Business Card Fiction
This year, one of the classes I’ve been taking is Creative Writing. Sounds like a ton of fun, right? Well, it does to me, but so far, we haven’t done a heck of a lot of writing in Creative Writing, and what we have done is mostly nonfiction. But we are now finally beginning to write fiction, and I couldn’t be happier. Whenever I get the chance (and the story’s good), I’ll post what I’ve written on here. This first post was an odd prompt – we were given a picture prompt, the painting by George Tooker you see here, and were told to write a piece of fiction about it. Simple enough, except there was a catch – we could only write it on the front and back of a business card-sized piece of card stock. Not the easiest thing to fit a full plot arc on. I tried my best, and I think you’ll like it. Go ahead and read below!
The Bureau of Time
Walter shuffled forward in line. “Name, please,” the man asked.
“Walter Robinson.”
“How long are you requesting?”
“Eight years.”
The man behind the counter punched a few keys. He had the same face as everyone else behind the counters. That was for protection – there were dangers in this job. “I can’t give you that. At most, you have seven months.”
“Seven months!” Walter cried. “I need more than that!”
“I can’t give you more than that, sir. I suggest you live your life while you can.”
“Oh, you’ll give me more than that!” Walter pulled a handgun and pointed it right at the clerk’s face.
“I’m sorry sir,” he said without emotion. “I can’t help you.”
Walter pulled a trigger and the bullet punched a clean hole through the robot. He emptied the rest of the clip in the two guards coming toward him, also robots. As he was taken away, he heard the clerk say, “Enjoy your life, sir.”
And just for a bit of fun, here’s a picture of the front and back of the card, with a quarter for scale.
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23 Comments
very cool exercise and implementation There’s a serious story there trying to get out.
Thanks! I feel like that happens a lot when I have limited space or word count – I always try to tell more than can fit.
wow, this is remarkable. You should flesh this out a bit and make it a short, instead of a mini.
I want to read more!! Really cool story.
I love it
Sometimes the best stories can be told in a few lines. I would be interest to see more. I really liked it, great job.
Good short-short story. Cheers, @Gurdur
I hope you’ll let us know when The Bureau of Time is released. Great job! 😀
I like it. I think you can make it even shorter w/out losing anything, & add a bit of description near the beginning.
Hmm, interesting. What exactly did you have in mind?
What a fantastic job you did with that exercise in brevity! Seriously, the creativity you were able to encapsulate into so few lines is really impressive.
Eerie and imagination-grabbing! Even though it’s only a few short lines, you captured the essence of the story. Well done!
Just enough to grab you, hold you and pull you in! Excellent!
there’s more than one way to get what you want. you demonstrated that quite well in a tightly packed space. nicely done.
Love that!
I really love this. Great interpretation, original ideas. Good job!
Very good. I enjoyed it. there is a group, Prose3@writing classes.com or something like that, he’d fit in our prose3, we’re sci fi, horror and fantasy.
When I took English 101 I think, I did my cause and effect paper on the premise “washing your car makes it rain.’ It all started with a man named Noah who had a camel named Porsche. Have fun writing. It’s worth it.
love, LinnAnn
http://linnannpike.blogspot.com
The title is a book that I want to read…An intriguing little gem and a sound reminder of the potential all around us. Good work and thank you for sharing dude.
Brother, you NAILED it. An excellent and well told story. Well done, Zack. (May I call you Zack, or do you prefer Mr. Umstead?)
Mike
Thanks all for the great comments! You guys really blew this post up (in a good way!)
Nice work writing a story that matches the image.
Hey Zack! I agree with previous comments that you could really develop this story. You made me want to read much more. Great job.
You really did a great job of matching the story to the image without making it about the image, I seriously think you should expand upon this!