Learning to write a little beside the rules

I recently discovered a call for submissions to a one sentence anthology. Each story could be no more than 350 words long but it had to consist of only a single sentence.

I know I can write a run on sentence, but not breaking them up proved to be a lot harder than I had expected. My efforts to keep what I write from running on and carrying my mind away are, at least partially, working. This was a lot harder than I expected.

One of the biggest things I noticed was that I would lose the thread of what I was trying to write when I tried to carry things on without breaking them up. How this is possible, I just don’t know. You would think that keeping a sentence together would lend itself to carrying on the same thought better than breaking it up but in my case that just isn’t how it worked.

The submission guidelines also stated that each author could submit up to three pieces. I wrote six, so that I could select what I thought were the best three of the group.

By the time this post goes up, the submission period will be closed. If you would be interested in seeing it, and the examples that they posted, you can go to, http://www.mbennardo.com/index.htm and look around or go directly to the blog post at, http://www.mbennardo.com/blog/2012/12/open-submissions-one-sentence-stories/

While the post says that I can post my submission on here, I want to wait until I hear something to post the three that I submitted. However, I have no problem sharing the other three with you now. I hope you enjoy them.

L. E. White

#1 Rambling Fear

I sit here now, to tell you of things that ought not to be mentioned in polite and civilized conversation,  and find my tongue struggling to select those words which will best describe to you, dear listener, the depths of darkness and despair to which this tale will fall; for fall it will and in so doing, we see not the lengthening of shadows or the spilling of blood, but rather the subtle symmetries and distinct junctions that have forever separated the beauty of mathematics and the extraction of true essence from the common mind and in so doing, leave the outer realms, those of dreaming, nightmare and vision, beyond the contemplation of the narrow, closed-minded and strictly scientifically minded individuals who do not partake in the pursuit of those things, for things they must be considered, which shall be forever unnamed by men and yet shall be sought out by formula complex and alien, that they may, on no more than their own merit, suffer the attentions of, not darkness, though without doubt that word does seem to fit, but rather the progenitor of darkness, and in this telling, I hope to impress upon you the folly of seeking that which is unnamed; for in names, there is power and in the naming, a measure of control, such that the unnamed is also that which may not be controlled, and in that case, is the only consistent, undeniable and unchanging force which we know, remembering that in man, the most fearful and dangerous thing is fear of the unknown, which is exactly, dear friend, what has been released.

 

#2 Without

It was difficult to keep my focus on what I had to do, but that is to be expected when one is faced with the prospect of a grim and terrible death the way that I am as I chant and work, raising the power, casting the spell, opening the gate to a dark, quiet and hollow land that sits beside our world without actually being a part of it, an alternate world that is only seen in deepest dreams by a special few but that I discovered and learned, oh cursed knowledge, about in my nightmares while losing the ignorant bliss that would have kept me from allowing these things that wiggle and twist their way into our world through this magical portal, and in allowing them to come here, I am killing everyone and everything because I can’t bear to see the rest of you enjoy the happiness of daily life without her beside me to hold my hand, breathe my name and look into my eyes; so I will do what no other has done, I will share my pain with the world, allowing everyone to suffer as I do because I am, at heart, to selfish to go on without her while all of you have each other.

#3 Gift Wrapped

As Tammy rolled out the paper, she thought back to other Christmases, to other gifts that she had wrapped and to the happy surprise of her family as the opened up exactly what they wanted; it didn’t matter if it was a new bike, or a new set of golf clubs, Tammy went to great lengths to be sure that Santa never disappointed, that he never came close and that he never almost got it right; no, for her family, only a perfect gift would ever do which was why she now picked up the rose clippers and walked over to the struggling form of the pretty young secretary that her husband had been screwing for the past couple of weeks, though he didn’t know that Tammy knew about it, and sheared off one of her fingers, carrying it back to put it into a little black box before setting it on the paper and neatly forming sharp creases so that the corners of the package would look crisp and professional; the packages had to look good, even though there were over a dozen of the boxes to be filled and wrapped, because when it came to gift giving, to really giving the gift that someone obviously wants, the presentation was almost as important as the contents.

 

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