Day 96 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Write about time running out.

Shannon: I walked into my office to find Marvin sitting in one of the chairs across from my desk. I peaked my head back through the doorway and inspected each direction, making sure no one was nearby. Once I was satisfied I closed the door.

“Do you know why I’m here?” His voice was cold, and since he didn’t look at me, I could only see from the side he still had the same intimidating appearance that was engraved into my memory the first time we met.

I gave a slight nod before sitting down to make it seem like I had everything under control, while trying to make myself believe it too.

“You’re running out of time James. I warned you when you agreed to this deal that time cannot be added or replaced. I suggest you get to work, because as we agreed…” he passed a note with what I assumed was my final time reminder across the table, “failure is not an option.” He placed his hat on his head with a swift motion, picked up his briefcase, and as quickly as he arrived he disappeared.

My hands were shaking as I opened the note: One week. My heart burned. It couldn’t be so soon. How had time passed so fast? I didn’t stand a chance. I dug my fingers into my hair and buried my head into the desk. Maybe I could run.

“What’s wrong,” Stan snuck inside. He must have seen Marvin. He knew about the deal. I passed him the note without saying anything. It spoke for itself, or so I thought. “Easy,” he stated with confidence.

“Are you kidding me?”

He shook his head. “The way I see it, even if it’s impossible, you have two options. You go down swinging, or you take yourself out before they can get you. Come on,“ he put out his hand. “You’re going to swing.”

I breathed out a growl. “Fine,” I took his hand. I didn’t feel better, but I did feel braver.

Erin: “I don’t have much time left,” a very drunk Brian complained.

“What the heck are you talking about. You have no time left,” I corrected.

“She’s married,” he mumbled distressed.

“No, but she’s going to. You’re too late,” I had to be blunt and I had to determine if I should even bring him to the reception.

“But I love her,” I barely made out his slurred words.

“But she loves her to be husband. You decided too late. She’s someone else’s, you’ll never have her,” I insisted.

“You’re mean,” he shouted.

“I’m honest, because I love you. You weren’t honest, because you don’t love Sarah. So she’s never going to be in love with you, she’s no longer looking,” I pointed out.

Quickly, write your story!

Day 95 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Write about untapped potential.

Erin: “I don’t want to have to fail Bobby,” our son’s teacher Ms. Gilligan explained. “However, if he doesn’t start to turn in his assignment I will have no choice.”

“We don’t know what to do with him anymore,” my wife groaned.

“His entire life he hasn’t been the studious type,” I added.

“He is the smartest kid I know,” Ms. Gilligan took us both off guard.

“What do you mean. He has been held back two years,” I reminded.

“Well maybe if he had been moved up two years he wouldn’t have shut down.”

“Shut down,” my wife’s voice rose in concern.

“Bobby knows the material. Bobby knows the material better than I do. He has a photographic memory. He can read the text book faster than one would think possible. It took me a while to realize he was doing that portion of the assignment. He is literally a little supper absorbent sponge,” she was gesturing dramatically with her hands.

“So why is he not breezing through the material,” I prodded.

“He’s not excited. He has no interest. When I ask him about the material he knows all of the topics. I just can’t get him to take the time to write that knowledge down.”

“What do you suggest we do,” my wife asked.

“We need to push him to a higher level of learning, I can create more abstract material for him, but he should be tested for potential transfer to a gifted program.”

Shannon: “Whoa,” a woman exclaimed loudly, as she twisted in her chair to look at me in awe. I turned my head to her, waiting for explanation. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping, but I’ve kind of built my career off of it. Is that you regular voice,” she questioned.

Of course this was about my voice. Strangers have never subtle about it. “Yeah,” I shrugged, “I know it’s kind of goofy.’

“It’s kind of a brand.” She got up to add her chair to our table. “I’m Megan by the way,” she introduce herself to only me.

“Heather,” I went with it, shaking her hand. No one ever started a conversation with kind words about the way I spoke.

“I’m an agent for voice actors, and don’t worry I’m not a fake. I only make a commission if you get the gig, but with that voice you could be animated characters, or you could be in commercials. Have you thought about radio, because people love unique these days?”

“I’ve never acted before,” I shook my head. “How do you know if I’d be any good? Plus, half the voice actors nowadays are huge celebrities,” I tried to find every excuse to talk myself out of believing I had a chance.

“Sure you can’t be the star right away, but movies have a lot characters. And, it’s basically just talking. A cool sound can’t be taught, and it’s a great career. Please think about it, and call me when you decide,” she handed me her business card and I took it. “Or you know, just tell before you leave, because we both know you’re not going to pass this up,” she flashed an encouraging smile.

“I’ll think about it,” I nodded with a giggle.

You don’t know what you are capable of until you try, so try tackling this topic.

Day 94 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Center a story on color.

Shannon: Black was the first thing I saw, the absence of anything distinguishable. Then with a few blinks the world around me appeared again in multiple shades of gray. I kept blinking waiting for the color to return. Still gray.

There was something wrong, not only with my vision but I couldn’t feel anything. I wasn’t even sure if I could move, but I was sitting up straight, so maybe I regaining control. Red, finally I saw the familiar color. I titled my head enough to see that I was strapped into the chair with red zip ties. Oddly, no other colors returned. I looked around. Everything red stood out like an accent. It was like a photoshopped picture in real life.

“What are you seeing,” a woman with glasses and a tablet sat in the chair in front of me. Suddenly the red clicked off, and I honestly answered, “Gray and blue.” Color was all I cared about.

“Perfect, it’s working,” she smiled. “Did you see any other colors before I came into the room?”

“Why am I here? Then I’ll tell you,” I had one piece of leverage, as far as far I knew.

“It’s nothing bad. It’s just hard to get wiling volunteers when their vision is at risk. It’s completely safe, but people get nervous about the needles. That’s why we needed to knock you out.”

“How did you…”

“It’s best not to ask about details,” she interrupted. “What color do you see now?”

Green, but I didn’t say it out loud. “Are you going to let me go?”

“Yes, after we know all the side effects. Then we’ll never bug you again, and if everything works your world will be more beautiful than you can even imagine.”

Yellow, she changed the color again. I got the feeling either my eyes were giving me away, or her technology had access to my view. “What does that mean?”

“I have this theory that there are colors on this planet we can’t see. I’m trying to tap into them, and you’re my first guinea pig. What color do you see now,” she tapped the controls and looked up to stare with a reluctant squint.

“Wow,” I breathed out. She was right, “I don’t know.”

Erin: The problem with the genetic modifications that I had the most issue with was my new eyes. The eyes were already pretty open windows to the soul. When they changed our genetic makeup to color-change with our moods the windows were not only open, but screamed the truth.

When my eyes turned black on my one year anniversary date with Jape, I lost someone who most days I felt very close to. I was grounded for my eyes turning purple. When my eyes turned pink in gym class I was mocked to a level not previously reached. Our government has taken away our most intimate privacy, our feelings.

Write in color?

Day 93 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Start with the line, “Who smiles at a time like this?”

Erin: “Who smiles at a time like this,” I screamed as my life was coming to a screeching halt.

“I’m proud of you,” my father explained.

“For what I failed?”

“Because you tried, and you didn’t give up. You gave it your best shot throughout the entire ordeal. If that doesn’t make a parent proud I don’t know what does.”

Shannon: Who smiles at a time like this? Definitely not a normal person, but me I know how to ruin any emotional moment. People are starting to stare, and I don’t even have a disease that makes me act this way, it’s just me. Sitting at a funeral, smiling. Probably looking like I’m happy that my friend died in freak accident, but the truth is I’m devastated he’s gone. I’m not smiling about his absence. I’m smiling because I’m remembering his presence.

I guess I do that a lot. I don’t like to deal with the sad, so I tend to live in the happy, even in moments where it’s healthy for me to be present. Right now I couldn’t, not while I was surrounded by all of these people. He wasn’t gone. Not if I could remember him, not if that memory could still make me smile.

Inappropriate emotional response? You Decide.

Day 92 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Pick up a book, flip to a random page, write a story include the first sentence on the page.

Shannon: Nerve by Jeanne Ryan

“You want us to follow your directions, so we’re just supposed to blindly trust you and you’re going to get us out of this mess?”

I scrunched my lips to the side. I didn’t know how to make them believe me. I sounded crazy, but my plan would work if everyone participated. This would be impossible alone. “Yes. I know you don’t believe me, but can’t you give me a chance? Let me prove it to you that I can protect everyone. I don’t know what will happen if you all go out on your own. I can’t promise your safety unless you listen to me.”

“I don’t know about this,” Elise shook her head.

“Yeah, I mean we don’t even really know you,” Abby shrugged. “How do we know this isn’t a trap,” she tried to debunk my plan to the whole group.

Suddenly it came to me. “I can tell you the first obstacle,” I spoke up without giving anyone else a chance to give their own judgment. “How would I know that?”

“You could be working with them,” Max argued. “You could be their mole. Sent here to get us in trouble. They seem to know you,” he shrugged a shoulder, and got a few nods from the rest of the group.

I shook my head. “They know I wrote the story. They don’t know me,” I explained.

“Well I’m trusting my own instincts. I’m getting out of here without your help,” he started walking away and most of the group followed. Three less vocal ones stayed behind. I felt discouraged that I couldn’t persuade the majority. I never could. Neither could my character, and suddenly it clicked: they’d follow the story on their own. I didn’t need to tell them what to do.

Erin: Bone Appétit by Carolyn Haines

“I have no interest in going on this date, that’s why I have such a big pit in my stomach,” I clarified to my friend who insisted I was excited.

She scoffed and continued to curl my last strand of hair, “well you agreed to go. So it doesn’t matter what this feeling is does it?”

“Just don’t get your hopes up,” I warned.

“Oh, I won’t,” she rolled her eyes then winked.

I still had the ginormous rock weighing me down from my abdomen. So, I did the only thing I knew would lift my spirits back up: I put some mousse in my hair and fluffed it up. I looked like me, I felt like me, and I was ready to go do me.

And I did and my date did the same, and the rock disappeared. That day started my descent to falling deeper and deeper in love with me future husband. I owe it all to my trusty hair products and use them to this day to change the course of my life.

Borrow one sentence and add many of your own?

Day 91 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Only use body language to express characters’ emotions.

Erin: The couple at the table next to me weren’t talking at all. He had one hand on her leg, and her other leg was entangled with his. Their eyes were locked in on one another. Her lips pulled up in the corners slight as he winked. For a brief second her cheeks flushed pink, before she ran her hands through his hair. His lips curled up as she bit her own. With every additional action they did, my body stiffened and my eyes started to wonder elsewhere in the room.

Shannon: She was pulling at her sleeves, looking like she was trying to stretch the fabric to a length of her own creation. Her eyes were turned to the ground, and she was rocking back in forth on her feet. I didn’t know who she was, I spotted her from a park bench, but she obviously didn’t want to go into the building she was standing in front of.

I wanted to know why. Was she about to see a person she was nervous to meet? Was she going to an interview? Was she about to hear news her mind was afraid to process?

She started pacing and her lips began moving. Talking to herself I presumed, since no one was there to listen, and no headphones in her ears for her to sing along to.

I started closing my eyes to take deep breaths in in and out, trying to calm her emotions with some kind of magical power, only because I didn’t want to interfere if she would eventually do it on her own. Everyone deserves to feel the courage of overcoming something on their own when they can, but I couldn’t sit there and do nothing. I guess I needed to mute my own feelings too. When I open my eyes again she grabbed the door, and soon enough she was inside.

Use words to describe characters’ feelings without words?

Day 90 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Let chasing pavements inspire you.

Shannon: I’m fighting for something that I’m not even sure I want anymore, and I’m starting to think my real motivation is that I want to see the conclusion. If I end this now then I’ve worked this hard and come all this way just to turn back, and never see where the trail ends and what can be found there. The only problem is what if the trail doesn’t end. What if that is the conclusion? What if I have to keep walking this path until I get too tired to carry on? At this point I could never be satisfied with that ending. I can’t see how I could come to terms with no ending, so until I can I’ll carry on.

Erin: Eventually I was forced to face the fact. He was never going to be mine. I could spend my life waiting for him and being there for him and he wouldn’t budge. If he was frozen in stone I had to make the move, which needed to be to let him go. So I did, and in doing that I made progress, my life was in motion, and I could chase people who just might chase me back some day.

What do these lyrics mean to you and your character?

Day 89 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: Only describe the setting. Nothing else.

Erin: There wasn’t much to see. The fog had overtaken the entire beach. There were so many water droplets in the air that the water in the lake had disappeared. There was a little of the walkway that peeked out and formed a gradient into gray. Without my eyes getting anywhere my ears started looking for my body of water. The waves crashing music made the fog seem to disappear. The ghost waves projected into the fog, in that I saw beauty.

Shannon: The shop looked flimsy from the outside, as if one poke could topple the whole place over. Every side of the building was trailed with bright green moss intertwined with dark vines. It looked as if the small structure was in the process of being swallowed by the Earth.

The windows had a film of fog, making it impossible to see anything but a yellow glow of light hiding inside. The paint was chipping off the door and the handle had an aged shine that was overpowered by rust.

Inside the first thing you see is the randomly pattered fabric-draped-ceiling. The atmosphere was so alive with color on the inside for its misleading exterior. Each shelf was covered in antiques that begged to be admired for their intricacies, and the lighting was just dull enough to need a closer look.

Start with where we are and continue with that place and end with that place?

Day 88 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: A character takes a photo that changes their life.

Shannon: “Hey,” a large bodyguard shouted from across the street. “Did you just take a picture,” he pointed at me and I stopped breathing. “I need to see your camera. Don’t make this hard,” he advised.

I booked it, running for the large crowd, going against natural instinct. I figured I probably couldn’t outrun him, but I might be able to confuse him. If I present this photo to my boss I could finally stop taking paparazzi photos, and finally get promoted to the travel position I’d been working for since I started as intern. The bodyguard would have to pry this golden ticket from my bloody hands. Even if that meant I was the evil one, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

Erin: For 73 years of my life I was taking pictures. The medium may have changed, but ultimately the product didn’t. I wasn’t capturing photos, I was capturing moments, emotions, and people who only existed in that instant of the flash of my camera.

That’s what was so appealing to me, how people didn’t really exist in my opinion. The person who walked into their boss’s office, was not the same one who walked out to pack up their desk and leave. The girl at the counter of the fast-food restaurant, hardened more into a stranger as she was being yelled at by a man who would not recognize himself once the death of his wife fully sank in. Hell, someone walking in for a photo was always one notch more self-assured or discouraged once I showed them the print.

Only children go to their graves as they were at 2 years old. I know the notion is morbid, but life is morbid. We die and are born every day, as new people and new experiences hurt and enthrall us. Pictures are the definition of survival. They may fade, but the people and the emotion they evoke from within them have a life and have a chance to be alive because I was there to deem the moment worthy. In that way, sometimes I feel like a hero. Without cameras and those of us behind them, immortality would have no meaning.

Only once have I questioned this philosophy. When I looked back at the photo of my future wife feeding the ducks at the park. As I was transported back to that day I remembered her being so loving. Both to the animals and then to me as I explained why I was taking photos of a complete stranger. That photo changed my life. Because my Kaley was the only subject I ever knew of that didn’t need my saving. The photograph was nearly as beautiful as her, but she stayed that woman.

Every photograph her mother showed me prior was also that woman. She had managed to keep the little girl finger-painting in her, and the tough athlete playing through an injured ankle, she even managed to keep a little of the sister laughing so hard soda came out of her nose and made her cry. She brought those people to her daily life, they worked together and the sum of their influence was the most wonderful woman to ever exist.

So even though I didn’t need to, I took pictures. Lots of them. And boy am I glad I did, because even though she projected the moments that made her till her dying breath, the day did come where I needed those pictures. When I took out the photo album for the first time it was almost like my brush with a miracle wasn’t quite finished.

Explain a sight that could change a life?

Day 87 of 365 Days of Writing Prompts: A Character is Completely Alone in a Huge Place.

Erin: I’ve always had thing about crowds making me feel smothered. When I have over ten people surrounding me I just feel like the world is caving in. One of the worst places for me to go is my hometown supermarket. There is only one place to get groceries in our town, so it is the most hopping place to be after work lets out. That’s why I never go at that time I go when the store is about to close.

This method worked well for me for the longest time. That was until I stayed in the chip isle for too long one night and the only worker left didn’t realize I was there. In her defense, I did walk to the store, so an empty parking lot was probably normally a sign of quitting time.

As I traipsed up and down the aisle, realizing I had unlimited supper options, a feeling suddenly hit me: this supermarket I had come to think of as crushingly small, was actually terrifyingly big.

Shannon: The baseball stadium was my second home. My dad owned the minor league team, so I got used to hanging out here when I was little whether I wanted to or not. However, most of the time I was the one who could never get my fill of time in my favorite place in the world. I mean how many kids can say they took batting practice on a professional field? Everything was grander in the stadium. Not to mention there was a different adventure with each new activity and feature they tested out.

Now that I’m little older, my new favorite way to past time involves hanging out in the stadium on off days when all the work is done and everyone goes home. I find a new place to explore everyday. Today I went up to announcers stand, and narrated an imaginary play-by-play as I messed with the sound effects. Then I started announcing the batting order after playing each of their walk-up songs. I didn’t have the typical commanding voice, but since I was alone, it was good enough for me. “It’s a home run, the Wombats win, the Wombats win,” I jumped out of my seat to over react. I always wanted to know it felt to be in the box during an unexpected win, this was as close as I’d ever get.

How does your character react when left alone?