EXERCISE: Ending Lines...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: Wed, 26 Jun 2002 22:09:58 -0400

Simple, but perhaps someone would like to run a short series for the list.

At one point (a while back), someone took those short stories in Readers' Digest and posted the last line from them.  The challenge was to write a story with that climactic line.  Of course, sometimes in writing the story, the climactic line got displaced, but it was an interesting way to get the fingers writing.

So, for example, we might take that line from Morley that I keep quoting (actually, Eudora does a nice job of remembering it for me).

Write a story whose final line is:

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

Let the grey cells pontificate (we're papal now?) upon what kind of scene, conflict, and characters might represent this little aphorism.  What parable of modern day (or whatever day you prefer) life would make this sentence sink in and tingle?

Go ahead and write!

(twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble... :-)

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.  Christopher Morley

And some of us tapdance a bit as we do it!  tink