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Challenge: Write a Short Story in a Week

Meadow337 said:
How about creating a story in the oral tradition which incorporates the following elements:

1. repetition of phrases to emphasize points or themes

2. interaction with the audience

3. strong rhythm and meter

4. music, costume, and props

5. idiomatic expressions

6. strong imagery

7. techniques such as onomatopoeia (creating sounds that imitate sounds found in nature)

It can be any length.
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Saw your post after I made mine. Sounds too challenging for me. I plead a severe case of head cold!
P.S: Could you post a sample of what you have in mind?
 
LOL and I was happily dumping it on Sparhawk.

Um .... fairy tales are a good example of an oral tradition. Hiawatha the poem is another with its repetition of key phrases etc.
 
Finish the story:

No one appreciates fairy godmothers. I give, give, give and do I even get a thank you in return? That's right, no. Well, now it's my turn. I'm going to ....
 
Gita V.Reddy said:
MY ENTRY

“No one appreciates fairy godmothers. I give, give, give and do I even get a thank you in return? That's right, no. Well, now it's my turn. I'm going to show them how it feels to be ignored and..exploited!” Myra snapped her wings open, flapped them hard and flew out of Fairy Land.....
Click to expand...

Great story!
 
Meadow337 said:
Never mind the typos LOL
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Typos are little rebels, determined to break into the world of perfect words and sentences. They know they have a presence and want to, no, need to be seen. They know they will be struck down, erased, deleted but they must have their place in a piece.
Of late writers, armed with Spell Check and Grammar check, have threatened the very existence of typos. But, whenever superior force is used to crush down a rebellion, the struggle takes the form of a guerrilla war.
A bunch of techie typos have designed a crude but effective software to track down points vulnerable to typo attacks.
One such point is keyboards used by people who type with a single finger. The rebel army knows that such a person is so busy finding characters on his keyboard that he has no glance to space at the monitor, and will easily miss the entry of the smart typo.
This my friend, is the grim story behind my typo. I'm sure the next time you see one, you will commiserate with me and not LOL!

*Not again! Line three from bottom: it's spare not space.
 
well I quite agree with you. Those blasted errors do have this way of waging guerrilla warfare on the innocent writer. :D
 
Yes typos are the worst things ever! Lol it dosn't matter how many times I reread what I have writen there always seems to be a few that get past me. :)


My short story is almost finnished. I am sure that I will be posting it soon :)

I injoyed both of the short storys.
 
A Simple Thank You Would Be Nice​
​

It was a windy blustery day in the land of Zoot when Fairy Godmother Elizabeth decided that she had had enough. She was traveling home from sorting out a huge mess in the Northern Mountains of Zoot and the weather was the last straw. Elizabeth stopped and sat down on a fallen tree trunk beside the road and said to herself, 'No one appreciates Fairy Godmothers. I give, give, give and do I even get a thank you in return? That's right no. Well now it is my turn. I am going to take a holiday, yes a nice long holiday and everyone can just sort themselves out for once!'

Elizabeth stood up with a determined look on her face and pulled her wand out of her sleeve and waved it over her head. In a flash of light she vanished and reappeared on a nice warm beach on some distant island. A beach house and a beach chair popped out of thin air and Elizabeth looked around herself and nodded. She tucked her wand back up her sleeve and sat down in the chair. With a little chime a multicoloured drink with an umbrella in it appeared on a table next to her chair.

On the first day of Elizabeth's vacation no one noticed that she was gone. On the second day there were a few grumbles from people that were upset because their wishes weren't being granted, but they did not give it anymore thought, assuming that there was just a backlog and that it would be sorted out in time. By the fifth day still no one had thought to ask where Fairy Godmother Elizabeth was or what might have happened to her. They just walked around with sour looks on their faces and complained.

Now although wishes were piling up and there was a small incident in the throne room with a lost prince trying to save the wrong kingdom, nothing major had happened since Elizabeth had gone on holiday. That is until the dragon appeared and started doing what dragons do best. He started off by burning the town of Gold into nice easy to carry chunks and then after gathering and making sure that his new horde was comfortable to sleep on and was done to his standard of perfection, his thoughts turned to the idea of a nice lunch. The memory of a huge herd of cows as he had flown into the Kingdom of Zoot made a huge gurgle in his stomach. The dragon took off to raid the King’s own cows.

Now you may be wondering what a Fairy Godmother has to do with a dragon but in fact, she has one of the most important jobs. She has to find and choose the hero that will fight and, in the end, chase the dragon out of the Kingdom. Without a Fairy Godmother there would be no hero, or for that matter, no Princess to motivate him to volunteer to be a hero.

Now as people started to notice and get rather upset about where Elizabeth was and why she was not doing her job, Elizabeth was sitting in a chair enjoying the summer sun and one of the best lunches that she had had in a long time. There was just no time to sit down and eat when you were a Fairy Godmother.

The dragon was now really starting to upset a lot of people including the King, not only had the dragon eaten half his cows but it had also stolen his daughter. Giving up on waiting for the Fairy Godmother to appear and fix things, the King started to send some of his Knights to go fight the dragon. None of then where ever seen again.

Running low on Knights, he posted a reward for anyone that could bring him the dragon’s head but those that were foolish enough to go and try to fight the dragon were also never seen again. However the dragon did stop raiding the cattle herds. Finally after weeks of trying and failing the King went to call upon Elizabeth in person to ask her why she was not doing anything about the dragon. The king traveled to the magical Forest of Yuck. It was only a short ride from the edge of Yuck to where Elizabeth's house was, and there on her front door was a note. It was pinned right at nose height so that anyone that approached the door would see it. In big capital letters the note said,

" TO THOSE IT MAY INTEREST:​
​
I, FAIRY GODMOTHER ELIZABETH, HAVE DECIDED​
TO GO ON HOLIDAY FOR AN UNKNOWN LENGTH​
OF TIME BECAUSE OF THE FOLLOWING REASONS​
MENTIONED BELOW.​
​
1. I AM OVERWORKED​
​
2. I AM UNDER-APPRECIATED​
​
AND​
​
3. ONCE IN A WHILE A THANK YOU WOULD BE NICE."​

There was a button under the note and under the button was a small piece of paper which had written on it in small letters,

"Push button if these things are happening:.

  • There is an attack of giant squid.
  • There are big green things with teeth in the throne room and the King can’t be found.
  • There is a problem with giant winged things terrorising people."

The King carefully reread the first note and the list, He scowled at the door as if it had just insulted him. He was not happy about anything that had had happened and was going to tell Elizabeth exactly what he was unhappy with when he saw her. He pushed the button. There was a beep and then a long pause while there was the sound of bees humming musically from the door. Finally there was the sound of a throat being cleared and then, 'This is Elizabeth, what is the emergency?'

The king took a beep breath and then set off on a long speech about all of the things that had gone wrong in her absence and about how she had to come and fix it all right away. There was a moment of silence after he had finished before Elizabeth said in a quiet but firm voice, 'No.'

'What do you mean no?' the King said incredulously.

'I meant just what I said, no, I shall not come and put out the fires and fix everything for people who are not polite enough to even say thank you.'

The King stood there staring at the door in shock. It had never occurred to him that Fairy Godmother Elizabeth would ever want or need to be thanked for all of the hard work that she did for the Kingdom. In fact he realised that he had never even thought about how much she did do for Zoot, she had simply always been there. The king suddenly felt sorry about the long speech that he had given Elizabeth and made up his mind to make sure that in the future things would be different, but first, 'Fairy Godmother Elizabeth, I am most deeply sorry for our thoughtlessness and from this day forward I will ensure everyone is thankful for what you do. Is there anything that I can do to make things right?'

There was a moments pause and then Elizabeth said with a smile in her voice, 'Well... a thank you would be nice.'

'Well then I, the King of Zoot, thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so patient with us, the people of Zoot for so long. And I would like to thank you for all of the hard work that you have done for Zoot and for all of us.'

On her sunny beach on the far off island, Elizabeth smiled and was happy. She had had quite enough of doing nothing and was happy to be going back to work. She was also thankful that things had changed. With a businesslike expression on her face, Elizabeth faced her door that was floating in mid-air and spoke into the button, 'So, I believe we have a dragon problem and a shortage of Knights?' as she stepped through it.

In the Kingdom of Zoot she startled the King as she appeared in front of him. He agreed that they had a vast shortage of Knights and far too many dragons. Within the next few days a hero was found and the princess was rescued. The dragon was booted out of Zoot and most of the town of Gold was rebuilt. But most importantly Fairy Godmother Elizabeth was never again under-appreciated and the King always remembered to say ‘thank you’ whenever she helped save the Kingdom.

THE END​
​
​
 
So who is next? I think we need to pick a name at random from the forum and ask them to pick a topic *evil laugh*
 
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