Contest: Writing Prompts for FreeWriters

They turned my life upside down, so I got the whale to swallow them, in my stories.

Photo by Daria Glakteeva on Unsplash

I have so many different preferences in my literature selection. One of my favourite form to read or write is narrative. Narratives can be from any point of view, be it first-person or third-person.

Some choose to write as themselves, while others write from a third-person perspective, or even pretend to narrate someone else's story when it's actually their own—perhaps they are shy, or simply can't talk about things directly.

Sometimes it feels like you are reading a memoir, other times it’s just creative writing.

One of the interesting aspects of being a writer is their unique perspective and worldview of everything around them, which seldom makes an appearance in ordinary, daily, mundane conversations.

These so-called conversations are often limited to hello goodbye like neighbors passing each other in the hall.

You can't just grab them by the arm and suddenly launch into a deep conversation. They would probably think you were somehow short of some marbles on that particular day.

Perhaps short story writers can make good conversationalists after all, especially when they are introverted like me, where socializing terrifies me.

I could treat it as a live word prompt based on the words I hear in conversation during a party. Just make up whatever stories from there, pretending that I’m talking to them when in fact I’m just trying to write some short stories, out loud.

I mustn’t forget to turn the dictation on for this.

Our space is not a shopping mall where anyone can come in; it’s a private club. We all have our personal circles and private spaces where we only let select people in.

But of course, there are the self-important who would just tear the memo apart.

They'd force themselves on you. I know this phrase is usually used in unwanted sexual advances, but to me personally, it felt that way: unwanted social advances, so they forced themselves on me.

At worst, their trespassing into our lives isn't entirely bad if it gives us new writing material; after all, we can find the silver lining in everything if we want to, even in arseholes—surely it's unpleasant and dark, but it's where the lining sparkles brightly.

Like when those insolent, entitled relatives who not only invite themselves over but also treat your house as their personal belonging, even bringing outsiders, popping champagne, and ordering you around like a servant, as if your place is the Downtown Abbey and they are the aristocrats that occupy it.

Since they like to play house and treat your life as their own stage, you might as well make them yours to write. Center your story around two characters who like each other but don’t get a happily ever.

Let one of them be captured by an alien and the other one be swallowed by a huge whale.

It’s our kind of takeover from their hostility.

We shall rewrite them; that for sure will brighten up our day thinking about it. Turning annoyance and pain into a source of amusement and empowerment for ourselves.

We learned from the best, but without breaking anything or anyone. That defiant pleasure. Just don't let others catch you with that silly grin on your face.

When dealing with busybodies with whom we see no point in talking about our writings, only for them to trash our work, just tell them that you are a ghostwriter.

We don't even have to give them details.

That way, we are still telling them we are writing while indirectly telling them off: It's none of your business.

For some others, when they know some unspeakable secret or they wanted to do some exposé but not in a journalistic capacity, perhaps they can rehash their material, change some names and identifying details, and turn it into fiction.

Photo by Dudit on Unsplash

You'd know the truth, even though you couldn't legally prove it. Like when your evil mother-in-law tried to use black magic to sabotage your marriage, or the time when she gaslighted you, making everyone see you as a mad person—hard to prove that too, and you can't use that in court, can you?

Truly horrible people like this are seldom difficult to hold accountable, and justice for their victims is rare. But we can rewrite the whole narrative to expose their wickedness through fiction, or just write under a pen name.

Of course, we would very much love to have personal feedback on our work from those that actually matter, like from our creative connections.

We don't need those nasty feedbacks that aren't even considered feedback, where they didn't read your work and they just want to say something nasty to you.

That, they can shove back into their own throat. Our time is too precious for all that, especially because these people just provided us with some new writing materials.

©Britt H.

Thank you for reading this.

More about the person behind the writing in My Introductory Post

Contest: Daily Prompts for FreeWriters

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