16. Odds and Endings
This last set of challenges will make you think about endings. Most writers find it difficult to end a story. You don’t want to wrap up loose ends too neatly, yet you want resolution. You want the finale to feel like a natural progression of the story, like it belongs, and yet you want it to stretch beyond the world of the story into a larger world. If your ending circles back to the beginning, it can make the story feel complete. Yet you don’t want to repeat the beginning. Finding the perfect way to end a story can feel like a formidable task. Practice helps.
Now get started writing!
347. User Guides
Suggested time: 30–90 minutes
This challenge works best as a game, with several players.
Each player should provide one or two small, odd objects; for example, an old key, a letter opener, a nutmeg grater, a thimble, a toy, or an eyelash curler.
Place all the objects in a box. Randomly give each player an object from the box. Then each player must find a peculiar purpose for his or her object and write a user guide for it.
Tell everyone to have fun with this challenge.
348. Least Organized
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Write about what you are least organized about. Are you compulsively neat in some areas but a slob in others? Do you have one dresser drawer that’s always a mish-mash mess?
...the world is mud-luscious...the world is puddle-wonderful – e. e. cummings
349. Like the Back of My Hand
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
You’ve surely heard the saying “I know it like the back of my hand.” It means you truly know something, just like you know the back of your hand. But do you really know the back of your hand? There are two ways to tackle this writing prompt. You can describe the back of your hand from memory (don’t cheat and look at it). Or, if that doesn’t appeal to you, write about something that you know so well that you know it like the back of your hand.
350. About Me, Briefly
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Write one sentence that sums up who you are.
351. LOVE
Suggested time: 1–5 hours
Love. Listen to songs and you’ll think you understand: “All you need is love, love.” “Love makes the world go ‘round.” “The love you take is equal to the love you make.”
But what is love? In 1000 words or less, state what love means, what it feels like, and why it’s so talked about.
352. Penny for Your Thoughts
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
When someone asks you what you’re thinking, what do you say? What are you thinking right now? Write about how you’d respond if your friend said, “A penny for your thoughts.”
Did you know?
As a sign of deep mourning, ancient Egyptians would shave their eyebrows when their cat died.1
353. World Peace
Suggested time: 15–45 minutes
What can we do to engender world peace, meaning freedom and happiness for all nations of the world? Write down your ideas and describe why they might work.
354. Knees Knocked
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Write about a time when you were so scared that your knees knocked together. What happened and how did you react? Describe this event, with over-the-top details.
355. Recurring Dream
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Describe any dream that you’ve had again and again. Is it a dreamy dream or a nightmare? Interpret the dream and tell what it symbolizes.
356. Obituary
Suggested time: 30–90 minutes
Write your own obituary. You might start with a six-word memoir; watch “Six-Word Memoirs: Video Story” for plenty of fun examples. Use those six words as a guide for what you write in the obituary.
Typical obituaries start with an announcement of the death, including the name of the deceased, their hometown, their age, and sometimes the cause of death. Next follows biographical information, such as interests, profession, schools attended, travels, awards, and other noteworthy milestones. The conclusion tells who survives the deceased and provides information for any ceremonies. Will you have a memorial? Be buried? Have your ashes scattered to the wind?
357. Epitaph
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Write the words you would like inscribed on your gravestone.
Here are the epitaphs of a few famous authors and artists:
• William Butler Yeats: “Cast a cold Eye/ On Life, on Death./ Horseman, pass by!”
• D.H. Lawrence: “Homo sum! the adventurer.”
• Thomas Jefferson: “Author of the Declaration Of American Independence, of the Statute Of Virginia for religious freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia”
• John Donne: “Reader, I am to let thee know, Donne’s body only lies below; For could the grave his soul comprise, Earth would be richer than the skies.”
• Benjamin Franklin: “The body of B. Franklin, Printer, Like the cover of an old book its contents torn out, and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be wholly lost, for it will, as he believed, appear once more, in a new and more perfect edition, corrected and amended by the Author.”2
358. Bucket List
Suggested time: 1–3 hours
Do you have a list of what you want to do and accomplish before you kick the bucket? Travel the world? Swim in the Aegean Sea? Tango in Tahiti?
Record 100 items on your bucket list.
I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. – Mark Twain
359. Three Days of Twitter
Suggested time: 1–3 days
If you don’t already have a Twitter account, you’ll need to create one for this challenge. Set up an account on Twitter. Upload a picture, and add a short bio.
Tweet at least ten times, with original content, during a 72-hour period. Retweet if you like, but that won’t count as one of your ten tweets.
If you’re new to Twitter and not sure what to tweet about, here are a few suggestions:
• Good movies
• Video games
• Sports
• Favorite places
• Travel tips
• Ponderous questions
• Cool photos
• Interesting books
• Inspirational videos
You can find more information about Twitter and microblogging at www.Write4Web.com.
360. Write a Process
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Write about a process that you learned as a child, and write it for kids. For example, you might write about learning to ride a bike, or wash a car, or cut the grass, or tell a lie without getting caught.
...life’s not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis – e. e. cummings
361. Hair
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Describe what you like, or don’t like, about your hair.
Did you know?
Cimetière des Chiens, or Cemetery of Dogs, is thought to be the world’s first pet cemetery. It opened in Paris in 1899, and is the final resting place of Rin Tin Tin.3
362. Secret
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Do you have a secret? Is it something you’ve never told anyone?
Frank Warren begins his book PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives by stating, “In November 2004, I printed 3000 postcards inviting people to share a secret with me: something that was true, something they had never told anyone.” Thus began an amazing project, with anonymous secrets shouted to the world in books and on the blog PostSecret.
Take a look at the secrets posted on the web or published in any of Frank Warren’s books. Be careful, though, that you don’t spend way too much time mesmerized by other people’s secrets!
Write your secret on one side of a postcard or note card, and draw a sketch of it on the reverse side.
363. Blog
Suggested time: 1–3 hours
Write a blog post on a topic of your choice, or select one of the following suggestions for your topic:
• What will the World Wide Web look like in five years?
• Are blogs literature?
• If you were forced to write one blog post a day on any topic, what would it be and why would you choose it?
• If you had to put only one bumper sticker on your car, what would it say?
• What sport or athletic activity do you enjoy? What are the main benefits of the sport?
364. Happy Talk
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Jakob Nielsen calls the introductory text on web pages “blah-blah text,” and he says, “Kill the welcome mat” (read “Blah-Blah Text: Keep, Cut, or Kill?” at www.useit.com/alertbox/intro-text.html). Steve Krug, in Don’t Make Me Think, calls it happy talk and says, “Happy talk must die.”
Find a website that is filled with happy talk—congratulating the reader on buying a product, welcoming the reader to the home page, or just filled with blah blah blah blather. Rewrite the text, removing all the happy talk.
Did you know?
In 2009, drivers in Samoa switched from driving on the right side of the road to driving on the left side. This was the first time in 40 years that a country had switched driving sides.4
365. Before I Die
Suggested time: 10–15 minutes
Artist Candy Chang likes to turn public spaces into community bulletin boards. The death of a loved one inspired her “Before I Die” project. On the side of an abandoned house in her New Orleans neighborhood, she put up a huge chalkboard that was filled with rows of the fill-in-the-blank sentence, “Before I die I want to _____________.” The wall filled with statements: Before I die, I want to become a pirate. Before I die, I want to stop worrying so much. Before I die, I want to be a mother. Before I die, I want to travel all over Ireland. Before I die, I want to dance a waltz in Vienna.
Now there are Before I Die walls around the world—in New Zealand, in China, in the United Kingdom, in Peru...
First, watch Candy Chang’s TED Talk, “Before I die I want to...”
Then, if there’s a Before I Die public art installation near you, visit it and write down the top priority from your bucket list. If there isn’t one near you, write the statement for yourself. Then write three paragraphs explaining why you want what you wrote.