The challenge: 100 first-page story hooks in sixty days. Just the first page (or less), and it has to hook the reader to want more. I'm now into the home stretch, and it's been a very long and interesting ride. Today, in fact, I'll finish them all up. They're all there, on my hard drive, one hundred new story possibilities. Two months of hard work. And it was hard.
Ninety-five has actually been published, as part of 's taxing series of writing challenges.
Ninety-six comes from my writing notebook. I had the first line. Then I kept typing.
Yep, that's the magical secret.
Ninety-five:
That one was empty. He could take that one out.
John drifted his car slowly forward, coasting to a stop at the light, with the fancy new Audi just to his right. His left index finger lifted up on the switch and the passenger window slid silently down. Cross traffic passed in front of him, heavy for this time of day. But no one was looking. What would they see, anyway?
He clasped the smooth wood handle, hefted it, and cocked his arm back.
Ninety-six:
It’s really hard to have a bad day when you’re wearing purple alligator shoes. I was, however, giving it a shot.
Two slugs of bourbon, neat, warred with some seriously sketchy fish in my nethers. My wallet, my gun, and my good sense had gone to the bottom of the Lake With No Bottom, and the only thing that kept me from being there as well was the tiny set of fingernail clippers I kept in the lining of my $800 suit coat.
Oh, yeah. The coat. Currently functioning as a straitjacket as I lay in the cargo bin of the #84 bus from Mobile to Nashville. We oughta get there in about four and a half hours.
And it was only Tuesday.
~Cristof
P.S. This series is the brainchild of The New Creatives, which challenged us to create 100 of something as a way of attaining mastery of a particular art form (or beginning the process, more like). This is my attempt. #TNCmy100