Wood talked about the power of specifics in a first sentence. You know, the hook. He gave some example that he also references in his book about a marquis eating lunch, but I’ve already forgotten. And, oh yeah, I only ended up reading half of the book, so…

So the rule for Round 2 was that all stories should begin with the bland, generic sentence, “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” The trick would be to write a killer second line.

I wrote a little story in the next week or so and sent it off a day early. I’d been checking back at the site every few days to see if I was a contender or not, but alas, today I saw that a winner was chosen, and it was not I.

Here is my entry: “A Fern in the Rose Garden.” Please to enjoy.
A Fern in the Rose Garden by Nick Faber

My Tiny Family

We come across a miniature village, set up on the lot between the antiques store and the used bookstore. Tyler, running around the model village, looks so gigantic and surprised that I have to laugh. My wife touches my back and I tense up again. “I’m big!” Tyler says, bending over to peer into the miniature ice cream shop. He is big. I wonder if the tiny villagers ever feel so bored.

The interview lasted a half hour, so I had enough time to wax philosophical about fiction writing. One point I tried to make was that an advantage of writing over other media is that it isn’t limited by technology. I guess that’s not totally true. What I really meant is that if you are a competent writer, you are only limited by your own imagination.

The reason I was so excited to talk about imagination in writing is that I had a great experience pushing myself to be more imaginative earlier that evening. I started noticing a trend in my stories for Name Your Tale. A lot of them were more realistic than my usual stuff, and some were pretty sad. I was afraid I would start bumming people out after a while if I kept it up, so when I started thinking about how to write my version of “I Want Out” for the Thursday Threesome, I started by telling myself “be imaginitive,” which myself interpreted as “write about magicians.”

Here’s that story:

I Want Out

I threaten to reveal the secrets of Devil’s Chest of Drawers and Phillips says Devil’s Chest of Drawers is no longer NCMA-sanctioned and they explained how you do it in a TV show two years ago, anyway, so everyone already knows it.

“Fine,” I say, “I’ll start cursing at parties.”

“We’ll reclassify you. Adult Illusionist.”

“And I’ll take off my pants.”

“Fetish Illusionist – for adults.”

I say, fine, I’ll just stop doing magic then, and Phillips laughs. “Good luck with that,” he says.

I’m not even twenty yards from the front gate when the first dove lands on me.

***
Title by: Anonymous
Story by: Nick

Back in the summer, I wrote a story in my composition notebook that was based on the same idea, but by the time I transcribed the thirty wide-ruled pages to fourteen typed pages, I was less than thrilled with it.

Then, about two weeks ago, I started thinking of this story again. But I was thinking of it in the present tense, urgently, I kept thinking, “Albert has forgotten. Albert has forgotten.” So I started a third iteration, this time as a flash story. I finished it last night, and no where in it do the words “Albert has forgotten” appear, but I like the way it reads, and I hope that, by sharing it here, it will no longer haunt me.
Day at the Beach by Nick Faber

(photo via flickr user citron_smurf)

I wrote two drabbles for Sam’s Dot Press’s Drabbler magazine, specifically “Drabbler #13: Alien Magic.” Because Drabbler #13 was published on February 1, and I never heard one way or another from the magazine’s editor, The Boortean Ambassador, I am assuming that my drabbles were not published. One of them will probably remain unpublished, as it was a tongue-in-cheek literal interpretation of the issue’s theme.

This is the other one, called “The Final Slaughter:”
The Final Slaughter by Nick Faber

(photo via flickr user millerm217)