Writing Challenge, Week 4
Day 22: Happy. Write a scene intended to make the reader smile.
Day 23: Melancholy. Write a scene intended to make the reader cry.
Day 24: Herald. Write a paragraph stating something you wish you could
tell the world. Don’t hold back your feelings. Don’t preach, just tell it
honestly, tell it sincerely.
Day 25: Synopsis. Write an original synopsis based off one of the titles
to these famous stories: The Lord of the Rings, The Scarlet Letter, or
Journey to the Center of the Earth. Include six elements: a main character
(MC), a goal for the MC, a setting (time/place), a villain, a price for fulfilling
the goal, and a quality for the MC to learn.
Day 26: Devoted. Write a scene in which a character uses the phrase,
“Return with honor.”
Day 27: Marvel. Write a scene capturing the sense of awe, inadequacy, or
amazement that you’ve felt, and describe the thing that produced the feeling in
you.
Day 28: Role model (or not). Pick a historical figure that has changed the
world and describe why you do or don’t admire them.
Day 29: Character development. In 500 words or less, describe an individual
with the intent of producing in the reader a specific feeling toward the
person, ex. like, dislike, sympathy, uneasiness, etc.
Day 30: Transparent. Write out your rawest memory with 100%
transparency. Don’t spare the hurt, though there’s no need to be graphic. Shred
it when you’re done if it makes you feel more confident to write it. The point
is to practice writing honestly and building the courage to do it.
Don't Forget to Post & Share Your Work! =D
Day 22:
ReplyDeleteI’ve always looked young for my age. Recently, I’ve been mistaken for three to six years younger than I am. I’m used to people’s reactions when I tell them my age, and it doesn’t bother me too much. However, the week after my twentieth birthday, my parents and younger brother (17 and looked it) went out to dinner at a local restaurant where the kids’ menu options cut off at twelve years old.
The hostess picked up a stack of menus and asked, “Do we need any kids’ menus today?”
After an awkward pause in which I stood there shaking my head, my mom asked how old the hostess thought I was, and then offered, “She’s twenty.”
The girl apologized profusely, and then promptly asked if my brother was also twenty. Nope.
She brought us to our table and seated us. She handed my mom a menu. “Here you go Ma’am.”
She set one down in front of me. “Here you go, Ma’am.”
Day 23:
Unidentifiable stickiness matted his hair, and dirt mottled his skin with grayish tones. He had dressed himself in a mishmash of clothing—all the clothes he owned. Ripped pajama pants revealed Carhartt pants underneath, and he sported a T-shirt over a long-sleeved hoodie. Over that he wore an unbuttoned plaid shirt, topped with a down vest. The hood on his hoodie was his only head covering, aside from the headphones with the ripped cord. His boots must have been found in someone’s trashcan, judging by the layers of duct tape slapped over them.
Beside him sat a backpack, stained with coffee, mud, and any other liquids that had been next to it in the dumpster he had pulled it from. But it worked. One shoulder strap had ripped off, but he could still use it to carry the overused Starbucks Styrofoam cup, an extra pair of socks that he could change out with his other ones got too sweaty, and a wad of paper towels and napkins.
The cars whizzed through the intersection, the drivers concentrating impossibly hard on the road ahead of them. They figured he’d been involved in drugs or alcohol or was just straight up lazy. They didn’t know his mom had done drugs while she was pregnant, leaving him with a vegetable brain. They didn’t know his family dumped all of “the stupid kid’s” belongings outside the apartment complex on his eighteenth birthday. Happy birthday.
He picked himself up off the sidewalk. It was time for breakfast. He shuffled into the alley, a few hundred feet away. He strained to push the dumpster lid open, held it above his head, and peered inside.
Day 24:
Each of you has a purpose more valuable, more honorable, more eternal that you can comprehend. You have God-given interests that the people around you need. Your life matters, and it only takes one person to change the world. God created you for His purposes—find that purpose and live it out for Him. Point your life toward seeking Him. He will guide you to where you need to be, even when the path to that place is painful, terrifying, and lonely, and even seemingly mediocre. Don’t give up.
Day 25:
The Lord of the Rings:
Redeeming his family name is all that matters to Vanya Zainan, and the 2096 Olympics may be his chance. With no money for extensive gymnastic coaching however, he can merely dream of making it to the Olympics, until funds and a letter arrive from an anonymous source.
Vanya plunges into advanced training, only to find that his unidentified giver has conditions for the finances to continue: the young man must achieve a perfect score on Olympic trials, or else bear a smeared name for the rest of time. Mental strain plagues Vanya, which triggers a string of sicknesses, forcing him to stop training two months before the trials. As Vanya struggles to salvage lost time, he is faced with a choice between rising to become Russia’s Olympic star or to sacrifice the honor that he is desperate to regain.
Day 26:
DeleteI never thought this was how I’d finish out my life. When I was ten, I didn’t see myself rotting in a box cell eight short years later. I never thought that I’d have the letters “P-O-W” tacked on the end of my name. Come to think of it, I don’t deserve my name anymore. I’m not human—at least not to them and…well, I’m beginning to think not to me either.
They’ve taken everything—food, water, and most of my clothes, of course. But they’ve also taken some of the intangible things like morale, hope, and dignity.
I’m scared. I suppose that’s one of the few things they’re trying to cultivate, to keep burning, and I’ve got to say, they’re doing a great job of it. Every time I hear the key rasp into the lock, I know what’s coming. And every time they fling me—bloody and bruised—back inside this filthy, reeking cell, barely large enough for me to curl up in, I wonder how much more I can take.
But with all they’ve taken, there are some things that have grown stronger inside of me because of them. Anger, I suppose, is a big one. Faith in God, most definitely. I don’t have much else besides Him, and He’s the only one I know of who can fit inside this box with me, who doesn’t mind the stench, and can comfort me when I can’t help silently crying for hours like a baby instead of the strong soldier I’m supposed to be.
And honor. Every time they drag me out, every time they beat my skeletal frame, and every time they throw me back without new information, without knowing my country’s secrets, my honor grows stronger. Because if my fellow POWs can do it, so can I.
And when the key grates into the door, my comrades’ words slide into my mind. Their sustaining phrase pounds on me with every blow. It shouts over the temptations spewing from my captors’ mouths. And it comforts me in the impossible silence, the black stillness that cuts me off from the world.
Sometimes, it’s my turn to whisper it to them as they walk by, begging them with my mind and fearful that if they break, so will I. But every time they come back having remained silent, my heart leaps and it gives me courage to go on.
Footsteps click on the concrete floor outside my door. There’s a clink, a groan of metal, and a thud as the enemy unlocks the door. They’re here for me again. The door swings open, and a guard grabs my arm and drags me from the room.
I stumble past the box cells in the shadowy hall, my emaciated legs trembling beneath the weight of my body. I strain my ears, hopeful and knowing that they’ll say it for me. The whispers begin, echoing ahead, behind, and around me, holding me up, reassuring me, strengthening me.
“Return with honor.”
“Return with honor.”
“Return with honor.”
DeleteDay 27:
The thing about awe and inadequacy is that it often steals words. But unfortunately, I’ve been instructed to describe the indescribable.
There are times that certain feelings come over me. Sadness, depression, and…wishing I could do more. There’s a feeling of comparison, of thinking that I won’t ever be good enough, that I can’t ever express my gratitude enough. There’s the feeling that I won’t ever be able to fully understand or get others to fully understand the great cost of their sacrifice.
These feelings usually come when I hear a story from the military of courage and cost, or hear a soldier share their heart or writing. It makes me wish that I could do the same, or that my work could capture half of what they’ve written.
Day 28:
I admire William Wilberforce. He expended himself toward outlawing the tyranny of slavery. He was a small man with a big heart and great dreams. Though his daily health issues brought him excruciating pain, he pressed on toward what he knew was right. Wilberforce marked history in a way that should never be forgotten and in a way that we should strive toward: God first, freedom for the oppressed, love for fellow man, and unquenchable passion for justice.
Day 29:
Like.
Her eyes were large and questioning, bright green, and framed with full-framed glasses. A few freckles dotted her nose and cheekbones. She wore her brown hair in a jaw-length A-line, cute and bouncy. It matched the spunky way she held her mouth in a kind of crooked half smile. When she walked, her hair sprang in rhythm with her step.
She walked now, a spark in her eye, her hair bouncing up and down, and that little smirk that even the rain couldn’t erase. The old man with the walker glanced up as she walked by, and she widened her perpetual smile a bit, flashing what sunshine she could his way. She grabbed the door handle and pulled it open, letting the man pass through.
“Thanks, missy,” he said, his voice old and crackly.
She ducked her head once. “My pleasure.”