Assignment 1: Compelling Sentence
Post your sentence in "Comments" here, please. Deadline: Aug. 23.
posted by writer @ 8:58 AM
The Phantom Professor
Ah, college life. From both sides of the books--the learning and the learned--I share the stories. Send yours to ThePhantomProf@aol.com or leave them as comments here. Now sit up straight and if a cellphone goes off in class, it's mine. (Copyright The Phantom Prof 2007)
Previous Posts
- Writing Workshop Lesson 1: Getting It Done
- We start tomorrow
- Weekend off
- Pre-meds: Comments from a reader
- What's on the mind of America's youth?
- Wow! Re: Writers, woodwork, coming out of
- The Writing Class
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- Golden rule days
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Tuesday, August 16, 2005
246 Comments:
The real tragedy of Jimmy's life is that he believed his own myth.
Somehow, I became slave to my own creation.
Gnashing his teeth, he stabbed at the keyboard blindly.
holy crap, you can even see the lips!
I've just been told that I am not really crazy, it is just that my brain is falling out of my skull.
I used to carry a purple crayon.
It was an age of confession and spandex, and Birdie wore the garments well.
She wondered whether killing herself would really accomplish anything.
She knew what to expect, after all, she was not unaccustomed to pain and suffering.
"If I had met you just a few years earlier, we'd probably have little red-headed children running around by now," Patrick told Robin, gazing into her eyes.
The incessant ringing of the phone dragged him through the fog of sleep, snapping him awake to the glare of sunlight through the mini-blinds.
Looking, he noticed a swarm of bees heading his way. (CAROL HERMAN)
I do enjoy wearing spandex.
This is what it feels like to be so alone and feel so unloved.
She knew that one day these children would kill her.
Those terrible, terrific twos; I'm crazy for her/I'm crazy from her.
I had never seen someone chew gum with such exuberance.
I never told you how hard it was raining that day.
Billy held up the strand of barbed wire, so I could wiggle through.
You expect so much when you know you're having a baby, but losing your own health isn't on the list.
Do you ever wonder why your life has taken the particular course that it has?
That’s just wonderful - after everything else that’s gone wrong, why should this be any different?
Most people would be surprised to find their father was capable of murder.
Tapper
As Thomas looked out over the wreckage strewn before him, he couldn't help thinking to himself, "How do I keep getting into messes like this?"
My pants were stuck to me like Saran Wrap on pudding.
It was only at her end that she realized all she had missed.
Forget sex; depression sells.
Late May rain woke me early today.
It always began with the familiar sound of jingling keys and echoing footsteps.
I cried again last night.
He loved her from across the room.
He walked in like a star and out like a ghost.
Darl suddenly realized that the overwhelming need to empty his bladder, a need that, until now, had ranked up on the same pedestal as eating, breathing and procreation, no longer was his most pressing concern.
Two decades apart, two years in, too old and too young, too many emails, two too many grey hairs, too taboo, to Irving, to Fort Worth, too far away, and my two confused parents went through my mind when, to a certain someone, I finally got to say "I love you too."
Kids need to run and jump and fall out of trees. - BG
Call me Prometheus for I have been thrown from my once beloved society into destitution; I, a soigne scion, traded everything to give mankind a great but deadly opportunity.
Whoever’s got their finger on the laugh track button sure as hell isn’t paying attention to the good lines.
The King was frantic; his most trusted advisor was dead, and the best replacement had run away.
Any night that begins with you pressing your butt cheeks up against the window at Burger King must be a good one. TimChuma
I wonder, what does God dream?
The tiny flicker of an infant eyelash, it set her world aflame.
Dreaming, I close my eyes and float clear sighted, attaching the threads of inchoate dream to passing clouds fat with the wet promise of future storms.
For the first time in a thousand years, the mission bell was ringing.
The call for help came quietly, a whisper so soft I thought the voice was coming from inside me.
It was the first time I ever heard my uncle swear; it wouldn't be the last.
She was one of many and nobody at all.
Sunflower
elstiv said....
The envelope, once sealed like a vault, split as though it had always been open.
I have always wanted to conquer Andorra.
Brian could clearly hear the thoughts of the passengers in the plane flying overhead.
She was just standing there, completely enthralled with that thought.
Vala’s real life, like all real lives, began in the middle.
Michael had never felt such total fear.
I forgot about the peanuts.
Finally, after one hundred and thirty three years, those who wanted Blue Creek to become a real town won.
Hey, writers:
Compelling can also be funny. The hardest part of this simple assignment: Does this opening line make me (or any reader) want to read more -- the next sentence? The next page?
So far, some really good ones are jumping out at me. Simple always works. Humor works. I just hope you're all not rushing in turning in your homework. Think it over. You have till Tuesday! Loving reading them though. Bulwer-Lytton indeed. Pish-tosh. More later. I'm gainfully employed this week as an editor, so I'm reading these as I can get to them.
On that first morning, she walked up the tiny narrow stairs to the door that opened onto the deck and thought, "well, this is different".
She left in a huff and a sportscar.
It wasn't true what they said about your whole life passing before your eyes when you die, and that was Maggie's final disappointment.
Maggie Ann was not, as her mother once told her, a very likable girl.
She stopped running and collapsed, both frailly and heavily like a falling house of metal cards, and the flashing police cars encircled her.
Martha envied the ripples of light dancing off Amsterdam's Herengracht Canal onto the ceiling above her desk; they exalted in a freedom life had not allowed her.
I have started to sort the pens in my life; each little stash of pens is organized by colour - of the ink - first, and then by size of the nib, and ease of use.
I knew that, no matter what happened, I would never scream like that.
Mac was cotton candy: three seconds on the tongue and he was gone.
She had heard that from the roof you could see the top of the building where Anne Frank wrote her diaries.
Daddy and I went to see the runners.
Ted K.
Why is it doctors can't find anything wrong with people who have the worst kind of disease?
Ok, so maybe the hook hands weren't the best idea I had come up with but now that they're a part of me and there's all this pasta to eat I may as well dig in.
He knew immediately that he would never forget the expression on her face.
Annie sat on the edge of the unmade bed, staring at the spittle that had flung out of his mouth and now hung at the bottom of his chin.
I was waiting for my date: a fifty something someone with a missing limb
Someone had been revenging himself upon the graffiti artists of the neighborhood.
I fed the dogs the last bit of food we had in the house.
Ruth couldn't breathe.
Baghdad was a disappointment.
Browsing the selection, Ella pondered the delicious irony of naming a condom after one of the most prolific kings in history.
Z
Investigators found just two words on the black box: "Uh oh."
She grabbed the tinted spectacles from her bag and hid her colourless eyes.
There ought to be a law against a blank page. - kangarara
She waited with anticipation, poised on the toilet, listening for the regular and comforting sounds of running water and a struggle with the paper towel dispenser, then the overwhelming relief of retreating footsteps followed by a door opening and shutting.
Leaning into the wind, her cape streaming behind her, she arched her painful back, and crept up the hill.
I'm not sure what the lady in the store meant when she advised me to "take the blackberry, you won't regret it," but I knew then that I wasn't in New York anymore.
She used to wear sunglasses on the back of her head in the dark moments on the field, right before the sun rose.
If I'd've been smarter then, I wouldn't be nearly as smart now, although I might have had more in the bank.
She tried it once,which was plenty.
The last time I was at my sister's, I vomited in her fish tank.
I've always contended parenting is too important to be left to amateurs.
On August 3rd, 1978, Martin Hatchett was born with six fingers on his right hand and fifty years worth of slightly used memories.
I hadn't always lived in the city, so I knew enough to take over some cookies when she moved in next door.
Naked, she wasn't at all what I expected.
He slowly began to realize that the awful truth of human/reptilian hybrids, dominating the planet by way of mind-controlling the masses, would both chain him and set him free.
The man in the front seat was talking about murder again.
Samarra Al-Masoud, smelling of simooms.
Had I come all this way for this?
I hesitated for just a second before I pushed the teaspoon to the back of my throat.
At my 21st birthday dinner my mother left early, went home, made herself a cup of tea and swallowed a packet of pills.
Sadly for Des, his pants split long before he did.
They had barely hit the water before the old man hollered, "Back!"
It was Anne’s firm belief that most people did not escape the devil because they set their sights too low.
The pain began in a slow, piercing burn, much like being slowly lobotomized with a white-hot ice pick.
There was loneliness and then there were soft lips on my face, there was rusty Autumn sunlight, the long, cold dark at the end of the year, and the death of God to consider: this is how I meet Persephone.
Master Anselm reached forward and delicately touched the pendant hanging at Lia's throat.
The curmudgeonly tourist blasphemed at the Colloseum, "What this country really needs is a good demolition company."
"Is my irony killing you yet?"
Never in my life had I encountered such a cultured and politically correct group of whack jobs.
I glanced around, wondering if anyone had seen me sideswipe the car on the dark street.
BANG! BANG! BANG! “Federal Agents from the Bureau of Prohibition” shouts the agent. “Open the door NOW or we WILL open it for you”.
I posted this originally in the wrong spot. That also gave me a chance to make a couple of changes :)
How long might it be before the Newsprint becomes a fossil?
The first thing my mother told me about him was this: he photographed his food, capturing every meal for posterity before consuming it.
All she knew was: there was no need to blush.
In the time that I knew him he broke seven hearts.
I thought I could plan my life out until she died.
In that moment, she'd never felt so vulnerable.
Ouch, that one really hurt.
When I woke up, everything was back to normal, the way it was before.
As the hated short bus slowed for her stop, Jeremy's cold nose jogged her elbow.
I used to think that the day I got shot was the worst day of my life.
While it might have been a coincidence that her new boyfriend's last three vacations had been to countries torn apart by armed insurrections, Shannon was beginning to suspect there was more to the story.
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"I was listening to you, darling," he said, winding the teatowel around his hands, "I just didn't hear."
As her husband's pipe smoke danced eerily across the quaint cottage bedroom, Rae had the vague feeling she was being watched from somewhere outside.
Kelly McQuire appears to have it all.
In my teenage and young adult years, mine were the parents everybody loved.
"Tell me a story!" Cat said.
It was an interview I would not soon forget.
I had felt, on occasion, as though my actions were jeopardizing all I had built during the past 3 years
– her phone call confirmed how tenuous my position truly was.
CEC
I always cave in to Andy.
Her bones had been gnawed dry; her skin felt like paper made translucent by rendered grease; fine grains of sand scratched her eyeballs every time she blinked.
Ten months out of college and two years into what would become a fourteen year marriage, I was deeded the title of this book by a guy who had writing aspirations himself, but didn’t want the burden of a great title he wouldn’t do justice to.
Victor did not vomit...at first
The first time I saw him, he was looking the other way.
In Mexico I made it a rule to sleep with my students only after the midterm exams were graded.
I'm not going to say I was a good new cadet and I'm not going to say I was a bad new cadet.
Henry always felt dirty punching in his automated-teller machine passcode on those filthy, little keypads; he often felt that the only people left in the world still trading in cash were narcotics dealers, commercial sex workers, and himself.
She felt remorse, not for the act, but because he was driving too fast for her to tell whether she'd left a dent.
Staring at that blank page I wondered if I would ever have anything else to say.
In retrospect, things went awry long before she realized the woman the window seat was dead.
Our mother wasn’t the kind you went looking for if she went missing.
The appearance of sunlight in Susan's office was a daily reminder that the towers were no longer with us.
Fitness and nakedness isn't a bad combination, unless you're a large white guy.
Richard had a love-hate relationship with the smell of new mown grass; it reminded him of his father but that in turn led to other memories.
The sharp cramps and his gurgling stomach led Steve to an inevitable conclusion: sometime tonight, he'd be paid a visit by his old nemesis, diarrhea.
Uncle John rowed across the lake, and already Celia knew what he was coming to say.
As the World burned down around him, he shrugged and thought to himself "Well, it all had to end sometime..."
On the day after my mother’s 58th birthday, I returned the car I had driven for 8 years (to which she still held title), and never spoke to her again.
He fought because I had taught him to fight, then he ran because I had taught him to run.
Meredith Daniels let out a sigh as she looked at the disaster that was unfolding on her classroom floor.
Amarius stood silently in the darkened alleyway, the moon casting shadows
over the rooftops; illuminating stark silhouettes of boxes, papers, and debris
littering the area.
tm
They say that things happen for a reason, but what they don't tell you is that sometimes it's a pretty piss-poor excuse for a reason.
She became my cellmate on Ash Wednesday, and by Pentecost it was clear: Rabbi Mara Grabina couldn’t control herself when it came to the minor prophets.
I heard you had committed suicide.
That morning, as he'd done every morning since the end of the world, Tod reached over and gently touched his new wife to make sure the angels hadn’t taken her in the night.
Calling a phone number he knew had not worked in over thirty years, he still hoped she would answer.
The low down halls were dark and dank, smelling of cows and chaos.
I thought that instead of posting a first sentance I would list the sentences above that I enjoyed most.
She became my cellmate on Ash Wednesday, and by Pentecost it was clear: Rabbi Mara Grabina couldn’t control herself when it came to the minor prophets.
If I'd've been smarter then, I wouldn't be nearly as smart now, although I might have had more in the bank.
The lemon was moldier than it had a right to be.
I used to carry a purple crayon.
She knew that one day these children would kill her.
She tried it once,which was plenty.
The last time I was at my sister's, I vomited in her fish tank.
Never in my life had I encountered such a cultured and politically correct group of whack jobs.
Thank you all for sharing!
Even as the old warship jumped away from the onslaught, the commander knew this fight was far from over.
Alone, at a depth of 900 metres beneath the surface of the icy South China Sea, the engineer of the military submarine suddenly saw something on his radar screen that he didn't expect to see for at least the next three days: a pulsating dot, indicating he was not, after all, alone.
This is my favorite so far:
"Richard had a love-hate relationship with the smell of new mown grass; it reminded him of his father but that in turn led to other memories."
Last Tuesday I had a devoted husband, a cute house in Alexandria, and I had never killed anybody.
The cats had been acting peculiar for a week when it began.
I wish you knew without me having to tell you.
I'd never found him more attractive than when he was covered in cooking oil with scrambled eggs in his hair surrounded by five energetic sixth graders.
Pity is a privilege; please don't abuse it.
Might I add two:
Where does one begin when the beginning is lost like the war?
To her family, Rita was a whore, but to Miles, if Rita was a whore she was the sweetest whore he had ever known, and the only one he had ever loved.
When I last wrote, I was spending time with the Christian Scientists.
The rain came like a million demons pissing from a black heaven.
Dear Reader, I would like to apologize for the following account.
The story always starts the same way.
I'd reached the pinnacle, and it was time to move on.
Her entire life was there, folded neatly in an innocent-looking manila envelope.
My pen was out of ink again.
In a flash of light and in a cloud of smoke he hit the stage running looking out at all his fans and promptly tripped over a dead guy.
Psychologists don’t come any more clichéd than Eugene.
I wish you could have seen it then.
The trees were walking.
It wasn't until the second time she walked into her room to find the strange woman sitting on her bed that she questioned her sanity.
Keiper says he called God's retribution down on Oklahoma during the Spring of 1954, and it's just taken this long to work.
Alice walked through the office, cheeks burning as she heard conversations drop away as she approached, and hushed words rapidly spoken as she passed.
Colonel Mustard was a very civilized dog.
The doll was broken in the most unusual way (not body part by body part, but shattered, smashed, deformed).
Throughout the 1990s, a number of sociologists and political scientists argued that the political significance of social identities and social cleavages had declined, particularly in advanced industrial democracies, due to the forces of individuation and fragmentation inherent in modern life.
-ECC
Slowly approaching the city gates, Hamed began to fear that what he was compelled to do would not be so easy, or even a good idea for him, an ordinary shepherd.
That ratty old cotton rag she tied like a tourniquet around her forehead usually kept the horrific headaches and their accompanying demons at bay, but not this morning.
"It's not that I don't love you," she sounded so rehearsed, "I'm just not IN love with you."
-optimistic
Being a star quarterback at a Texas high school is usually good for landing the hottest cheerleader after the game, but when a second one walked through the door to join them, life suddenly got a whole lot better.
She locked the door as she did every night, thinking to herself yet again, someday – someday this place will be mine.
“Alright people, one more time facing upstage, please – no, Warren, your other upstage!”
She worked in four dimensions; her media were wood and rust and the wear of time.
Somewhere above the waste the sun beats futilely on the wall of toxins with clenched fists.
There is, in life, a comfortable monotony...a complacency...that with ghastly consequence may be pierced and shattered by even the most accidental of indiscretions.
When she realized her mistake it was already too late.
To prepare for political discourse, I must crystalize my current opinions on the key issues of today.
"Even though you'll have to kill me, tell me."
I believe I died today.
On his 85th birthday I gave him a large gift-wrapped box and a card that read, "Grandy, I've always wanted to give you the world and now I can."
In a perfect world, there would be a warning before you blunder into the orbit of a sociopath.
Of all the cliches he thought he would actually experience, the phrase "When monkeys fly out of my butt!" was pretty close to the bottom of the list.
i wanted to write a sentence, but the words escaped me, no, were beyond my grasp, no, were floating on the foggy parameters of my mind, no----it didn't get written because i'm just too lazy to think about it. phew! (is that two sentences?)
It's never been this dark.
His mouth was twisted in a perpetual smile.
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