Thurday May 3rd Prompts

With prompts, read them all, especially out loud. Cut and paste the ones that "ring" and put them at the top of the list.

As soon as one sounds like the beginning of a story you could write, try starting a story with it, word for word if necessary (you can always change it later). Hear the voice, feel the rhythms. the emotions. Now write as fast as you can but keep thinking of that varied list, imagine a magnetic force, merely a tendency; let the story search for another prompt.



PROMPTS

She sat on the stairs in white bikini briefs

Because I could not stop for death

Her flat was in a side-street, an easy downhill to the front

After great pain, a formal feeling comes

Mrs Lettice was waiting for her as she left the flat.

There's a certain slant of light

Leaving a house-key in the lock wasn't that rare

My life had stood, a loaded gun

Not fruit but sweet

Let us go then, you and I

The door opened with a schlatt! of wood

In the room the women came and went

A curved archway went through to the galleyed kitchen

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

She wasn't shocked by blood or death

Among the smoke and fog of a December afternoon

She had no real excuse

She has a bowl of lilacs in her room

Withing an hour the street was the scene of a circus

Shape without form, shade without colour

Glad to be heading for the cool day

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In a dormitory street where hardly anybody knew anybody

When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his stride

Pointing to a pine-coloured door

I've paid for your sickening fantasies

Billy Tingle straightened out an aluminium easel

Superior people never make long visits

Six parallel streets away from her own

When fishes flew and forest walked

The shopping centre was busy

Death in Milan

The afternoon light closes