Good morning ladies and gentlemen!
Wow, it’s July’s challenge already. There’s only one more month to go after this until will find the winning writer for DAGNA’S WRITER OF THE YEAR!!!!!!!
Slowly but surely, you should find that you are able to vote for your favourite parodies that have been entered for June’s challenge by clicking here. For those of you wondering what the hell I’m going on about with the title to this month’s blog, allow me to explain.
Merce Cunningham is a name that I have written and spoken so many times as someone who studied contact improvisation at university. One of the incredible things I remember about reading and listening to lectures about the work of Cunningham was his use of chance. He would roll a dice to decide the lighting or structure of a performance at the tech rehearsal and allow the very nature of improvisation and fate intertwine. I decided to borrow this to engage an idea I’ve had for Novel Dreamers for a while and as such I give you my cunning plan…
Each writer will be receiving an opening and closing sentence that they must incorporate into their writing this month. They must weave a tale that get’s the reader from that opening gambit to the closing line by any means they want. The twist comes in when you find that I’ve pulled the writers into a pool and pulled their names at random to create an order which is as follows:
- Steve Archer
- Hannah Torrance
- Matt Beames
- Kyra Leigh
- Picto Pirate
- Leanne Pearce
- Kirsty Mealing
- Richard Leverton
After doing this, I requested from friends to offer opening lines to short stories and then numbered each entrance and pulled a line for each writer which I shan’t share here but they will be emboldened in the hand in pieces as you’ll see in the following example piece shortly. So each writer has an opening line, but what about the closing line? Well each proceeding writer is using the previous writer’s opening line as their own closing line, as such:
- Steve Archer Closes/Hannah Torrance Opens
- Hannah Torrance Closes/Matt Beames Opens
- Matt Beames Closes/Kyra Leigh Opens
This follows all the way along until Richard takes my opening sentence as his closing creating an infinite loop! It’ll become much clearer over the month as my challenge for the example piece is to try give an entire example of what I’m trying to do. The example you’re about to see is the short piece I’ve written with my opening line and my closing line/Hannah Torrance’s opening line. In 4 days time I shall upload my example piece for Hannah’s opening line to Beamesy’s opening line, culminating in a full text by the hand in weekend as I don’t have an example piece to write next month 😦 (more on that next month).
So until then, dear readers, enjoy the work so far of these incredible writers, put up with my example piece and following 7 pieces to come and above all, give these guys the votes they need and deserve!
Archer
Deadpooled 😉
You know it’s not going to be a great day when you wake up dead, and you can be fairly sure it’ll be a bad day when you wake up dead with a hangover, an empty bottle of tequila, and the head of the princess of Lichtenstein. Talk about your Hollywood wet dream! It’s everything a summer blockbuster needs according to the coke fuelled, beige imagination sporting calculators in suits. Luring opening line; zombies; The Hangover part fucking too many and a gritty realism with the head of some blonde bimbo with a huge black dildo being bit in two by the ensuing rigamortis. Warm Bodies eat your fucking heart out!
For what it’s worth, my name is Rick. Well it used to be Rick and as I’m apparently “undead” I feel like I can keep the moniker for the foreseeable future. Fuck off with your question of “is your last name Grimes?” before you even start. Yes, this is a zombie story but I’m far from playing brooding hero with the dark past; I’m more of your Wade Wilson type. I am a mercenary, who has been paid…
Was I even fucking paid?!
Right. I was hopefully paid by some royal family associate to come to Lichtenstein – which I thought was the actual place in Wolfenstein – to remove the current threat to international relations all round. What I wasn’t expecting was for Miss Uncongeniality over there had the keys to the new improved formula Neo Nazi nightmare that is the Lemming Strain. Ok, it’s not actually called the Lemming Strain but I didn’t pay attention in the briefing and people are dropping like… you get where I’m going; if you don’t, shut up and go play Lemmings. So boring shit, nothing new, every bloody story/film/game has some stupid government doing dubious things and a few months later everyone’s walking around like students at fresher’s week (bites and all). One thing we hadn’t expected was certain people have DNA that react differently to the strain and as such they are fucking unstoppable; like OJ Simpson unstoppable. Which is where you join me now with the door exploded open into splinters as a 6ft musclebound cowboy strode through the remaining frame.
“Puny ex-man is not doing good, no?” His English was as bad as his aftershave, though that may have been the roadkill of a mullet he was rocking.
“I did the Deadpool reference earlier, asshole. He isn’t an…” I feel like bad guys don’t leave time for witty repartee before or between punches. The air kicked out of my lungs quicker than a fat kid on a waterslide and I flew across the room before sliding down the wall that caught me. I looked up at the mountain of a zombie in front of me, not completely sure why I opened my mouth to begin with. These things were just unfair, yeah I said it! A small part of your DNA gives you the ability to retain your mental faculties after death and gives you enhanced abilities; great! Some people unconsciously choose to forgo mental capacity for increased physical capability and this brute of a man was one of those bastards. Guess who gets to try take him down?
I threw myself at the midst of the sinuous monster, he braced himself for my tackle. I expected this and leaped up, placing my foot on his upper thigh and launched myself over him before bringing all my weight down in my fist as it connected with his jaw and shattered (his jaw, haters please!) as I landed in a pretty badass Blade like one knee bow. Then he started chuckling and I turned to see him click his few remaining fragments back into place.
“You bwoke my jaw, fuckface” he glowered in hatred at me, finally pausing before swinging!
“I didn’t mean to. It was an accident.”
Novel Dreamers 