SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

Welcome to Week 9 of the Friday Fiction Writing Challenge! Here’s a complete list of all the posts so far. Feel free to join in.

This week’s random word is: Wetsuit

As prompt words go, this one is full of possibilities—most of them wet. Although, for some reason, during the first five-minute sprint, I went dry. Super dry. Like desert dry.

Here’s my first sprint (unedited):

The scorching sun beat down on Charlie’s back as she emptied the contents of her backpack onto the sand. There wasn’t much. They’d dumped her in the desert with a knife, some water, a tube of superglue, and a fucking wetsuit.

She shielded her eyes with her hand and blew out a harsh breath. There was nothing but sand for miles. No help. No water. No one.

Charlie took the knife and cut the neoprene material into sections. If she glued the sections into long cylinders, she could carry extra water. Well, that all depended on if she could find some. But that was a problem for later. For now, it was enough to keep her moving.

She scrunched her bare feet in the searing sand. There was enough material left over to fashion some kind of shoe to protect her soles. The flipflops she’d had in the hotel before she was taken for her test were most likely still by her bed.

After finishing the above sprint, I left it for a day. I usually do the ten-minute break thing, but I had outlining work to get on with. So, I came back to read it today and to find something to spark the second sprint.

There are too many things intriguing to me in the first sprint. The above is far from perfect, but there’s so much in there that I want to work with. I love this character. Charlie’s definitely going to make it into a full story. I’m intrigued as to what’s going on in her story, why she’s in the desert, and who dumped her there.

I’m going to skip the second sprint this week. I think this is only the second time I’ve skipped the second sprint, but like the last time, I’m happy with the reason.

Thanks for reading!

HOW IT WORKS

1. Don’t think too hard on the noun; just write about it for five minutes.
2. Once the five minutes are up, walk away for about five/ten minutes.
3. Now, come back to the text and re-read it,
4. Pick out something that piques your interest and write about that for five minutes.
5. Be courageous and post your results to your blog. (Both sets of writing sessions or just the one, it’s up to you.)

RULES

1. Complete the challenge on your blog before 1700 UTC of the following Friday.
2. Link to the original prompt post and make sure to use the tag Genre Scribes so that we can see all the posts together in WP Reader.
3. Your text must be fiction (preferably one you publish in (or plan to).
4. No real-life stories.
5. The text can be dialogue, an interior monologue, a scene, flash fiction, anything… so long as it’s fiction.

Full information is on the Genre Scribes: Friday Fiction Writing Challenge page.