Writers in the Storm

I don't remember where I first found reference to this writers challenge, but I was intrigued. Writing a horror story in two sentences? How could someone DO that?

Well, it’s not only possible, the results are amazing!

Go read these twelve, and come back. We’ll wait . . .

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/12-absolutely-terrifying-two-sentence-horror-stories

After reading those, who could resist taking up the challenge?

Not the WITS Bloggers!

Here are our two sentence horror stories. Our gift to you, for Halloween.

Laura Drake:

She loved Don, but Fear Factor? She’d thought she could power through, but love died when the first hairy leg touched her face.

Jenny Hansen (from my contemporary single title, A Bit of Intrigue):

Simon missed the personal contact of gutter-variety larceny; he missed the smell of fear that oozed off a person as he beat them.  Most of all, he missed that effervescent moment, when their pain-crazed minds finally understood: their fate belonged to him and depended on his mercy.

Orly Konig Lopez:

It was a closed casket funeral, there wasn't enough left of the body to piece it together into anything recognizable. I was the last one in the room saying good-bye, except for the person scratching at the inside of the casket.

Sharla Rae:

It was an old creaking house so every night I ignored the thumping footfalls coming up the stairs to my bedroom. And every night I’d sigh in relief when they abruptly stopped at the top; until they didn’t.

Fae Rowen:

For some inexplicable reason, every morning when she pulled back the curtains she gave thanks that the green gardens outside her bedroom window looked exactly the same as the day before. But as the heavy drapes slid aside today, large smoking holes in the dead landscape didn't slow the mutant army marching toward the thin glass wall separating her from them.

We know WITS readers are always up for a challenge, so now it’s your turn. Post your two sentence story in the comments! 

Come on, scare us . . . we dare ya!

photo credit: Stephanie Massaro via photopin cc

By Sharla Rae

I’m sharing not one list today, but two. The first one covers shades of the basic color spectrum. The second deals with adjectives describing color and the possible “conditions” of color, that is, how it’s used. But Writing in living color is more than just knowing and choosing color descriptions. It’s showing the reader the story in living color even when “no” colors are mentioned.

Here’s how Laura Drake did it in her book, The Sweet Spot.  In this excerpt, the focus is not on the color but the “entire” picture the character Belle presents. Only three basic colors are used. Remove the color terms and the reader would still see this scene in living color.

At the end stood a woman perusing a dog-eared catalog – a woman Char had never met, but recognized from the gossip. This was that new Yankee that moved in a few months back.  Just where do you go to get an outfit like that? Red shortie cowgirl boots, a lacy black square-dance miniskirt puffed with petticoats, a white bustier cut down to there, and a black lace bolero jacket. Char swallowed, attempting to focus on the woman’s features. A nimbus of black curls overwhelmed her deathly pale, sharp-boned foxy face. Huge dream-catcher earrings bobbedwith her every move. She looks like Dolly Parton gone Goth. 

If we watched this scene on an old black and white TV, we’d still see that Belle’s getup is extraordinary. But in this written scene we have an added advantage: She looks like Dolly Parton gone Goth. This is a descriptor that is immediately familiar to the reader. Who needs color names with this statement? Dolly Parton “is” the color.

Using color terms however, can be very useful. Color contributes texture and perspective by showing without telling.

Here’s an exaggerated example:

Black & white Movie: The scene opens inside a bedroom. It appears to be just a garden-variety bedroom.
Color Movie: Red velvet drapes at the windows, and bright purple upholstered furniture decorates the room. This is no ordinary bedroom and the person who decorated is probably out of the norm too.

Black and White Movie: A woman dressed in an ordinary business suit walks into the room. Again, nothing appears out of the ordinary.
Color Movie: The woman’s cheeks are too red, her suit is gaudy purple (not black) with flaming red trim.

Color gives a different perspective, showing a peek into the character’s personality by using the colors.

Colors aid with scene setting by adding tone and drama, whether it’s the gloom and doom of a storm, a cheerful summer day, a bustling city, or an old Victorian parlor.

This excerpt is from Lyn Horner’s novella, White Witch – on the night of the Great Chicago Fire

Bright sheets of fire flapped in the air, frighteningly beautiful in hues of orange, gold and angry red. Flung out by the murderous blaze, burning debris scattered hither and yon, a threat Jessie constantly fought, using a blanket to smother cinders that fell on the wagon.

In the Lyn’s excerpt, I especially like her verb choices of sheets “flapping” in the air and debris being “flung” and “scattered.” Adding the color here gives a bigger than life living color scene but even without the names of the colors, this scene is very colorful. And you can't argue the drama!

Colors might also reflect drastic contrasts. It’s the old “appearances can be deceiving” rule.

We could use the above excerpt from Laura’s book as a contrast. The heroine, Char spies the woman named Bella in this scene and is shocked by her appearance. But what Char doesn’t know yet, is that the woman on the outside is very different from the woman on the inside.  Contrast.

A generic example:

Jennifer closed up Corrine’s dusty little antique shop, and rode a rickety elevator to the old woman’s apartment. The elevator jolted to banging halt at the second floor. The door clanked open into a tiny vestibule hosting wide, bright white double doors with shiny brass handles.
Using the key Corrine had given her, Jennifer opened it, stepped over the threshold and stopped dead.  Vaulted ceilings and a variegated Berber carpet of white and black transformed the warehouse space into a grand open-spaced condo. A huge abstract painting in scarlet, neon blue and jungle green splashed one of the stark white walls where it hung over a licorice-black sectional.
     Good Lord, where were the antiques?  The dollies? The dust?

There are many ways to convey color and it’s not necessary to tell readers what they already know.  We know grass is green or that the sky is blue.

Of course, there are times when a familiar normal isn’t normal. It’s often just as affective to use character actions and one of the other five senses to show colors.    

Example: The following is perfectly correct: Dry brown grass crunched beneath her feet.
But we could also write: Dry grass crunched under her feet.

We are “familiar” with the fact that healthy green grass doesn’t crunch. We know if the grass is dry and crunchy, it’s dead and familiarity tells us it’s most likely brown. There’s no need to tell the reader the grass is brown. For that matter, we might dispense with the word dry. Only dry grass would crunch.

In Margie Lawson’s blog, Ax Your Clichés: Why and How, we learned to put a twist on cliché descriptions and use more powerful constructions to show character emotions and story tone. The same rules apply with color.

Cliché terms like lobster red, strawberry blond, sky blue, and grass green are boring.  These descriptions don’t really add texture, tone, contrast or drama. They just are.  Sometimes simple is better.The hair is blond; the day is gray etc.  But whenever possible, make colors work harder by showing.

Find new ways of expressing color but don’t make the mistake of using color terms readers have to research. Some examples: Brunswick (a green), Gamboge (tree known for yellow brown resin), Falu Red (a deep red) Ferruginous (rusty iron color) At The Phrontistery you’ll find a few more of these obscure color terms.

As long as clichés are avoided, using common objects, foods, places, animals or even people [Dolly Parton] to describe color is effective.

Below are a few examples but don’t be afraid to make up your own. Mention any of the terms in the list below and a reader automatically knows what color you’re talking about.

Writers can create color names that by themselves don’t sound like colors at all.  Let’s take an imaginary trip to any cosmetic counter. We’ll spy color names that have nothing to do with the actual shades of blush, eye shadow or lipstick. What these color names attempt to do instead, is evoke an emotion that appeals to the female buyer– because after all the buyer is buying dreams of beauty, looking sexy, professional or looking like the-girl-next-door.

Any of the colors listed below could prefix almost any cosmetic color or even the color of attire, and we’d totally understand the emotion or mindset the color represented.

Bella Bamba
Crazy For Chic
Dove’s wing
Dusky Nights
First Blush
Glam Girl
Midnight Rendezvous
Naked
Party Girl
Passion’s Kiss
Radiant Kiss
Ra-ra Blue
Riviera Rose Satin
Shy blush
Trend Setter
Virgin Pink
Viva Las Vegas
You Jealous?

Can you make up some names for colors that evoke an emotion? I played around with a few ideas below. Keep in mind that it’s often the “connotation” of the descriptive that counts. What emotions do you associate with some of the following color descriptors?

Pepto-Bismol - Sickening, distasteful.
Jonquil - cheerful, perky
The color of sin – Probably black, meaning sexy or evil
Cocoa - warm & comfortable
Marshmallow – cheery, easygoing person
Moldy (black or green) – the blek factor
Morning mauve – promising, cheerful, relaxing, soft
Pearl – might project wealth, purity
Rabid … - this could prefix almost any color and give it distasteful connotation.
Quaker gray – prim and proper
Rosy  – health, beauty
Stone – cold and hard to read
Sterile – cold, chrome and steel

Below is a list of color names/descriptors. The list is long so I tried to eliminate over used terms and obvious clichés. The second list of terms describes the conditions or state of color.

ORANGES

YELLOWS

Adjectives Describing the State of Any Color

By Kathryn Craft

Storytellers know that on the page, internal conflict is a writer’s best friend. But when that conflict emerges from voices inside the writer’s own head, where each wants to weigh in on the writer’s path and her way of walking along it, things can get confusing. Like a GPS whose discordant voices are offering multiple routes simultaneously, they may just slow you to a standstill.

 Might we not say to the confused voices, which sometimes arise from the depths of our being, Ladies, be so kind as to speak only four at a time?

~Anne-Sophie Swetchine

We writers are sensitive to these voices because of the way they intrude upon the deep, solitary thinking our craft requires.

If you think about it, every single decision in a writer’s life must be coughed forth from some internal compass. There’s no one to tell you when to work, or how to tell if you’re getting better, or how much social media is enough. Those who work in a company talk such things over at a water cooler, where the extreme position of others allows you to take a stance. If Ed is the pessimist and Julie the timid risk manager, you are free to be the forward thinker, the one who pushes the others by saying, “But why not?”

Those who work alone engage in those same conversations—in their head, where the voices playing devil’s advocate don’t feel so helpful.

Some of our inner voices obsess over the tough truths of our lives and call it like they see it. A writer is an entrepreneur whose business may fail for a decade or more before seeing monetary return. While typing away late into the night, a writer is a student earning no degree; an intern with no mentor. A self-employed dreamer whose bitchy boss and recalcitrant employee both live inside her own skin.

Her left-brained half—lets call her “L”— is constantly putting new programs in place to re-organize, compartmentalize, and otherwise tame her unruly life so that the writer can make good use of her time. L is the boss. She fills all the lines in the planner. She has a get ’er done bent.

Her right-brained half is innately improvisational. Prone to breaking into song at inappropriate times, R flounders between blind faith and unrelenting pessimism. L wants to outline, but R gets lost in the flow of writing and misses turning points. L says to record life before forgetting its rich detail and R flits away from the computer to go out and live it. When L dictates exercise every morning, R says, “You can’t make me.” Some days L gets a workout just chasing R around the room.

But two halves don’t make a whole. Move over, L and R. Other voices want prominence. Fear of Success and Fear of Failure will not be squelched. Needs Validation wants to duke it out with Needs to Call the Shots. Demands a Book Deal tussles with Writing is its Own Reward. And no matter how loud the Cheerleader yells “You can do this!” we hear the dirge of the Statistician: “Do you even realize how small the chances are of success?”

Oh, we know inner conflict. We have enough characters in our own heads to people an entire novel.

But when you get to the point where you’ve written something that every single one of them is truly proud of, a miracle happens. For a moment they will stop fighting for prominence, look in the same direction—and weep like babies. Because every single one of them helped you get where you are right now.

Writers have no need for a water cooler at which to whine about their work. We chose this life because it suits our natures. Yes, all of them. They may have different strengths, and different ways of going about things, but after decades of working together, my inner natures finally realized that they’re all playing for team Kathryn, and that they’re all desperately needed.

Internal conflict need not be maddening. If we can keep our natures pointed in the same direction and harness their teamwork, they are perfectly suited to transcend the difficulties of the writing life.

And then, the warm glow that comes from self-love and the palpable impulsion of inner teamwork will drive us deep into the length of the creative night, making all aspects of our chosen path much less difficult.

K: Well done, team.
R: Let’s go celebrate with an ice cream sundae!
L: But it’s only 8 a.m. and I have you scheduled for another 2,000 words…

Okay, ’fess up—I can’t be the only one. What inner nature are you struggling to overcome? What used to stymie you, that you’ve now made peace with it? Let this, for one communal moment in a solitary endeavor, be our water cooler…

Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com. Her debut novel, The Art of Falling, will be released through Sourcebooks 0n January 28. To read more about her book, check out her author site, KathrynCraft.com. Pre-order links are live at bn.com and amazon.com! Her second novel, While the Leaves Stood Still, is due from Sourcebooks in Spring 2015. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania literary scene, she loves anything that brings writers together—conferences, workshops, retreats, and blogs like Writers in the Storm. She also blogs at The Blood-Red Pencil and at her personal blogs, The Fine Art of Visiting and Healing Through Writing. Connect with Kathryn on Facebook and Twitter.

Author of THE ART OF FALLING Coming from Sourcebooks January 28