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.

[Debbi Mack]

I woke up on the floor, my head throbbing. My watch said 3:15. Slowly, I sat up and looked around a bedroom I didn't recognize, and saw a crumpled piece of paper, a lipstick, a set of car keys, a wallet--and a body with a bullet wound flowering from his forehead. I didn't know the dead guy or who I was or what I was doing there--and the empty wallet gave no clues about either of us.

I checked my watch again and it was still 3:15--must have stopped.

[B.R.Stateham]

Not bad for a off-the-cuff writing exercise. We should do this more often. It was fun.

[J. F. Juzwik]

This was great fun, and so many different takes. This place is chock full of creative minds for sure!

[D.R. MacMaster]

The dead man's wallet wasn't talking, it just didn't have anything to say. The cracked face of his digital watch kept screaming 3:15, over and over again, and I decided to leave the meaning of to the eggheads from the lab. There was a ball of paper clenched in his left hand, wrapped around some car keys, judging by the logo, from an Impala. Clenched in his right hand was a lipstick, and since the corpse had a face like Ernest Borgnine after ten rounds going bare-knuckle with Mike Tyson, I assumed that electric pink was not his shade.

[minervaK]

Did you mean the first sentence instead be

"The dead man's wallet *was* talking, it just didn't have anything to say."

or

"The dead man's wallet wasn't talking. It just didn't have anything to say."

?

The first one sounds like the beginning of an interesting paragraph, in which, perhaps, the finder of the items is hallucinating.

[Jon Loomis]

O'Halloran blinked. "You're supposed to say it before you take the picture."

"Say what?" Curtis said, taking another photo of the dead guy, and another.

The dead guy was white, and dressed in white tie and tails, like an orchestra conductor—except that the tail-coat was broccoli green, and the gray pants had a shiny green stripe up the leg. There was a hole in the dead guy's forehead, just above the arch of the left eyebrow. Blood was everywhere.

"'Say cheese,'" O'Halloran said. "You're supposed to say it before you take the picture. Not after."

Curtis rolled her eyes, then bent and took a close-up of the wallet. "Yeah, right," she said. "Tell the rookie any damn thing and see if she'll believe it."




See what you've done, B.R.? Now I can't stop...

[B.R.Stateham]

Jon, buddy

I can set back and say I have done a good deed--you're writing! The world is a better place now, (grinning idiotically)

[B.R.Stateham]

Oooh. . . just thought of the ultimate writing contest!

Two writers---one set of crimescene evidence--each writer given 30 days to write their own take on the crime scene and story behind the evidence.

We (the boys and girls here in Crimespace--decide the winner)

And the winner gets an all expenses paid trip for his family to their nearest Wendy's burger stand!!!

Now, how's that for a contest?!

[D.R. MacMaster]

It could become a regular game for the site. Each month could have two different members taking up the challenge, then the winner creates a new crime scene for the next two.

[Debbi Mack]

Or we could write a serial novel (not to be confused with a serial killer novel--though it could be a killer novel). That could be really wild, given the differences in our styles and all.

Or, to keep it short, it could be a serial novella.

[minervaK]

Here you go:

http://crimespace.ning.com/forum/topics/crimespace-serial-novel

cheers!

[B.R.Stateham]

Here's a thought (yeah, I do have one at times).

We limit the contest to a short-story. And someone like Thuglit--or one of the other mags who have people in here--print's the winner of each round in the contest.

And at the end of it all, The Grand Master Writer gets the 1st Place Prize. A mint-conditoned, autographed, movie poster of Raquel Welch when she starred in 1,000,000 B.C.!! Wow!