How To Write Badly Well

Fail to explain what’s going on

2011-09-22T16:34:00.001+01:00

Dear readers,

I owe you an explanation. At some point over the next few months, there will be a shiny wonderful book (you remember books, right?) based on this blog. It may or may not be called 100 Ways To Write Badly Well. It will include both the best bits of this blog and all-new material. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it.

The lack of updates here is partly down to me working on said book. The lack of updates in the near future will also be partly down to this. I’m going to mothball this site for a few months and relaunch it, new and improved, when the book’s ready. Sorry for not explaining this sooner. Don’t worry, though – it’s all going to turn out okay in the end, just like a predictably-plotted story.

Those of you who have sent me suggestions for new blog posts are wonderful people and I can only apologise that those suggestions are being put on ice for a while (yes, ice and mothballs – what of it?). Thank you all so much.

See you soon.

Joel

Banish “said” from your vocabulary

2011-08-17T18:29:00.001+01:00

‘I’m afraid she’s dead,’ unveiled the doctor. A silence settled on the room as the family took this in.

‘You’re sure?’ proclaimed Lois, quietly. The doctor nodded.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he conversed. ‘It was a peaceful end.’

‘Did she...’ Lois vocalised. ‘Did she have any last words?’

‘Yes,’ nodded the doctor, nodding. ‘She epitaphed a few words before she left us. “Tell my children I love them,” she stated. Then she recapitulated “all of them,” and shortly after that, she went.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ philosophised Lois. ‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’

‘I’m so terribly sorry,’ the doctor gushed.

‘Can I ask a question?’ questioned Lois.

‘Of course,’ dialogued the doctor.

‘If we had brought her in sooner,’ she began, ‘is there anything we could have done,’ she continued, ‘to give her more time?’ she concluded, questioningly.

‘I... I’m afraid not,’ the doctor ejaculated.

Commit to clichés

2011-08-08T15:17:00.004+01:00

‘Run like the wind!’ Olaf shouted. ‘The kind of wind that goes very fast in a certain direction, then changes course abruptly to avoid obstacles, whilst taking care not to let itself be caught by its pursuers!’

Anneke glanced over her shoulder. It literally felt as if her heart was in her throat – a thumping knot of muscle lodged just behind her tonsils, pumping blood around her body from its strange new position through arteries which presumably had been rerouted down her throat in some way. She ran as fast as she could, knowing that what pursued her was her worst nightmare – worse than finding herself back at school with no clothes on; worse than her teeth falling out in the middle of a business meeting; worse than not being able to understand what the man in the golden highchair was saying and then noticing that he has the face of her boss but sometimes it’s the face of her old piano tutor and she somehow knows without knowing how she knows that if she gets too close he will shout at her but the room is getting smaller and smaller and her shoes are too tight. It was worse than any of those things and was made even more terrifying by the knowledge that it wasn’t, in fact, a nightmare, but a real thing in her waking life. It was, however, a figurative nightmare, with all the concomitant emotional impact that description suggests (for which, see above).

Keep plugging

2011-06-29T09:07:00.000+01:00

Dear Readers,

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m performing the How To Write Badly Well live show at three different festivals in the UK:

Sat 2nd July, 8pm – The Page is Printed Literature Festival at the Tacchi Morris Arts Centre in Taunton.

Mon 11th July, 7:30pm – Poetry Café at the Frome Festival (also, I’ll be on the panel for Writers’ Question Time on Sun 10th, 2pm at Frome Library).

Sat 16th July, 5pm – The Literary Salon at Latitude Festival (I’ll also be compering over in the Poetry Arena all weekend – come and say hello).

I realise this is only geographically relevant to around 15% of you, but if any of our American or Australian friends would like to hop on a plane and come along, I’ll buy you a drink when I see you.

As always, the show is available in its entirety on YouTube for those of you too lazy and/or foreign to come along and see it.

All the best,

Joel

Explain how clever you are

2011-06-28T09:28:00.002+01:00

I was perambulating unassumingly along the boulevard (this being the correct term for the particular, almost arbour-like (although not, it must be pointed out, arbouresque), thoroughfare upon which I was located) on a solstitial morning in June (I mention the precise month only because I fear my peracute polyonymy might bamboozle you by dint of sheer perspicuity) when I happened upon (or, indeed, happened to happen upon, depending on the degree of predestination or otherwise your own philosophy, dear reader, allows you to countenance) a particularly dentigerous (which is to say, imbued with a denticulated maw of considerable significance) specimen of Canis Lupus Familiaris (of the order Carnivora, the class Mammalia, the phylum Chordata and, as I am sure you have ascertained by this point, the kingdom Animalia). This, as you will shortly realise, was a chance happening (again, the question of fate in this scenario is, as you might put it, “up for grabs”) imbued with a not inconsiderable semiological heft. For now, though, do not overtax yourself with interpretive endeavours, dear reader; all (inasmuch as such a term can be applied to the, I’m sure you can find no way to adequately deny, infinitely fractured world in which we reside) shall be revealed.

Craft ambiguous similes

2011-06-20T12:00:00.002+01:00

Susan stepped out into the busy road like a country lane, causing traffic to screech to a halt like nails on a blackboard. She stood for a moment, letting the wind whistle past her like a wind chime and the silence fill her ears like shells.

‘Get out of the road!’ yelled an obese taxi driver like a sack of blubber. Susan paid him no attention. She was calm, not letting her thoughts turn to panic, like a still pond.

‘It’s okay,’ she said, feeling as unflappable, placid and content as a dead bird’s wing. The taxi driver’s eyes widened like a child at Christmas.

‘Out of the road!’ he repeated, his voice a furious scream, like a stuck record.

COMEBACK WEEK #5: Kill off key characters

2011-06-17T12:00:00.000+01:00

On his forehead, Dash felt a trickle of sweat trickle down his forehead.

‘You see,’ said Colonel Daringman, handling his LaserBlasterGun carefully in his hand with care, ‘I knew that the only way to destroy you was through your sense of duty. Your sense of adventure. Your lack of a sense of where the sensible limits of risk are.’

‘So you sent me on a suicide mission?’ Dash growled with a growl.

‘Not quite,’ the Colonel frowned. ‘I knew you would never commit suicide on a suicide mission, so I sent you on a killing-you-with-a-dangerous-mission mission.’

‘You fiend!’ shrieked Samantha, fainting. ‘How could you?’

‘Let me show you,’ Daringman hissed with a hiss, stepping over the unconscious beauty. Dash felt the air around grow thick with the slowing of time as time seemed to slow. In that one fatal instant, he could see the energy beam emerging from the muzzle of the LaserBlasterGun as if it was space-ketchup coming out of a space-bottle. In actual fact, he knew it was moving at the speed of light or faster as it crawled through the air towards him like a baby made of deadly laser energy being fired from a gun. He was powerless to move, powerless to cry out or even to think. Time slowed again. The closer his death came – the laser baby dawdling now – the slower time seemed to get. In the last instant, the one that seemed to go on forever, he felt a sensation like a weight being lifted from him. For an infinite moment, he knew everything. Then, Dash Gallant, Captain of the Star Corps, hero of the battle of Tor’Sang, the only man ever to escape a Mhal-Evol’Unt interrogation unit, closed his eyes for the last time and joined the ranks of the dead.

COMEBACK WEEK #4: Alienate your existing readership

2011-06-16T12:00:00.000+01:00

‘It’s good to see you, Samantha,’ purred Dash, his velvety voice as smooth as silk. ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather come back to.’

‘I feel the same way,’ purred Samantha, her velvety voice as smooth as silk. ‘And to think that some of these pilots come back from a dangerous mission and the only person there to greet them is their maintenance robot.’

‘Yes, can you imagine?’ purred Dash, his velvety voice as smooth as silk. ‘What kind of person would form a deep personal bond with something as stupid as an adorable robot sidekick? That’s the kind of childish conceit than only an idiot would enjoy.’

After laughing for a minute or two, Dash paused, alert. Amid the hilarity, he could hear the unmistakable sound of a LaserBlasterGun powering up. He turned around. Colonel Daringman was coolly pointing his weapon directly at Dash’s chest.

‘You weren’t supposed to come back,’ purred the Colonel, his velvety voice as smooth as silk. ‘But you just don’t learn, do you?’

COMEBACK WEEK #3: Introduce new characters

2011-06-15T12:00:00.000+01:00

‘It’s good to have you back, Gallant,’ spoke Colonel Daringman. ‘And there’s someone else here who I know will be particularly pleased to see you.’ He turned to a technician, who was just standing there, awe-struck with awe. ‘Where’s Fumblebot?’ he barked with his voice.

‘I’m here, Colonel,’ said a seductive female voice from behind Dash. ‘I wouldn’t miss this for the universe.’ Dash spun round.

‘Samantha Fumblebot,’ he gasped with a gasp. ‘As beautiful as ever.’

‘Oh, you,’ laughed Fumblebot. ‘Three months of being missing presumed dead on an ice planet and you haven’t lost any of your charm.’

‘No,’ grinned Dash, grinning. ‘Just a few of my toes.’

COMEBACK WEEK #2: Change important aspects of your franchise

2011-06-14T12:00:00.001+01:00

Sprint laughed, pulling his friend to him in an entirely heterosexual bear hug and squeezing him tenderly.

‘Don’t trust them,’ the engineer whispered, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘Star Corps command. They’re not who you think they are.’ Before Dash could respond, or free himself from the now uncomfortably long embrace, he heard a warm voice addressing him warmly.

‘Well, aren’t you a sight for sore space-eyes?’

Dash looked up. Colonel Daringman was striding across the landing bay with long strides, a wide smile on his smiling face. In an instant, Dash knew something was different. His Space-Zen instincts told him that Daringman was a traitor at the very least and quite possibly a shape-shifting Mhal-Evol’Unt agent. From now on, Dash knew he wouldn’t be able to trust anyone. From now on, he was on his own – a maverick space-cowboy operating outside the restrictions of the military command structure. Also, he suddenly realised that he had never known who his father was and maybe he should start being motivated by the desire to find out.

COMEBACK WEEK #1: Return from an unannounced hiatus as if nothing has happened

2011-06-13T12:00:00.001+01:00

Dash Gallant stepped out of the airlock with a step. A hiss of OxyAir hissed around him as he swaggered manfully across the threshold. Amazed gasps of amazement, similar to the hissing hiss of the OxyAir aerotubes, but slightly more organic in their nature coming, as they did, from the mouths of the spaceport technical crew, came from the mouths of the spaceport technical crew.

‘What did I miss?’ Dash guffawed winningly. An overalled figure in a grey overall sprinted up to him and clapped a hand on his shoulder with a delighted clap.

‘Only the whole sprocking war!’ the figure, who was the figure of Engineering Chief Gellard Sprint, joked. ‘Where the sprock were you?’

‘Here and there,’ shrugged Dash. ‘I’ll tell you about it later, over a cold bottle of Hoertellian Spurg.’

Use supplementary appositives, noun phrase constituents designed to convey additional information, in all your sentences

2011-04-27T12:00:00.002+01:00

(with thanks to Language Log)

The dog, a mottled grey lurcher with a lazy eye, regarded me superciliously. I had no idea how I, a simple dog-fearing man, would manage to sneak past it and through the gate, a rusted metal barrier, to freedom. I shifted on my feet, those fleshy and ever-so-slightly arthritic appendages, nervously.

‘Good doggie,’ I, an inexperienced dog-soother to say the least, said. ‘Do you want a bone, a hard, calcified material of which animal skeletons are constituted? Do you? Do you?’ I waved the bone, a sheep tibia, at him. I just had to buy myself enough time, the abstract concept describing the indefinite continued progress of events, to run away.

The dog, an imposing presence with its powerful jaws, two perfectly evolved pincers capable of crushing a human leg, one of the limbs upon which a person stands, growled. It was now, the conceptual moment at which these events were happening, or never, at no time in the future. I, the person trying to escape from the dog, the animal which was threatening my health, the state of being free from illness or injury, a specific instance of physical harm or damage, started running.

Signpost your twists

2011-04-25T12:00:00.000+01:00

Agent Sam Glowingly waved a hand at the tangled web of notes on the whiteboard.

‘So,’ he said, ‘we still have no idea who the killer is.’

‘No,’ said McSleet. ‘Unless we can find someone in the monastery who’s able to leap thirty feet off the ground, pass through a stained glass window without breaking it and kill his victim through the power of sheer terror.’

‘Not your average monk,’ observed Glowingly. ‘In fact, it sounds more like one of the legendary fighting monks that reputedly inhabited this very monastery hundreds of years ago, but whose secrets have been lost for generations.’

‘Aye,’ agreed McSleet. ‘But we need to find a real solution, not sit here chit-chatting about ancient history that has nothing to do with the case.’

‘You’re right,’ said Glowingly, getting up from his chair and adjusting his pistol holster. ‘We’ve got no time for idle talk about legends that neither of us has any reason to believe are even true, let alone relevant to our current investigation.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Where next?’ he asked.

‘We need to interview more potential witnesses,’ said McSleet, fishing a battered pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. ‘How about Brother Laurence, who’s been studying the ancient manuscripts which sat undisturbed in the monastery vault for centuries and who has also, incidentally, been working out quite a lot recently?’

‘Okay,’ said Glowingly with a shrug. ‘But I think we’re wasting our time.’

Don’t not use double negatives

2011-04-22T16:32:00.000+01:00

Although I wasn’t unfamiliar with the failings of post-structuralism, this particular book lacked some of the omissions I didn’t expect to not find. I had neglected to overlook the index, but this was a lack of oversight which failed to concern me – that is to say, if I hadn’t neglected to overlook the index, my lack of neglect wouldn’t have concerned me less.

‘This doesn’t fail to be a non-trivial problem,’ I muttered to myself. ‘There couldn’t be the absence of something I’m failing to miss, could there?’

It wasn’t something other than nonsense to imagine that I’d succeeded in failing to untangle the many far from non-linguistic problems that this text certainly didn’t lack. I just didn’t seem to be able identify the missing elements – or rather, the absence of them. Perhaps my failure to find said omissions was itself not insignificant.

‘Maybe I’m being too negative,’ I didn’t not whisper to no one other than myself.

Recap the previous book

2011-04-19T12:00:00.000+01:00

Daniel Peridue, newly appointed Captain of the Guard as a result of his heroics at the battle of Langtathon where he had single-handedly held the main keep of Castle Langtathon against a determined strike force of magically strengthened ape-men called Grathraks, felt uneasy. It had been three months since the Southern Enchanters had broken the centuries-old treaty and launched their attack under cover of night, only to be foiled by the swift actions of Eli Shiningheart, who had revealed himself to be the long-lost heir of Lord Langathon and thus fulfilled the Prophecy of the Protector, as passed down from generation to generation of Ingturon scholars and eventually into the teachings of Yath’l Cth’dang, last of the Ingturon, who had nobly sacrificed himself at the Mountains of Rehethihimah to save Eli’s life and grant him the mysterious power of the Ancient Ones. Now everything was quiet. Too quiet.

‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he asked his companion. Remi Longshanks, reformed thief whose skill with throwing knives had proved to be invaluable when he and Daniel had infiltrated the Enchanters’ inner sanctum and stolen their magical hearthstone, thus severing the link that allowed them to command the Grathrak army, looked up.

‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Were you thinking that peace has settled uneasily on these lands and that the dark shadow of the return of the Old Magic still lurks somewhere far to the South, despite our success in repelling the specific threats that previously faced us?’

‘Pretty much,’ said Daniel.

Forget what you’re doing halfway through a sentence

2011-04-16T16:02:00.000+01:00

He opened the door and got into the car engine shuddered into life and the vehicle lurched down the driveway. He knew it was only a matter of time was against him and he had to do something had to be done. If there was one thing he knew for sure as he could be under the circumstances were against him, he thought with a grim smile formed on his face the facts.

Suddenly, the car jolted the car. He hadn’t been watching the road came to an abrupt stop in front of him was a barrier across the road came to an abrupt stop. It was too late to slow down into the ravine below the car was a deep ravine. He jammed his foot on the brakes weren’t working. With a screeching metal screech of metal screeched as he flew into the darkness opened and swallowed him.

He screamed, ‘Nooooo!’ he screamed. His life was flashing before he even had time to think about what he had done with his life was flashing before his eyes filled with tears of regretted so many things he regretted in his life was flashing before his eyes had time to close his eyes filled with tears in his eyes closed.

Write grammatically correct dialogue

2011-04-09T18:33:00.000+01:00

I could feel the thrum of the bass speakers all through my body. When I spoke, I couldn’t even hear my own voice.

‘I am going to the bar,’ I shouted into the noise. ‘I intend to purchase a drink.’ Moopie didn’t stop dancing, but nodded, flicking sweat off her face.

‘That is a good idea,’ she said. ‘To change the subject – do you happen to know the name of the gentleman who was dancing with us?’

‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘I am having a certain amount of difficulty hearing you.’

‘I was enquiring as to whether you knew the name of the gentleman who was recently dancing with us,’ yelled Moopie, leaning towards me. I hesitated for a moment. I knew who she meant, but I didn’t feel like talking about him, much less to him.

‘I do not know to whom you are referring,’ I said.

Solve mysteries by introducing more mysteries

2011-03-17T10:03:00.000Z

‘So the vault was never broken into at all?’ said Mr Hain, his brow furrowed in confusion.

‘Correct,’ said Caldwell. ‘But someone did get inside.’ He paused, giving the gathered company a moment to catch up with his dazzling mental acuity. Mr Hain gasped.

‘An inside job?’ he said. ‘At my bank?’ Caldwell turned to him and smiled.

‘You could say that.’ He raised one gloved hand and pointed to the bank manager’s head. ‘Would you please remove your hat?’ Slowly, Mr Hain lifted his black bowler. ‘And would you kindly look inside?’

‘My god,’ gasped Mr Hain, staring in disbelief at the lining of his hat.

‘That, ladies and gentlemen,’ said Caldwell, with a small flourish of his hand, ‘is an occult inscription placed in our good friend Mr Hain’s headwear in order to control his every thought and action.’

‘Placed there?’ said Lady Petunia, her voice trembling. ‘But by whom?’

‘Whom indeed,’ said Caldwell. ‘Someone with considerable knowledge of mysterious black arts. Someone with access to Mr Hain’s hat. Someone able to perform such an act and go completely undetected.’ He paused, listened intently and took one step to his left before swinging his arm wildly in the air.

‘Gaaah!’ yelled a voice, seemingly from nowhere. Caldwell grabbed at thin air and shook his fist. ‘Alright, alright,’ said the voice. ‘You can stop it now.’

With a shimmer of pale light, a figure appeared, Caldwell’s hand gripping its cravat.

‘This,’ said Caldwell, ‘is Mr Laender, a demon of considerable power.’

‘A demon?’ gasped Lady Petunia.

‘Yes, my lady,’ said Caldwell. ‘A demon summoned and solicited by you, a time traveller from the future.’

‘Curse you!’ screamed Lady Petunia, her synthetic face peeling off and revealing the hyper-intelligent lizard beneath. ‘Curse you to the seventeen dimensions of hell!’

For a moment, the assembled company – detective, bank workers, policemen, demon and time-travelling lizard – were silent.

‘Um,’ said Mr Hain, tapping his fingers on the edge of his hat. ‘I mean... Are you absolutely sure it wasn’t just a break-in?’

Choose one character to bully

2011-02-28T12:10:00.000Z

‘So it’s settled. We head north.’ Her hand resting lightly on the pommel of her sword, Saltar looked at each of her companions in turn. Pheos returned her gaze coolly, sparks of shadow flickering around his gloved hands. Gramble shrugged and hefted his axe from one compact, muscled shoulder to the other. ‘No objections?’ said Saltar. ‘Then we ride as soon as...’ She hesitated. ‘Where’s Dingleton?’

‘Curse him!’ muttered Gramble, looking around. ‘Stupid wretched creature.’ Pheos smiled archly.

‘I believe our diminutive friend is currently relieving himself,’ he said, nodding towards a nearby bush.

‘Sorry!’ said the bush. ‘Sorry! Hang on, I’m just...’ The bush rustled and Dingleton fell out, his trousers round his ankles. ‘Wooaah!’ He tumbled head over heels down the muddy slope, his hands stuck in his belt as he tried desperately to pull his pants up.

‘Dingleton!’ snapped Saltar. ‘Get up. We’re heading north. Where did you tie up the horses?’

‘Tie up?’ said Dingleton, a baffled expression on his face. ‘They were... um...’

‘I’ll murder him!’ yelled Gramble, gripping his axe. Saltar sighed.

‘At least tell me you picked up the bag with the holy amulet in,’ she said.

‘The thing about that...’ Dingleton began, before losing his balance and falling flat on his face.

‘Why is he here again?’ hissed Pheos.

‘I don’t know,’ Dingleton moaned quietly to himself. ‘I really don’t know. I’m not equipped for this. It seems cruel even to have brought me. When you think about it...’ Whatever he had been about to say, it was muffled by the bird faeces that fell directly into his mouth at that exact moment.

Include unnecessary linguistic redundancies of language

2011-02-25T09:39:00.000Z

Kevin entered his PIN number into the ATM machine at a rapid rate of speed. He had a preplanned date arrangement with a female woman and didn’t want to be delayed by lateness. If he compared and contrasted Olivia with previous girlfriends he’d dated before, she was universally superior and better in every way.

‘Hurry quickly,’ he whispered under his breath, his hand advancing forward towards the cash slot where money would come out. He glanced at the LCD display, which was showing an advertising commercial. ‘I’m in too much of a rush to have time for this,’ he muttered. ‘You can keep your added bonus free gift.’

Finally at last, his cash money emerged into view and he grabbed it with his hand. Irregardless of this delay, the end result of his date arrangement would be a new beginning at this moment in time. Little did he know or realise, but his goals and objectives were about to be completely and utterly met in a way and manner it was impossible to over-exaggerate.

The ending should have a twist... or should it?

2011-02-23T10:18:00.000Z

Sarah sank into an armchair and let out a satisfied sigh. It was good to be home. As remarkable as it seemed, the house was just as she’d left it, all those weeks ago. Or if there were differences, they were small things – a layer of dust on the furniture, a pile of unopened letters in the hallway, the gentle click of a pistol being cocked. Wait, what?

‘Get down on the floor!’ screamed the masked gunman, kicking open the kitchen door. ‘Face down! Face down!’ Sarah hesitated for a moment.

‘Freddie?’ she said. ‘Freddie, is that you?’ The gunman froze.

‘No,’ he said.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Sarah. ‘I thought we were a team.’

‘We were,’ whispered Freddie. ‘But that was before...’ He reached up to his face and gripped his mask. Sarah braced herself. ‘Before...’ He pulled aside the fabric. Sarah couldn’t look. ‘Before this,’ he said, throwing the mask to the floor. ‘Look at me, Sarah. Look at what you’ve done to me.’ She slowly raised her eyes to his. A second passed. ‘You did this, Sarah,’ he said. ‘You gave me this big smile by being so lovely.’ Sarah grinned back at him.

‘You big silly,’ she said. ‘You had me worried there.’

‘Worried? He laughed. ‘What could there possibly be to worry about? It’s all safe again. We won, Sarah.’

‘I think you mean I won,’ said Sarah, turning into a werewolf which she had been all along and eating him.

Get fixated on a particular reference point

2011-02-20T13:36:00.000Z

Geoff craned his neck and looked up at the building.

‘Soon they’ll be everywhere,’ he muttered. ‘Pinkman and Grist Associates, sweeping across the financial district like Genghis Khan, destroying everything in their path.’

‘Not if we stop them,’ said Felicity, quietly. Geoff shook his head.

‘We’re like unarmed Chinese peasants,’ he said. ‘They’ll run us down on horseback.’

‘But the antitrust investigation...’ began Felicity.

‘Useless,’ Geoff interrupted. ‘Like a bamboo hut. They’ll lie to the regulators, they’ll lie to the courts, they’ll do whatever it takes and come out clutching the still-beating heart of the bonds market like a newborn Genghis Khan emerging from his mother’s womb clutching a bloodclot – a story which, whether apocryphal or not, indicates the high regard in which Genghis Khan’s capacity for bloodthirstiness was held by his people.’

‘I know,’ said Felicity. ‘That’s what you always say.’ She stared down at her shoes, made of the same kind of leather as Genghis Khan’s saddle would once have been. Geoff’s gaze was still on the skyscraper above them.

‘How tall would you say it is?’ he mused. ‘If you got two hundred Genghis Khans and stood them on each other’s shoulders...’

Refuse to give names to characters

2011-02-08T15:10:00.001Z

A tall man with glinting eyes stepped meaningfully from the ship’s gangplank and surveyed the dock.

‘Where is she?’ he demanded, gesturing at a stooped and subservient man beside him.

‘Sorry, sir?’ the servile man asked. The tall man with the smooth black walking stick clicked his tongue impatiently.

‘You know who,’ he said. ‘The demure woman with the scarf.’

‘I’ll make enquiries, sir,’ the balding, diminutive man replied (the same man who had been talking a moment before).

‘Well make them quickly,’ interrupted a tall man with shining eyes. This was not the same tall man with glinting eyes who had so far been conducting the conversation, but a new, even taller man with eyes that shone rather than glinted, who had just disembarked behind the two figures already standing on the dock.

‘You!’ hissed the tall (merely tall – not taller) man with glinting rather than shining eyes. ‘I should have known you would try to interfere.’

‘Interfere?’ queried the tallest available man with the really quite unsettlingly shiny eyes. ‘I would never interfere. I am merely concerned for our mutual acquaintance’s wellbeing.’

‘The demure woman?’ asked the second-tallest man.

‘I would describe her as more reserved than demure.’

‘Ah.’ The still-actually-quite-tall-though-short-comparatively-speaking man said. ‘I’m not entirely convinced we’re talking about the same woman.’

Base your plot on unsupported assertions

2011-01-27T09:50:00.003Z

‘I don’t understand,’ I said, a leaden feeling spreading from my stomach and into my limbs. ‘What did I do wrong?’

‘No,’ said Father Eschaton, ‘you do not understand.’ Light from the highest windows of the temple bathed him in gold. ‘When you destroyed The Machine, you upset the delicate balance of good and evil in the world.’

‘But...’ I frowned. ‘But The Machine was evil, wasn’t it? It fed on people’s souls.’ He nodded gravely.

‘It was evil,’ he said. ‘But it was precisely evil enough. Now there is a dangerous imbalance in the forces of the universe.’

‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Hang on a minute. Surely we’re in favour of good and opposed to evil. I really don’t see what I’ve done wrong here.’ Father Eschaton hesitated for a moment.

‘There is a balance...’ he began.

‘Why?’ I said. He shifted uncomfortably.

‘Sorry?’

‘Why? Why is there a balance? Why not just have everything good and nothing evil? What’s actually wrong with that?’

‘I...’ He licked his lips and squinted. The golden light seemed to be bothering him. ‘The balance is beyond human understanding, beyond the mere...’

‘You don’t know, do you?’ I let the question hang. ‘You were going to send me back into that volcano, to almost certain death, and you’ve absolutely no idea why.’ He shrugged and mumbled something. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Speak up.’

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘I just thought...’

‘What? You just thought what?’

‘I just thought...’ He poked at the dust near his foot. ‘Just thought it’d be interesting.’

Use... dramatic... ellipses...

2011-01-20T13:11:00.001Z

(with thanks to... Carolyn)

With a screeching cacophony of mechanical discomfort, the plane dipped unevenly towards the runway and...

...made contact with the tarmac. The rubber on the tyres instantly shredded, the exposed metal sending a shower of sparks directly towards the stricken aircraft’s fuel tanks, which...

...were of course safely sealed. The plane skidded along the runway, hurtling ever closer to the airport’s observation tower...

...which luckily was still half a mile away, this being a sizeable airport. Wide-eyed and soaked in sweat, the pilot gripped the controls in front of him and silently cursed...

...his decision to wear thermal underwear and to reuse the same pair of disposable contact lenses he had worn yesterday. Then, with the inevitability of a volcanic eruption, the plane...

...came to a halt safely and every single one of its unfortunate passengers...

...disembarked.