100 words for entry into the Wordstorm competition with 'a twist of the NT', no adjectives.
Barry stops grazing, sits on his haunches and twitches his pointy nose. Is it smoke? He swivels his ears like antennae and peers through the Spinifex. The bush is dark and quiet. He twitches some more. He can definitely smell smoke. Then suddenly the bush starts to crackle and bang. Barry, the Bilby is on the move. He gathers up his hind legs ready to canter. Like a stallion in full flight, he screams around the spindly gums, skids around an outcrop of rocks, trips on a root and slides to halt on the floodplain. He’s safe this time.
4 comments:
Eve says,
Wow! One hundred words. Good for you, Sue. You packed a lot in, and gave your story a NT flavour, as you intended. Plus, you fulfilled the prompt....
Not sure about making a bilby move like a horse, though.
Heather says:
Amazing how you can create that much image with 100 words! (I like the concept "Wordstorm").
The grammarian in me wants to warn you that technically you have 5 adjectives - "dark", "quiet", "hind", "full" and "spindly".
I agree with Eve re the horse metaphor not quite working, though I like the complex second-last sentence (followed by the simple final sentence).
A fine undertaking Sue for such restrictive rules. Our bilby is forced to deal with a bush fire and comes out victoriously. I'm with the other comments about the horse metaphors. For such a short piece, get deep into the bilby psyche and write from his world. (I don't know squat about bilbies but I'm assuming they're not very horse-like)
I like what you did with his ears and nose, having him testing the air and the sounds for danger. Do more of that from a bilby's POV.
Kerry says:
Nice little exercise, Sue. Interesting that we know there's a fire although it's never confirmed. You merely mention smoke, crackle and bang. Shows how few clues a writer needs to get a point across and the reader fills in the gaps with imagination.
Post a Comment