For the last stream, with special guest Abbey, we did a fun exercise: Abbey and chat wrote the beginning to a story, then I had to finish it.
We did this before when Abbey was a guest, and I really enjoyed the story we came up with. It was fun to try and make sense of a story that Abbey and chat purposefully tried to make as crazy as possible.
And this time, it was a challenge. Abbey and chat wrote a story about an otter assassin turned pork-bun-saleswoman, targeted by a rival duck.
Yup. That’s what I had to work with. Here’s what we came up with:
It was a lovely, foggy day at the beach. Seagulls were screaming over bits of discarded bagel, and the relaxing sounds of the waves crashing into the shore reminded Cooper that she had so much baking to do. Cooper scuttled over to her cave, however, there was a duck in the distance WATCHING.
Suddenly, Miku came to the beach with her laser gun! She came to order steamed pork buns from Cooper for her intergalactic space rave. The sounds of flapping wings could be heard overhead as a prince and his dragon rode off into the sunset.
Cooper readied the fire for placing the steamer into the oven, but then the duck appeared!
It was time for battle!
The duck swooped into the moist cave, and stopped just in front of Cooper.
“YOU! AGENT 329! PREPARE YOURSELF! I HAVE COME TO ASSASSINATE YOU!”
Cooper looked at Miku in surprise, and apologized for the delay in baking her steamed pork buns for her intergalactic space rave.
(This is where I took over.)
“Oh, no worries,” Miku said. “If you’re busy with revenge assassinations, it can wait. I understand.”
“No it’s okay,” Cooper said. “You were first in line, and he was second. So by Robert’s Rules of Assassination, he has to wait his turn.”
Duck clenched his beak in contempt. “Aw duck! She’s right. Well, I would expect no less from the legendary Assassin-Otter. Very well. I will wait.”
Duck folded his wings and sat on the cave cafe table chair, sheathing his duck dagger for the time being.
“How many pork buns did you need for the rave again?” Cooper asked.
“Well one for each star,” Miku said. “So about ten trillion.”
Miku and Duck waited patiently as Cooper slowly baked the ten trillion pork buns. She may have been an otter, but her nimble hands worked quickly packing the pork meat into balls, stuffing them into sweet dumplings, and steaming them over the boiling blood of her enemies. Thanks to Cooper’s pork buns, at least seven planets inhabited entirely by pig-species went extinct.
Once all of the ten trillion buns were made, Duck leaped from his seat and brandished his dagger.
“Now!” he quacked, quivering with excitement. “We duel!”
“Excuse me,” Cooper said. “I need to wrap the pork buns. Can’t just send them away like this.”
“Oh,” Duck said. He sheepishly waddled back to his chair and sat down.
Cooper and Miku wrapped up all the pork buns in delightful little boxes with flower and dinosaur prints. Once they were finished, Duck again leaped into action. Cooper held out a finger.
“Excuse me,” Cooper said.
Duck groaned. “What is it now?!”
“We have to have the mandatory post-bun-baking tea ceremony,” Cooper said. “Would you like to join?”
“Me?” Duck said, his feathered face brightening. “Join you, the legendary Assassin-Otter for a tea ceremony?”
“Sure,” Cooper said.
Duck dashed over and the three of them sat down around a blanket on the stone ground, sitting on their knees and slowly sipping space tea.
Suddenly the cave started wailing, and everyone looked over. On the stone wall of the cave, a crying face appeared out of the greasy remains from expired pork buns.
“Why wasn’t I invited?” the anthropomorphized wall screamed, water dripping down its expired-meat eyes.
Cooper sighed. “Wall-ter, we’ve been over this. You’re always invited. You’re literally always here.”
“I know,” Wall-ter said. “But I just… I like the feeling of being invited, you know?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Duck said, setting down his cup with a clank. He took a deep breath before continuing. “Before I came here today, and lived a trillion lifetimes watching you make buns, and you invited me to your tea ceremony, all I could think of was getting revenge. But now, here with you guys, I’ve realized that all I really want in life is–”
Out of nowhere, Cooper grabbed Miku’s laser gun and blasted Duck’s head off. It fell to the ground with splat and a shocked (yet satisfied) expression on his unblinking face.
“Wow, that was amazing!” Miku said, giving Cooper a slow clap. “You really lured him into a false sense of security.”
Cooper blew on the barrel of the laser gun, even though it didn’t actually do anything, it just kind of looked cool.
“That’s how I roll,” she said. “Anyway, who’s up for some duck-meat buns steamed over freshly boiled blood?”
Wall-ter wailed. “Am I invited?”
Cooper and Miku both laughed. “Classic Wall-ter.”
Hey, it almost makes sense! It reminds me of the absurd prompt we wrote last time. While it’s good to flex your creativity/crazy muscles every now and then, it can be easy to fall into doing them too often. I was looking forward to writing something different for today’s prompt.
And we got a prompt that delivered on that. Chat voted for this prompt submitted by DemetrioM: “As a dog, it is your life’s mission to answer a question your human keeps asking. Who, in fact, is a good boy?”
The decision to pick this prompt was heavily weighted by Abbey, a lover of all animals (as you can probably tell from the story beginning she wrote).
I wasn’t as enthusiastic, but I surprisingly really like where we ended up. Rather than taking the easy way out, we made something in between a Taoist fable, a kid’s book, and a cartoon. I have to admit, I’m a fan.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published, the writing exercises, or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns until Twitch deletes them.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon, forthcoming November 2018.