Creative Writing at It's Best

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[William Terrell]

Remember the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"? Here's a prime example offered by an English professor from the University of Phoenix:

Class Assignment for Wednesday

"Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story.

You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back also sending another copy to me.

The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth.

Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."

The following was actually turned in by two of my English students:

********************************************** ----------------------------------------------------------------

THE STORY:

(first paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.
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(second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,....", he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
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(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities. Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.
---------------------------------------------------------
(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret Mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em out of the sky!"
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(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.
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(Gary)
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. "Oh shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F*CKING TEA??? Oh no, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels."
----------------------------------------------------------
(Rebecca)
A**hole.
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(Gary)
B*tch. ********************************************** <

(TEACHER) A+ -- I really liked this one. Only group to get an A!

[zip]

, clap, clap, clap, clap, calp,(?) clap!

Dern dyslexicia. lol

[Libertina]

ROTFLOL Bump a rooni

[zip]

My all time favorite short story:

"An old woman sat in her house.

She was alone. Everyone else in the world was dead.

The doorbell rings."

Hey, that's heavy stuff so I'll lighten it up with my favorite short poem:

Fleas
Adam
had 'em.

[philman_36]

But in school, a student's goal is not to master his subject but to please -- indeed, even entertain -- his teacher.
You say this after you said this...
The teacher gives an "A" to the most entertaining submittal.
It seems as if they did what you say they're supposed to do to get a good grade, yet you're not happy with the grade that was given.
You've lost me!

[boris]

"Hey, that's heavy stuff so I'll lighten it up with my favorite short poem"

There's a site (several actually) which publishes "Sci-Fiku" (science-fiction haiku). Sometime ago I read a faux scifiku on one of them, and I can't find it anymore, but I can repeat it:

Nice planets
All in orbit:
No bumping.

====================

Then there are Piet Hein's Grooks, now out of print:

Problems worthy of attack
Prove their worth
By hitting back.

You'll conquer the present
Suspiciously fast
If you smell of the future
And stink of the past.

===============================

--Boris

[CGVet58]

Dog-ass tired, Dexter flops onto the sofa automatically reaching for the remote and grateful for the cool breeze coming through the windows... It had been a long day, part of a long week in what was promising to be another long, hot summer. He notices out of the corner of his eye that Cathy's remodelling of the adjoining den along victorian/roaring 'Twenties motif was a bit too garish for him - his private nickname for it was "Capone-Lite", but hey! - he didn't really care since she was such a sweet woman and besides, those mint-thingy whatevers that she loved to serve when wearing that lovely, lacey thing He'd bought her last weekend went down the pipe pretty smoothly, especially when liberally laced with a shot of Bombay.

He switches to ESPN; news of the NBA draft was blending into another Tyson-bashing remark on his most recent run-in. A sound wafts ("wafts???", he thinks... that's the kind of word Cathy would say...) from the Capone-Lite room... was Cathy calling him?

(back to you...)

[William Terrell]

It's so archtypical, too. Intersex conversations have been going downhill at this velocity, to the same end, for the same issues since we've been wearing male and female skins.

The real humor is that Rebbecca and Gary will probably get married.

[Alouette]

The following was actually turned in by two of my English students:

This is an old urban legend. It first appeared on an Internet joke list several years ago. Still funny as hell.

[William Terrell]

That's the thing. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's so reflective of male/female relationships that it's an archtype, and especially highlighted so well by the story.