The last stream was special guest Abbey’s last chance to join us for a while, so she got to pick what we did. And she picked one of her favorite exercises: editing auto-generated fanfiction.
We’ve done this a couple times before. For those unfamiliar, what we do is we go to the website Fanfic Maker, put in some parameters, and then auto-generate an entire story. We read the whole thing, and then rewrite the beginning, trying to stay as true to the original intent/spirit as possible.
As usual, the original story was very… unique. (You can read it here, just prepare yourself mentally first.)
Here’s what we came up with for the rewrite:
“The Secret of the Stick”
Spaghetti Fingers had just exited their daily spa routine, perfectly al dente. With a towel wrapped around their waist, they admired their firmly moist, beautiful androgynous features in the locker room mirror. After double checking to make sure that nobody was around, they made a kissy face at their reflection and flexed as hard as they could.
“Oh hey there sexy thing,” Spaghetti Fingers said in their silky voice, raising their eyebrows. “You busy tonight? How about I treat to you a bottomless salad bowl at Olive Garden?”
Immediately, Spaghetti Finger’s heart sank. They couldn’t help but sigh, and their flexed muscles went flaccid.
“Oh who am I kidding?” they groaned. “I haven’t had a date since the Ravioli Revolution in 1988. And bottomless salad bowl? I got so flustered even asking myself out that I forgot it’s just called ‘unlimited salad and breadsticks.'”
Spaghetti Fingers walked dejectedly over to their locker and opened it up, ready to put on their saucy shirt and pesto pants and head home for the night.
But as soon as the door creaked open, a giant breadstick the size of a baseball bat fell out of the locker and crashed to the floor. It hit the tiled floor with such a force that it snapped in half.
“Wow, what a stale breadstick,” Spaghetti Fingers said. “But I don’t remember putting that in there?”
Curious, they bent over to investigate. That’s when they noticed that lodged inside the breadstick where it had cracked open was a yellow piece of paper with writing on it. Spaghetti Fingers gingerly pulled it out and read the note.
Well for a story about an androgynous person named “Spaghetti Fingers” who’s in love with themself and gets a mysterious note in a breadstick, I’d say we did pretty well for ourselves!
As crazy as the story’s premise is, this is still a solid beginning. It sets the scene/tone, and gives the who/what/when/where/hook. If your curiosity isn’t piqued at the end of reading this, then I don’t think we can be friends.
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.
Featured image: Flickr/Mike Mozart