Fire Scene

Poets & Writer's magazine has recently started a new little segment called "The Time is Now". It is a writing prompt that is updated weekly. Well, two writing prompts: one for poetry and one for fiction. (I guess most people don't need a formal prompt to get started writing non-fiction). I have been afraid of creative writing for a long time. I am an editor. I look at what other people have written and I judge it ruthlessly. So, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to take myself out of my judgey comfort zone and try to be an author. I don't have any real great ideas for a book, but I thought, maybe if I just keep trying these little writing prompts maybe I will learn something--like a new skill!!

Below is the prompt from a couple weeks ago (because it took me that long to write something I thought came even close to worthy of putting on the internet). I encourage everyone to judge me ruthlessly--don't hold back! And give the prompts a try! It is actually pretty fun.

Choose three people who you know well and write a detailed character description of each one. Now change the gender, name, and a few physical traits of each one. Begin a story with all three characters standing in the rain outside of a house on fire.

*I am not going to tell you who the real people are, except to say that one of them is me. See if you can guess which one!

Character descriptions:

Bailey: Short. Just over five feet tall with raven-colored hair and creamy skin. She is obsessed with Europop, tall shoes, and has never had a drink in her life. A woman who is fiercely independent and who prides herself on her happiness in her single life. But beneath her bubbly exterior there is a loneliness that pervades the air when she doesn’t think anyone is paying attention. She moves from man to man, never really finding a functional or satisfying relationship. She isn’t dependent on medication to be happy, but she smokes weed when she is feeling down.

Tacey: Tall, dirty blonde, tan, and very, very thin, with spiky, hazel eyes and a turned up nose. She looks like one of the girls from Blue Crush and she does actually surf. Her dream is to be a photographer, and she has the talent, but has been making way more money being in front of the camera as a model rather than behind it. She has been hurt often and heartily by men, and as a result is obstinately suspicious of men, relationships, and people in love. It remains to be seen whether she can open her heart wide enough to really let in the lover she truly deserves. She is simple in the best way—that is, uncomplicated, laid back, and eternally looking to diffuse tense situations.

Halle: Dark, shiny, red hair and big eyes that sparkle when she smiles. She is curvy, to say the least. She likes sunshine, and met her boyfriend in rock climbing class. She is hopelessly idealistic, and has been termed romantic in the not-nicest of ways. She wants to save the world and is perpetually tortured by the fact that she is only one person, with one person’s ineffectualness. She dreams of travelling the world righting small wrongs and putting her mark on life.

The beginning of the scene:

Sizzle. That was the thing she would remember most. The sizzling, hissing sound of rain as it plunged into the flames. It made little invisible jets of steam only evidenced by the noise they made, one right after another. It seemed like she should be getting wet, but she didn’t really feel anything. Just heard the sizzling. She tried to remember what she was doing. She was always doing something, or at least intending to. Halle turned her head and gazed down the line of people standing on the periphery of the scene. She didn’t recognize most of them. The firefighters, EMTs, police, and residents from nearby apartment buildings were all foreign to her. She noticed a girl with streaming black hair bouncing from person to person asking them if they were all right and offering consolation to those who answered her. Halle turned her head away—it was aching horribly by now, a symptom of the smoke inhalation, the paramedic had told her. She pulled the emergency blanket more tightly around her shoulders and looked in the other direction. A woman with dirty blonde hair was sitting nearby on the curb, clutching a camera bag to her chest and staring into space. She had a bright red burn across one cheek, and her fingers were smudged with soot. Everyone looked like they had been through a battle. It was the kind of scene Halle was used to seeing on TV—the dirty, lonely, wet people waiting to hear if any part of their life was salvageable. She had never watched those shows with any real interest, always dismissing them as exploitative, manipulating others’ tragedies to keep people riveted to their televisions. But now that she was standing there, alone and empty-handed, she wished there was someone looking at her. Someone who knew her and wanted to take her somewhere warm and dry. She moved closer to the girl with the black hair.

So there you have it. My first foray into fiction writing. It feels kind of like I am walking around in my underwear. But, so far nobody who has seen me in my underwear has laughed at me (to my face) so maybe it will be okay. If you want to check out the prompts for yourself, go here. It would be really interesting to see what poetry people come up with, and I am hoping to try my hand at some poetry in the future. So we'll see how that goes.