Red Monster

Blue Monster, I am pleased to say, has been very nice to the Green Monster and talked him into blogging his lovely reviews. However this whole sorry issue could have been avoided if Blue wasn’t so self-centred and arrogant in the first place.

Anyway this week I want you to write the opening of a teenage romance, something along the lines of Point Romance.

Lucy

Lucy put down the phone and looked at her reflection, she sighed, as always she had a smattering of red sore looking spots, oh well. Justin had still asked her out and would be picking her up about seven. It was now five and she hadn’t even showered. She hurriedly rushed off to the bathroom to become presentable. Her stomach gave a flip as she thought about it. A first date! Was it even a date?

What actually counted as a date? Never mind, she thought, it’s still something. Should she wear lipstick? Should she wear a dress or jeans? So many things to think about. She had never considered that meeting up with someone she saw every day at school could be so hard.

She sighed and opened her wardrobe door.

Blue Monster’s lightening up on the issue of Revue Monsters may in fact come too late – Green Monster is now talking about never even sending his stuff off to magazines, he is that upset.

I’m hoping at the moment that Yellow’s pleas for his work to be reviewed will pay dividends.

Oh well, this week I want you all to write the opening of a dark and supernatural fantasy.

The jewel clipped night shuddered as the angel passed above the town. He was looking for the house; the house of the Lord Mayor. A white building belonging to the world of Peter Pan’s London shone out at him and he descended, rippling the air behind him.

Oh dear, Blue Monster is saying he is feeling all alone but he is failing to realise that if Green Monster starts up a blog it will mean that he will be less alone. I think Blue Monster really hasn’t gotten over the fact that any other Monsters exist on the internet at all. And on top of that he really is scaring poor Green Monster off :(.

Oh well I’m sure it will all be resolved.

This week, just start off by thinking about dreaming and see what 20 minutes of writing, whatever pops into your head, produces.

Darren

Darren sat and watched the sky, he often did. It helped him dream and think of the past times when he was happy, when the world had seemed to be on his side. But that had been a long time ago now and he hadn’t been left with much, just the clothes on his back and the train ticket. Ah yes the train ticket. It had been a golden egg, though he hadn’t thought so on the long journey as he’d watched others eating and drinking.

He’d got no money and no hope and he had no idea why he had gone to the station and gotten on the train and even less of an idea what he would do the other end. He had been pretty sure he was in trouble; he was in debt so deep and had dragged others with him. Then in desperation he had thought to claim on insurance for a small fire that he had orchestrated. But it had gone wrong and the whole lot had gone up and he knew with a sinking feeling watching the firemen that they suspected him.

And so he had boarded the train and it had taken him to the Lake District and there beneath a dark blanket of sky he had decided to become a non-person.

No money? Who cared? He’d been sure he could find something and that he had. First it had been an old barn and then when he was turfed from that six weeks later he had found a hollow tree the size of a small (very small) room. Then when he thought the Woodland people had found him he’d moved on.

He’d been malnourished by then but had not cared. Then he’d found the campsite and had showered and washed the tatters that were his clothes. He’d slept the first night in the toilets and then had found an abandoned tarp the next day. The campsite wasn’t manned and only asked for donations and he had the tarp. He made a shelter and then? Then he was camping and there were fires permitted and people left their wood behind, bits here and there, and often they didn’t want to take excess food home.

And so Darren had lived at the campsite and spent the days walking the barren hills. But his mind niggled. He remembered the before and it seemed to him he was never warm now, never not hungry and he wondered sometimes if prison was better than this but the purple clouds and green hills had him captivated. He shivered and wrapped the old tarp around himself in the hope of some extra warmth.

Blue Monster is being so annoyingly small minded. I am beginning to be embarrassed about calling myself a Gurgitation Monster. He is not showing Revue Monsters any respect and this saddens me deeply. Green is lovely and is also very shy about coming on to the web and with the way Blue is behaving. Who can blame him? 🙁

I do hope Blue calms down a bit. He did for Yellow Monster I see no reason why he shouldn’t for Green.

This week, think about cracks and fissures and where they would be least expected.

The Rent

The spire rose high into the cloudless sky. This was a dagger puncturing the vault of the heavens and sometimes on stormy nights you could see the life blood of the universe bleed in, trickling both down and up the spire.

This was the gateway but as of yet no-one knew – no-one saw the rent that sucked the joy from the world.

But soon they would.

I am glade that Blue has cheered up but I personally think he is wrong about other monsters and I have been encouraging my friend Green Monster to write his revues on a blog but he is worried no one will like his stuff. 🙁

Ok this week I want you all to write the opening to a sci-fi milita piece, this means action, gore and of course some sort of science or technology element to it. Well what are you waiting for? And I don’t want any one saying they don’t do sci-fi. It is always a good idea to try something new as it will give you ideas and feedback into what you are planning to write.

Oh and ‘militia’ means in a military/war novel style, for the uninitiated.

Melanie

It was the sound that pierced Melanie to the bone; that liquefied her brain and made red gloop run from her nose. She never knew that it was a new piece of military grade tech, nor that she was the first casualty of a global war.

But if she had she would have been happy – in the end the first to go were the lucky ones and the saviours?

Hell can take many forms.

Oh dear poor blue really has got the mizogs but Yellow and I were not taking the mickey out of him, no, far from it, we do like him and his writing it’s just he sort of was being mean to Yellow.

Still, monster politics aside lets look at today’s writing exercise. We all know the horror of odd socks so write about it for 20 minutes. It’s random but I think you’ll be surprised by what you come up with – I was. Try to make it a complete story in itself i.e. beginning, middle and end.

Odd Socks

One day the purple socks with yellow polka dots were separated by a cruel twist of fate – namely the washing. Left was left upon its own and Right was abandoned in the student halls of residences washing room where it promptly fell down behind the dryer.

A similar fate had occurred to a green and pink striped pair. As a solution to the odd sock dilemma the student decided to mix and match and thus Left met Right and Right met left and they were happy, though they felt their relationship was a bit unbalanced and longed to be a four instead of a two. 

Fortunately for them the tumble dryer broke down and an engineer was called who pulled the machine out and rescued the lost socks. He was just draping them on the back of the ‘washing waiting to be done’ chairs when the student walked in.

Ecstatic to find her missing socks she thanked the engineer for them with a kiss and coffee and later the socks mingled in a draw just above the t-shirts.

I think Blue Monster may be a little delusional this week but we love him anyway. 🙂 I hope this means we are all going to be friends again?

Today we are going to write for 5 minutes about shoes.

Shiny Shoes

I saw some shiny shoes and oh how I wanted them

They were sleek and smooth

Perfect in gloss red

Bright and vibrant

Like plastic moulded to the most delicate of shapes

A spiky heel that would stick in

And a little bow on top

They were of the cartoon

Glossed female variety

And I coveted them

But I did not buy them

They were more than my food bill

For six months

They call to me still sometimes when I sleep

Someday maybe

Someday

That day I will wear them and sing and dance

I will crease them and scuff them

I will wear them out

And I will have joy from them

Yellow Monster is doing really well with his writings despite Blue’s unwarranted animosity. Go Yellow!

This week spend five minutes writing about coat hangers.

There is an old man whose wife thinks him insane and paranoid. He is scared of video players and cannot grasp the concept of MP3s but what he most fears are coat hangers, especially the old metal kind that are actually useful to the arts and craft community – not to mention the budding engineer.

These, he insists, lurk for him in the most obscure of places – waiting for his unsuspecting form to open a cupboard or walk through the hallway to the stairs. Then they leap upon him, entangling and snaring him often ripping clothing and leaving bruises.

His wife thinks he’s paranoid but the truth is that the coat hangers are out to get him. They have been baying for his blood ever since he was eight years of age when he cut one of them up to act as supports for a model plane he had stuffed with homemade explosives. Coat hangers have very long memories.

Blue Monster is, I’m afraid, having a bit of a stress attack about Yellow Monster. I think he is perhaps feeling just a little bit threatened and so he should – the silly monster.

This week you should write about transit vans.

I think I am in love

Red as I am

With a big roaring

Red transit van

It zooms past my window

Every single morning

Such a big shiny thing

It makes me want to sing

I must be in love

Cos anything with the audacity

To wake me thus

Normally finds out about my violent capacity

I think I am in love

Red as I am

With a big roaring

Red transit van

But I’m after the colour and not the man

Who drives such a beautiful red transit van

Blue has to be one of the most arrogant and self deluded monsters I have ever met.  Yellow’s writing is of an acquired taste, I’ll give you that, but he is writing and that is the important thing – and it was his first story. Blue is still being mean over on his blog, which is totally uncalled for. I just hope he hasn’t overly upset the Mellow Yellow Monster we all know and love.

This week’s writing was inspired by a children’s toy from a vending machine and I think that for this week’s exercise you should go and find one of the vending machines and spend a £1 on a small random toy and write a story about it. Or alternatively if you have children, get them to give you one of their toys but it is important that they choose and you have no input.

Princess in a Bubble

Inside a sphere on the pedestal of King Annason a tiny but perfect woman sits upon a gloriously large amethyst, gem quality and cut to perfection. She is dressed in brocade and silk and has streaming ribbons in her wavy honey hair. She is a princess, sent to him for marriage but something about her had displeased him and so she had been imprisoned within the eggshell thick glass bubble.

Her hair and clothes move as if there is an air current, though in actuality there can be none. Sometimes she gets up and wanders around, forlorn inside her little world. She is hungry but cannot starve to death. There is no food but nor is there the same concept of temporality for her body, though her mind still knows it and longs for rest.

Very occasionally the King, who is old and wizened and vicious will come and demand a song of exquisite beauty from her. She sings sweetly and dreamily but it is never good enough and he never relents and so he always denies her her freedom.

He married again several times and each wife suffered some horrendous fate without issue. A coco coloured beauty from beyond the southern sea had offended him and so was turned into a wooden chair upon which he sits to address the kingdom’s nobles. Her features are locked within its highly polished grain and sometimes they change.

The blue glow from the candle arbour is another wife as is the very crown he wears but they are waiting, all of them. He is old and the enchantments are likely to break when he dies and they all wish to perish with him in order to be the ones to carry his soul over. They are in the half realm now, courtesy of the spells he wrote, and they know how to show him exactly how much they have suffered due to his selfish ways.

The end