Writing exercise

[B.R.Stateham]

Dan Coleman had a great idea about a writing exercise using three sentences to describe a scene. So let's give it a try! (but expand it a little bit.)
Below are the 'items' found at a crime scene. Use all, or as many as you can, to both describe the scene and the environment it was found in. Compress it into five or less sentences to set up the scene

Items::
A watch that has stopped at 3:15--a body-- a crumpled piece paper--a discarded, empty wallet--lipstick--a set of discarded car keys.

[J. F. Juzwik]

Getting called out on a rainy night to the docks at 4:30 on a Monday morning because a body was found caught up in some pilings was not a good sign of how my week was going to go. The guy, if that's what the body had been, had obviously been beaten all to hell before he was dumped in the river. It had been recent too, if the broken watch he was wearing was any indication since it had stopped at 3:15. A set of car keys and an empty wallet with a crumpled piece of blank paper stuffed inside were bagged, but my gut told me they weren't going to give us much. My gut did believe, however, that whoever the dame was who dropped her tube of blood red lipstick on the edge of the pier knew plenty--now, I just have to find her.

[B.R.Stateham]

I stood looking down at the discarded wallet of the dead man. It had been ripped and slashed open like pillaging Vikings would do raiding a English nunnery and then thrown rudely onto the bloody chest of the man lying at my feet. Frowning, one glance at the body told me it wasn't going to be an easy case. Someone had stuffed the victim's watch into the victim's mouth--a digital watch that had stopped at 3:15 in the morning. In the stiff's right hand was his car keys--in the left hand a tube of lipstick. It was 5:30 in the morning--birds were beginning to chirp--traffic on the next street was beginning to rumble--and the color Chartruse seemed to be an odd color for lipstick so early in the morning.

[Jon Loomis]

O'Halloran frowned. "All this crap lying around next to the dead guy--empty wallet, lipstick, keys, stopped watch, piece of paper--it's like something out of a freaking detective novel."

"Always the skeptic," Curtis said. She took O'Halloran's picture with the department's digital camera: the flash was blinding. "Say cheese."

[B.R.Stateham]

Jon--

Another couple of hundred words and you'd have a good page written! And how long did it take you?

[Jon Loomis]

Maybe five minutes, with editing. I kind of like O'Halloran and Curtis already... and another edit--so six minutes.

[Dana King]

The watch had stopped at 3:15; the body checked out much earlier. The crumpled piece of paper might have come from the empty wallet a few feet away. Either, neither, or both could be the victim's. Same with the car keys. It was the lipstick that interested Jenkins most.

[I. J. Parker]

The arthritic knee bit was my favorite of all the examples. The human element.

[Jon Loomis]

Agreed.

[Marie Cash]

I'm not even Japanese, and I'm bowing. You're all amazing!

[Thomas Grant Bruso]

Detective Harrison arrived at the crime scene at three-thirty that early October morning. A few feet into the moonlit cornfield lay the body of a teenage boy. Harrison bent down and noticed a piece of paper balled up in the boy's left hand, and an empty wallet by his side. The detective's eyes followed the clues down to the victim's wristwatch, where the time had stopped at 3:15. Harrison stood, felt his arthritic knees pop, limped over to the side of the road, and stumbled onto a set of car keys and a tube of lipstick that lay in a puddle of...blood? Water? He heaved a sigh and looked up at the full moon, wishing he hadn't taken that telephone call earlier.


p.s. Thanks, Dan and B.R. That was fun. I think I'm going to use this scene in one of my chapters.

[Naomi Johnson]

I kicked at the lifeless body of my last, best friend. I had just inherited all his worldly goods: A snakeskin billfold containing no money or anything else of value; a useless watch: it hadn't been 3:15 for almost 8 hours; car keys but no car; lipstick but not my color.; and a crumpled piece of butcher paper that smelled like spoiled salmon. Thank God he still had the paper or I'd have killed him for nothing.

[minervaK]

I like this one.