For the last stream’s exercise, in honor of U.S. tax day, we tried a new exercise: writing a story that starts with a random sentence from the Form 1040 Instructions.
We generated some random numbers and got three sentences from the 107-page document. All three of them were equally robotic and miserable, but that’s exactly what we signed up for.
Chat voted for one of them, and we started our story with it. Then, halfway through, we got another sentence from the document.
I’d say given those restrictions, we did pretty awesome. But you can read here and decide for yourself: (text from the Instructions is in bold)
“Your envelope may need additional postage if it contains more than five pages or is oversized (for example, it is over 1/4″ thick).”
And with that killer pickup line gone from my lips, I gave the guy sitting next to me at the bar a seductive wink. All he did was stare at me in confusion.
“Uh, excuse me?” he said. “Did you just call me a quarter inch thick?”
“You bet I did, handsome,” I growled, leaning closer to him. “You interested in filing jointly tonight, if you know what I mean?”
His eyes went wide and a look of horror spread across his face. “Are you… quoting tax documents at me?”
“It’s all I can do, honey,” I said, slightly slurring my words. “I’m a CPA, and it’s April. Twelve hour work days every day pouring over taxes has got my brain in more places than using an item on page 2a in Schedule C but only if it is less than the number on line 83. All I can do is drink my woes away and quote worksheet instructions.”
He took a drink, then looked at me, this time not with horror, but with a grin on his face. Then he said something I couldn’t believe:
“Was a full-time student at least age 19 but under age 24 at the end of 2017 and didn’t have earned income that was more than half of the child’s support?”
My mouth dropped open. I covered it with a hand, and then batted my eyes salaciously as it curled up into a smile. He shook his head and wiped his face as if coming out of a shock.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I’m a CPA too. I know what you mean by taxes taking over the brain. What I meant to ask is, do you have any kids?”
I leaned in on the counter and looked up at him. “Honey, my number of exemptions is one. And let me tell you: You may be able to take this credit if you, or your spouse if filing jointly, made (a) contributions, other than rollover contributions, to a traditional or Roth IRA–”
“I don’t need to hear any more,” he said, putting a hand on my arm. “I want to take this credit for sure.”
“Above the line or below the line?” I asked.
He leaned in to my ear and whispered, “Both.”
I gasped. “Double dipping! That’s… scandalous. I like it.” I slammed my empty glass down on the counter. “Now let’s go mail that oversized package of yours before I have to fine and penalize you. I’ll chip in for the extra postage.”
Needless to say, this exercise was an enormous challenge. It was so hard to get the sentences to even flow somewhat naturally together, and writing about anything not having to do with taxes would’ve been next to impossible.
That said, I think we still did a pretty good job. It just shows that you can find inspiration literally anywhere, so never be afraid to scope out new things, no matter how unpromising they may seem.
You can watch us write/read the story here.
After that we did a writing prompt and chat voted for this one submitted by Interficior: “An old tree watches as these funny little creatures called humans build a city around it.”
Funnily enough, when picking our prompt, I thought this was the easiest of the three that chat had to choose from. And yet when we wrote it, it ended up being almost as hard as our exercise.
I think part of the reason for that is because we decided to take a bit of a serious turn with it, which requires a lot more careful construction. I’m quite happy with how it ended up.
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: Pakutaso