The Prompt
“Ash had one more loose end to tie up before catching the 9:15 and kissing this town goodbye forever.”
Kai Lovelace
Kai Lovelace is a writer and musician born and raised in New York City. Links to his work can be found here.
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Prefer paper crafts? Here’s the cut & paste version
I initially had quite a bit of trouble figuring out just what the loose end was going to be, so I finally decided to transfer that problem to Ash and make it the foundation of the story. As various possible answers presented themselves and I learned more about the characters and their relationship, I could see the story slowly but steadily build up. The writing process was slow-going, but the surprisingly satisfying, wholesome and emotional tale I got out of it was more than worth it!
So simple and difficult. This wrote outside my confort zone. I feel like my story is so-so, but with potential.
This prompt led to a very rough, but well-earned, draft of a story. lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllthose rows of uppercase I or lowercase L happened 00000 as I dozed for a moment.
Found and deleted 127 rows of zeroes and 5 rows of lllllll. (I had been debating leaving those few rows of lllllllllllllll when I succumbed ot the day.
Sometime after the zeroes I closed my laptop and officially went to bed.
I did write a story for this prompt, yesterday (half on my phone at a lunch break at work and half after work. At my usual writing time, I revisited and took a different approach to one of the stories from an earlier prompt. I’m not a “planner” when it comes to sprawling my stories onto a page, but I did tryout some planning strategies to “be ready” for May this year. I’m seriously pinching myself over how well it’s gone.
Julie, thanks for organizing this. Writers, thanks for the prompts.
There were a lot of possibilities with this prompt. I wrote about a man down on his luck planning revenge before he leaves town. Nothing goes right, and he misses the 9:15.
This inspired me to write sci/fi regarding cloning and space travel. He has a 9:15 blastoff deadline.
The prompt has a noir feel to it, so I went for a noir/sf tone. I also wanted a nice twist. So Ash spends the small hours planting installations around the city, we don’t know what for. As he leaves on the 9:15, he and his fellow passengers look back on a city transformed, no longer grim. “He had kissed the city he loved goodbye.”
I loved the noir vibe of this prompt! I’m having a silly brain day so I made it spoofy.
Love this prompt. It can lead to so much! Saving it for this evening