A Story with a Twist: Let’s Write it Together

This week, I have a fun challenge for all my readers: let’s build a story together!

As I was pondering what to write this week, I found this little story I never finished. I started writing it for fun, after a conversation with a friend of mine who has roots in Verdun. I started to expand on it, then had a bright idea (or, rather, I thought it was good…).

I am posting the beginning of the story here. There is much left to do, and a lot of fun to be had. Together, we can define some characters, decide how they are connected, and choose how they interact. The idea is to create story with a twist.

We can do this in steps. For this week, think of the background and context I am sending you, and create a character that would be interesting. When a few characters have turned up in the story, you can contribute a piece of information about how any given character interacts with the others. I will pick up the thread you send me, and weave a story. I’ll post it back to you, and we can see where it goes.

The story’s structure is a collection of vignettes, all with a twist. We can use each character in a few vignettes, so we can learn more about them as they interact in different ways with others.

For example:

Character: The man in the cowboy hat with the big black dog.

Interaction with others: The people who are afraid of his dog and scream at him to take it away.

Character: The big black dog.

Interaction with others: the black dog is a seeing-eye dog.

Character: The woman with the orange hair.

Interaction or reaction: The women who think her hair colour is natural.

It should be fun!

Here is the story I have already started:

French Twist

They say you never know what each day will bring. Yet the girl in the little brown cap and the brown and red shirt knew very well that this wasn’t quite so.

From behind her counter, she scans the restaurant. Calling it a dining room would be a stretch, but it is the area where some chose to eat. The Formica-topped tables and molded plastic chairs form a checkered pattern on the checkered floor. It’s the late shift, so the room’s glaring neon lights make the dark street even darker. Only the reflection of the street lamps on the damp sidewalk hints at the shape of the world beyond the storefront window.

The girl compares the shape of her day to the French twist donuts she serves – the segments of every donut are the same, but you can never twist each donut exactly the same way.

The customers sitting in the restaurants are regulars. They come in every night at the same time. She can track the evolution of every shift by the arrival of every regular. Their presence, and the time at which they arrive is predictable. She just never knows what they will do when they come. They are a strange lot, a mix street people, odd balls and drifters who congregate at the Dunkin Donut every night to play out part of their daily drama.  The girl’s shift is the back drop for a slice of life in Verdun.

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HOW TO DO THIS: Post your contributions in the comments to this blog post. I will assemble them, and re-post so you can see the evolving story. When it’s done, we can publish it and share it so others can see what can be done. We just might start something!

Tell me more! I can’t wait to receive your bright ideas! This should be fun!