh, like this one, well...his stomach was rumbling just thinking about the first bite.
2. The open sore on Colin's heel was giving off a strange odor. Maybe wearing his shoes without socks was a bad idea. At first he thought someone had left a jar of pickled eggs out, but the there was an added spice of bologna to the smell that made him investigate. As it was, he didn't really think to check himself until he realized the cat had been following him and nipping at his ankle, trying to lick at his foot.
3. I knew this one was gonna be an epic shit. I'd been fighting a case of the bubblies all day and I'd come close to unloading in my pants twice already. As it was, I'd accidentally sharted on the way in to the toilet and had to peel the drawers out of my ass crack. All was going well, until I reached up to scratch my nose and noticed the brown stain on my fingertip...
Ever been to a burlesque show? A little strip tease, a little dancing, a little entertainment…Actually, burlesque shows are classically more about comedy and parody than they are about the jiggling, but who’s counting?Burlesque literature, however, contains no boobs. From answers.com: Burlesque: A literary or dramatic work that ridicules a subject either by presenting a solemn subject in an undignified style or an inconsequential subject in a dignified style.Typically written in poem form, burlesque is a classic literary tradition often used in Spain and Italy, with Cervantes one of the most prolific writers in this style.
Yeah, I gotta say this one kicked my ass more than the 1000 word challenge. I couldn't write a true burlesque in the confines of a sonnet, as hard as I tried. This was the best I could do in the 24 hours i gave myself to write this...
While walking home along the Quai d'orsay Recalling days at school. I reminisced Of evolutionary naturalist, One Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet
Contemporary of Lavoisier He criticised his view on chemistry Disdainful to a tolerable degree Of theories set forth by Georges Cuvier
Was also known as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck His theory was the topic of his day Much like Charles Darwin and Pangenesis
He said paternal aspects were the spark That carried over through our DNA Lamarckism’s not easily dismissed
