Prompt: Drawing Connections

An activity to warm up your creative talents

Choose a number, 1 to 5, and make a note of it. This will be your starting sentence. Then do the same twice more, keeping them in order. These will be your middle and last sentences. 

E.g. Starting sentence: 3

Middle sentence: 5

Last sentence: 2

Then choose two seperate numbers, from 1 to 10. These will be your imagery.

Find the corresponding fragments from the lists below, and spend ten minutes trying to weave them into a piece of writing. Good luck!

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Starting sentence 

1. I was dressed in a completely inappropriate shade of pink.
2. As I stared at him, he blushed a violent shade of red.
3. My dad and I had never gotten along.
4. The dog was loose in the park, and I couldn’t find her.
5. Thinking back, I’d had plenty of reasons to be suspicious.

Middle sentence (Just somewhere in between the two other sentences)

1. Last night I cheated on my partner. And it wasn’t the first time.
2. I should never have gone to Morocco. 
3. At this point, public humiliation was an old friend.
4. I’d have never guessed the key to it all was my old fedora.
5. I couldn’t believe I’d killed a crow.

 Last sentence

1. The way she’d made tea.
2. I love it when a plan comes together.
3. I was going to regret this in the morning.
4. All in all, it was a rather tasteful funeral.
5. Destiny is a fickle thing.

Imagery (These don’t have to be incorporated literally – be creative!)

1. A crack in the pavement
2. The smell of my grandmother’s laundry
3. The warbling of birdsong
4. A gleaming Mercedes
5. The smell of a new book
6. The whistling of a kettle
7. An old battered notebook
8. The smell of freshly ground coffee
9. The ticking of an old grandfather clock
10. The stench of a strong french cheese

Some of our examples

As I stared at him, he blushed a violent shade of red. James had never done well with attention – the man would start shaking if he was talking to more than three people – so why he’d chosen to ride in this monstrosity, I had no idea. He’d turned up to my house in a gold plated Mercedes, it’s body gleaming in the sun. I could feel the eyes of my neighbours on me, as they snuck a glance at out of their windows. Truly, I should have been mortified, but at this point, public humiliation was an old friend.

“Get in,” I hissed at him, and we ducked inside the gaudy beast.

It’s interior stank of freshly ground coffee – James drank the stuff by the gallon – and we took off down the road like a peacock running through a poultry farm.

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

“It’s my uncles.” He winced. “He wanted me to look after it, and I can’t just leave it on the driveway.”

“Is your uncle a fucking oil magnate?” I asked, incredulous.

“Something like that.” James sighed, and took a sip of his large Starbucks brew. “I gotta ask you. Please, please, could you look after it for me? I can’t stand the attention.”

Wow. Usually, my luck is for shit. But all things considered… this could be fun. Destiny really is a fickle thing.

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My dad and I had never gotten along. Mainly ‘cause he was a prick. He was right about something though… I should never have gone to Morocco.

A nice little heist Keys said, steal a priceless old battered notebook, straight back home. It wasn’t quite like that of course. We stole it alight, but turns out the police in Morroco don’t play very fair. They shoot out our wheels and after flipping the car over a crack in the pavement, we ended up in a Moroccan prison.

For a country with such vehemently anti-gay laws, prison sure didn’t feel like a safe place to shower. So we didn’t, and the smell helped keep the gangs away too, after a while. All the gangs except Stinky Steve, he’d lost his nose in some far-off war, so he’d sidle up beside me in line and grin with that solitary tooth of his. He pushed and I pushed back, but one day I was in the shower, and everyone left. Except Stinky Steve. He smiled at me and said something a mix of romantic and threatening in Arabic. Then I did the last thing he expected…

I kissed him. He practically swooned in my arms out of pure shock, and with that I grabbed the tiny white tufts of hair he had, and smashed his skull open, chucks of his brain splattered across the room. I said goodbye, and invited Nasty Nick in, he always knew how to deal with a dead body. To my surprise, he buried him in a small hole, and said a prayer for his soul. All in all, it was a rather tasteful funeral.