One good creative writing exercise is writing with a stipulation, something like, you can’t use the letter “a,” or you have to write a story with a sentient bag of chips.
One good creative writing form of torture is writing a story with FIVE stipulations!
During the last stream, the Wheel of Prompt-icality landed on “stipulation,” and chat voted that we write a story based on these top five scoring stipulations:
- Every 6 sentences a pigeon has to be appear somehow.
- One character must speak in riddles.
- There has to be a gratuitous advertisement somewhere.
- Sentences in each paragraph must either get progressively shorter or progressively longer.
- Every sentence must contain the name of a fruit or vegetable.
Watch the full video here or scroll down for the final story.
Here’s what we came up with to try our best to fulfill all five: (fruit/vegetables bolded, pigeons underlined)
Inside the executive’s office on the tenth floor of the New York Apple building, the advertising agent Steve pitched a new idea to his clients. They were serious men in serious suits the color of rotten potatoes, watching Steve with serious frowns. He had to make this proposal as juicy as possible, like a peach. So he decided to start with a cool-as-a-cucumber riddle. He just hoped it wasn’t too corny.
“Why is a pigeon like a writing desk?” he asked the men giving him sour grapes. One of the men looked like a wrinkly squash, complete with yellowed skin and dried-out-hair. The other two next to him were lean and silent like string beans, not moving their gazes from Steve for even a second. Squash lowered his gaze, readjusted himself in his chair, and then cleared his throat before speaking in a gruff voice that reeked of garlic and onions.
“Don’t care,” Squash said. “But so far, your presentation is the pits.”
“A pigeon is like a writing desk,” Steve continued, ignoring Squash’s remark, “because both are a sign of bad health.”
Squash and both String Beans narrowed their eyes in confusion, which is exactly what Steve wanted. He needed them to think he was a few grapes short of a fruit salad. Then he could prune them into exactly what he needed.
“People love pigeons,” he continued, keeping a strawberry-sweet tone, “just like they like their desks that are killing their spines. But where there’s trash, that’s where the flying rats flock the most, and where there’s a beloved writing desk that someone spends hours sitting at every day, there’s a spine ready to snap like celery.”
Without waiting for their response, Steve walked over to the window where there was a flock of pigeons rasin up into the air outside, and threw open the window. Immediately, the birds flew indoors, knocking over the window planter of chives and basil, cooing and chirping all around. They flapped frenetically below the ceiling, making the three couch potatoes shoot up to their feet.
“Stop this madness!” Squash screamed. He and the String Beans bent over, covering their heads with clipboards. Steve just watched them, smiling, knowing that his carrot-and-stick approach would soon be coming to its conclusion.
“You all were so busy getting worked up over a few bruises, you never noticed the rest of the sweet banana,” Steve said as the pigeons did exactly as he’d planned. “But now lettuce put that behind us and take a look at the fruits of our labor.”
Steve pointed to two desks that he’d prepared for this moment, one a kiwi-skin brown wooden monstrosity, and the other an eggshell-white rising desk sold by his clients. The pigeons were all convened on the brown one, cooing and pooping, turning its once-creamy brown into a spotted mushroom. The white desk, however, was empty and retained its cauliflower white.
“As it turns out, there’s a deadly chemical inside of the desks you make,” Steve explained, “worse than the arsenic in cherry pits. But we can easily turn those lemons into lemonade. The poison repels pigeons like a smelly durian.”
Squash and the String Beans slowly lowered their clipboard shields and stood back up straight, staring at the desks. They slowly walked over to them, as if what they were seeing was the apple of their eye.
“My god,” Squash said, “you’re right as rutabaga! We were so pigeonholed in trying to fix the poison, that we never thought to use it as a marketing advantage… we were comparing apples to oranges when what the people actually wanted was pineapple!”
“Grape job, Steve,” said one of the String Beans, coming over to Steve and shaking his hand. “We’re so glad you could turnip to this meeting today.”
After several more handshakes and words of a plum, Squash and the String Beans left the meeting room, leaving Steve alone with the desks and the pigeons. He slowly sauntered over to them, and squatted down, bringing his melon head to their level.
“Actually,” Steve said to you, the person reading this story right now, the one actually in the lime light, “the poison doesn’t actually repel the pigeons that much. You see, I actually spent the last month training these birds to fly on my command using grapes. How did I crack that coconut? Man, go to Skillshare!
“Skillshare is an online learning community where experts in all fields share their strategies in video-based content that is easy to digest, like a juicy watermelon slice. And of course, that includes pigeon training, where I found my inner peas. Register today with promo code PIGEONPRUNES to get one month free! You’ll be sure to guava good time!”
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 join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso (edited by me)