Fiction Friday #170

This week’s Fiction Friday prompt:

This week’s prompt is a retro prompt from August 29th, 2008 (#70!). It requires a little homework, but was a favourite the first time we ran it.

Step 1. Go to a busy locale—a cafe or coffee shop would be easiest. Sit down with a notebook, and make sure you look busy, so people don’t know you’re listening. Now write down random soundbites of conversations.Try to get at least 10 lines or snippets.

Step 2. Now use all ten in a cohesive scene of dialogue or as dialogue in a story

Step 3. Leave a list of the lines plucked from real life at the end of the story for people to see.

The story tells it all. I don’t think I need to elaborate any farther.

I had every intention of writing a story for this week’s Fiction Friday installment, but I just wasn’t feeling it. The prompt was a good one though: sit down somewhere busy and write down sound bites. It didn’t seem like such a hard assignment, but I was proved wrong. I don’t have a story in me this week, but I will offer up the ten little gems I collected. I gathered these today as I was sitting in the food court at the Mall of Georgia waiting on my new eye glasses.

Sixteen dollars an hour is bullshit. (Two teenagers a couple tables over talking about finding work.)

I’ve got a haircut at 5:00. (And old man talking to his friend.)

Costco membership … I can use it anywhere. (Same old man.)

Do you like yours like that? (A guy to his son.)

All I have to get now is the blue guy. (A kid to who I assumed ot be his brother.)

Next time ask me what you want. (This one struck me as especially funny. A mother scolding her child.)

Blow in the paper! (A mother correcting a kid who sneezed.)

I gave you one to be nice and you took the whole thing. (Another mother correcting her child.)

Oh my God, he’s cute! (A teenage girl to her friend, noticing a boy walk by.)

Where’s the bathroom? (The same old man with the 5:00 haircut.)

“Fuck it” John murmured to himself, defeated and worn “can’t write shit this week.” He clicked the Save as Draft button on his blog, took a deep breath and pushed hard against the desk top with his hands, sending himself rolling backward off the floor mat onto the carpet. A wheel on the chair came to rest on top of the autographed portrait of Dakota Fanning his sister had given him. “Fuck!”

John swiveled around in the chair when he heard that crumpling sound and looked down to see Dakota’s distorted young face staring back at him. He rolled off of it, bent down, and picked it up. Holding the picture to his lips he whispered “my sweet Dakota, what have I done?” and tears began to form in his eyes.

He lowered his arms and discarded the picture, for it wasn’t the destruction of the picture that caused him such pain – it was that he couldn’t write.

Originally posted 2010-08-26 16:08:11. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Related posts:

1. Fiction Friday #174 This week’s Fiction Friday prompt: Use this lyric from Shore Leave to flavour your story: “Hong Kong drizzle on Cuban...
2. Fiction Friday #175 This week’s Fiction Friday prompt: “Lonely in Paradise” Being my first week in culinary school and being saddled with a...
3. Fiction Friday #166 This week’s Fiction Friday prompt: A covert trip into an attic reveals something unexpected. I felt the need to pay...
4. Fiction friday #172 This week’s Fiction Friday prompt: Use one or more of these words in your story (but resist the temptation to...
5. Fiction Friday #161 This week’s Fiction Friday prompt: Include a telepathic parrot in your story. I had loads of fun with this prompt....