500 Words - I

A couple of weeks back, Lynn and Robyn put on their writers' hats and got together for a little creative writing exercise.

They picked the book nearest to them and looked up the fifth sentence on the fifty-sixth page then used that as the basis for a five-hundred word short story.

Lynn and Robyn are both real writers so the results were always going to be good and indeed they didn't disappoint.

Here is Lynn's

And here is Robyn's.

Lynn's sentence was:
"The sweat blinded me and in one last purposeful gesture I drew together the threads linking the rhythm of our movements and knotted them in an elegant shimmer of power."

Er … not quite Jane Austin Lynn. What on earth were you reading?

Anyhoo … from that somewhat inauspicious and alarmingly racy start, our Lynn somehow managed to produce a heartwarming tale of love and respect across three generations and at the same time a tug on the conscience for poor, long-suffering Harry.
Lynn's story confirms my own view that men only grow old; they never grow up. Harry is a real delight and the perfectly named Sybil sounds as old and cracked as the Greek Sybils themselves.

There's also a lesson to us all in there about brown trousers.
Wise words, Lynn.

Robyn had a sentence from a Hemingway short story called "Fifty Grand":
"He was wearing an old blue jersey and an old pair of pants and had on boxing shoes."

From this little vignette she wove a story involving a little boy and his parents that was both charming and moving.
Robyn has a wonderful eye for detail and dialogue and in a brief exchange between her characters she told three complete life stories.
She has the knack of all great artists in that she can sketch a few quick strokes and allow the viewer's - or in this case the reader's - eye fill in all the detail almost without them knowing it.

Listen to the three of them talk - the boy, the mother and the father - and you already know them; you know their past lives and their futures, just as you do Harry and Sybil in Lynn's story.

Great writing.

So … how on earth do we follow that lot?
Well, I'll tell you …

Our esteemed ladies have been kind enough to appoint me Official Sentence Setter for a regular creative writing blogfest.

What I shall be doing is setting a sentence every week or two (depending on how busy we are outside Blogville) for Lynn, Robyn and anybody else who wants to join us (this means you) to use as the basis for a short story or essay.

The only rules will be:

- I will set the sentence and there'll be no arguing!

- The story shall be 500 words long … that will usually include the first sentence unless - as this week - it is ludicrously long, so then you can choose whether or not to include it in your word count.

- Post it when you've finished so we can all enjoy it.

That's it for the rules.
Easy, huh?

As you know I have way too many books so I'm not short of an odd sentence or two.
I shall be setting the occasional Shakespearean or Classical sentence so you can write in period style if you fancy … or not, if you don't.
There will probably be other genre pieces, too; maybe a Jane Austen bodice-ripper or a Raymond Chandler hardboiled private dick or any manner of literary oddity.
You can write in the style of the author or completely subvert the genre; whatever the hell you like.

Above all, just enjoy yourelves.
If you don't feel like writing you don't have to, but if the sentence gives you an idea then go for it.

To set you off, I have chosen the first sentence and it is from Nabokov's "Lolita" (yup).
I wanted to test Lynn and Robyn with an awkwardly long sentence that included an odd name, just to see what they come up with.

The sentence is:
"And again next day a thinly populated sky, losing its blue to the heat, would melt overhead, and Lo would clamour for a drink, and her cheeks would hollow vigorously over the straw, and the car inside would be a furnace when we got in again, and the road shimmered ahead, with a remote car changing its shape mirage-like in the surface glare, and seeming to hang for a moment, old-fashionedly square and high, in the hot haze."

Have a go yourselves.
So that you won't feel embarrassed, I've joined in too and shall post my own effort tomorrow.
I am DEFINITELY not a writer of any kind (as a writer I make a pretty good musician) so it's gonna be pretty awful, but at least Robyn and Lynn will post their own stories and I'll feature them here together with any others who might feel tempted to join us.

Now get writing and have fun!