A slightly different challenge this week. It’s another of my favourite writing sites to help unblock the block! The website is called One Word. The aim of this game is to use the word posted below (don’t look till you are ready to write) as a prompt and then free write for 60 seconds, no stopping. Don’t edit, don’t worry, just write. Mine is right at the bottom of this post with the prompt word, no cheating!
Now, to the winner of the worst possible sentence from last weeks writespiration, and boy did we have some cracking entries. And by cracking, I mean awful!
The winner of the most terrible opening line is………
Jane congratulations Jane, you wrote the most terrible opener, giving everything away and breaking all sorts of rules in the process! Fabulous entry:
‘It was terrible knowing that they were all going to die in a house fire, except for Jill who runs off to South America with the postman who apears in chapter sixteen, that Simon would fail his Oxford first year exams and end up working as a petrol pump attendant until he throws himself off a bridge in chapter twenty one, and that her operation would be a disaster and leave her housebound so when she drops her lighted cigarette onto the sheet she can’t even raise the alarm, but you have to live through the next four hundred pages, don’t you?’
Runner up goes to Keith for the most depressing adverb rich opener I’ve ever seen! Fantastic effort Keith 🙂
John wasn’t sure where he was going; walking solemnly and forlornly through the pea-souper fog, straining his weary eyes to make out the slightest detail murkily presenting itself to his age-worn visage; the laughter lines for which he was, until recently, famed giving way to worry-lines as he plodded relentlessly through the misty, dewy, heavy, moisture-laden air under a leaden sky that was constantly threatening to unload its heavy cargo, its payload, its bounty onto an unsuspecting world below, a world where hope had given way to despair, where happiness had been supplanted by depression, where gaiety had fallen prey to solemnity, a world whose very atmosphere, the elemental structure that is designed, intended, purposed to support and nurture life, is slowly, but surely, inexorably and remorselessly threatening to stifle it, to extinguish it, to render it extinct.
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Helen Jones new to writespiration, gave a stonking effort with this terrible opener. If my wife had been choosing the winner, Helen would have won 🙂 – it made Mrs. Black laugh out loud.
‘He had always liked penguins, and those shoes with the velcro fastening.’
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Geoff was far too good but he does get an honourable mention for the two most disgustingly vile sentences:
‘And it’s confirmed: Nigel Farage will be the next Prime Minister.’
‘The only interesting about Tarquin was his toe-clipping collection which he had spent years cataloging: this is his story (with illustrations).’
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To this weeks Writespiration, remember, don’t look at the word till you are ready. Set your timer for 60 seconds don’t edit just write fast. Scroll down to see the word:
SILENCE
Here’s mine:
Why is silence so deafening? It ached in my ears, the pounding silence swallowed up any thoughts I had. It hurt. Hurt like the loss of my parents. No more voices to call me in at the end of the day. No mother to shout upstairs “dinners ready.” Just endless silence.
Thanks for the honourable mention, Sacha. It depressed me writing it!
All “great” opening lines! This One Word site is pretty cool. Thanks for sharing it. It’ll be a fun way to get prompts. I actually participated this week and have no idea where this story (or thing) is going, but here it is:
There was an eerie silence lingering in the air. Everyone eyeballed each other wondering who was going to be the next to stand up and say something. They were all thinking. No one wanted to be the bearer of bad news and played “nose-goes” inside their heads willing someone else to say something.
Thanks Rachel, what a fab entry…. at the end of the day one word is just about getting you writing, not necessarily about quality or producing a complete story! another fab entry 🙂
I love starting prompts with just one word. There are so many possibilities. Thanks for the prompt!
A great exercise in what not to do! 🙂
Silence is a great word to write about. I love what it prompted you to share. 🙂
Thank you Norah.
Hi Sacha, thanks for the honourable mention – that’s awesome 🙂 and I’m glad I made Mrs Black laugh.
Okay, here is my sixty seconds on silence:
Silence. It was all around him. Weighing heavy on his ears, on his time. Time that he scratched out, one by one on the damp bricks, the only indication that it passed the slivers of light through the barred window high above. No one came to see him. No one cared, it seemed, that he still lived.
Hmm. Not sure that I didn’t take a bit of a segue into ‘time’. Oh well.
oooh this is eerie – I love it. lol well doesn’t matter what it turns into, its the fun of the game 🙂
Thanks Sacha, it was fun 🙂 I really enjoyed yours, such a lot of story in so few sentences
Ok Sacha, I will give your sixty seconds a try.
Silence. A beautiful voice, his laughter are forever gone. Lost in silence are the sweet words. “hey, Mum, love you.” The silence is unfathomable. The silence tears at the heart.
oh my gosh, how heart wrenching and emotional. I love it. Thanks SOOOOO much for joining in 🙂 Im chuffed you joined in 🙂 and its a fab entry too.
Silence is a long way from home, which is a hollow noduled bucket in Minneapolis and rather twee in a woebegone sort of way. Carriage bags have a habit of breaking silcne wit a rustle and a grimace. Shoping with silence is a chore and
Funny where the mind takes you…
lol, these are all brilliant. your mind is clearly TanGental today :p!… see what I did there :p
Too cool for school…
If silence is golden then why am I not rich and living in outer space where it is silent. I love being silent like in the silent films which I don’t understand because they have no talking in them and are often in black and white and all fuzzy to watch. I wonder if they served popcorn in those days?
hahaha Hugh you legend. Now I’m wondering the same thing. I love where this prompt is taking everyone. Fab entry. You’re just as Tangential as Geoff! :p
Yes, I love these timed challenges where we can let the mind go wild.
Thank you. Being compared to Geoff has got me thinking 🙂
I am SO thrilled that my talent for putting readers off in the first sentence has at last been recognised 🙂 Thank you Sacha. Here’s my go at the stop watch thingy.
Silence. The word sounds so loud when I think about it. Like when you put your head underwater. The sound of water. And the night air when everything else is quiet. Except the silence.
Well, that wasn’t very long, was it? What happens when you don’t have a stop watch and your phone only stays lit up for five seconds at a time so you have to keep stopping to peer and the clock.
Had to try this one. Thanks for the writespiration. 🙂 Off to read the comments (didn’t want to see the word ahead of time). Absolutely LOVE Helen’s first line. Truly. Brilliant.
could not agree more! She is fantastically talented 🙂
Oh my… I think I need to bookmark this site and come back every week. Do we have to include the word or just the idea of silence? Here’s my first shot with only 22 words: 😛
“Would you shut up already?! I told you we’re not going to the zoo to harass the lions today.
That’s next week.”
aww, thanks so much, I really hope you do come back :), every week is something different :). I will publish your post next week with the new challenge :). And you can incorporate silence however you like… the prompts inspire everyone differently – so there’s no wrong answer :D. Thanks so much for joining in 🙂