So these have been too much fun, and they’re decent writing exercises, so I’m thinking about making them a monthly thing. I’ve gone back to tag older self-imposed challenges of this type with “out of context” so that they’ll be easy to find together.
The challenge is this: Find the last line that I have read in the several books that I consider myself to be actively reading at any one time and try to use those lines to make a new scene, first adding nothing to the lines, only arranging them, and then I’ve added a second layer: trying to make the lines more cohesive by giving them new dialogue tags and adding new lines to create new context.
Doing this is a writing challenge for me that also gives you a glimpse into my “currently reading” pile while giving you the smallest sampling of text from each of the books on that pile.
In no particular order, the last lines I read in the 5 stories that I would consider myself actively reading are:
“Oh yeah…” (Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling)
And with that, Spencer had to be satisfied. (Dragonbreath, Book 6: Revenge of the Horned Bunnies by Ursula Vernon)
“By Castor, you just never change, you never change!” (“The Brothers Menaechmus,” Four Comedies, Oxford World’s Classics by Plautus) *This is a play, and I decided to stick with the spoken dialogue instead of using the stage directions, which are written as sentence fragments or very oddly constructed sentences. Of course, the quotation marks I added here to keep it in style with the other prose books.
“You’d better!” snapped Boo from his place on the elephant’s trunk. (Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi
Babbitty hopped out of the grounds and far away, and ever after a golden statue of the washerwoman stood upon the tree stump, and no witch or wizard was ever persecuted in the kingdom again. (“Babbitty Rabbitty and her Cackling Stump,” The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling)
I think the order in which they make the most sense (to me) is:
“Oh yeah…”
“By Castor, you just never change, you never change!”
“You’d better!” snapped Boo from his place on the elephant’s trunk.
Babbitty hopped out of the grounds and far away, and ever after a golden statue of the washerwoman stood upon the tree stump, and no witch or wizard was ever persecuted in the kingdom again.
And with that, Spencer had to be satisfied.
So there are A LOT of names in that pack: Boo, Babbitty, and Spencer seem to be the players who MUST be on stage. Why is Spencer satisfied that Babbitty’s left and why is it not really enough? Why and how is Boo on an elephant’s trunk? At whom are Boo and the unnamed second speaker yelling? And why are they yelling (apart from that that person never changes)?
“Oh yeah….” Babbitty’s eyes glazed over as she looked at the life-sized statue, completely out of place in the muddy fair grounds, despite the sagging, striped silk tents of the traveling circus, and unwieldy baggage for a traveling troupe, especially a troupe whose annual profits had just been spent on a statue.
“By Castor,” Spencer swore, “you just never change, you never change!”
“You’d better!” snapped Boo from his place on the elephant’s trunk.
Babbitty hopped out of the grounds and far away, and ever after a golden statue of the washerwoman stood upon the tree stump, and no witch or wizard was ever persecuted in the kingdom again.
The statue proved to heavy to carry, but with Babbitty fled, though perhaps she would never change, she would not bother them with her thoughtless spending again. And with that, Spencer had to be satisfied.
I still have not to my satisfaction answered what the statue has to do with witches and wizards, but otherwise… with that, I’ll have to be satisfied.
So how’d I do? Would you do something different with these lines? Would you like to try with your own “currently reading” pile? Let me know in comments. I’d love to see how others approach this challenge.
Dragon Bite Books 