Hello, and welcome to Week Eighteen!
Special note for new subscribers: You can skip to the bottom of the page if you’d like to go directly to the prompt.
Eighteen weeks! Hard to believe we are already more than one third of the way through our year of 52 prompts. (Yes, there will another year of 52 prompts after this one…if I can think of that many.) You all have written so many stories! As always, thank you for being here and for playing along with me. In the immortal words of the ever-fabulous Sandra Bernhard, “Without you, I’m nothing.”
This week, we’ll be working with another story form:
The numbered story.
We’ve played around with form already—remember when we wrote stories in the shape of a letter back in Week 8? Or when we wrote a story in seven sentences back in Week 2? There are so many forms a story can take!
So—a numbered story. Here’s how it goes:
In a numbered story, you number your sentences (or your paragraphs) like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on. You put the numbers right on the page, as though you are making a list from your sentences. That’s it.
This form seems deceptively simple. All you have to do is number your sentences (or paragraphs) as you write. Easy, right? Well, yes, in a sense. But the very fact that the sentences are numbered makes each one seem to count more. To carry more weight. Your sentences can’t hide this way. Each is equal to another.
Let’s look at a couple of examples.
The first is called “This is How You Leave Him,” by Holly Pelesky, published online at monkeybicycle.net. Go have a read! NOTE: Their site seems to be down this morning! Bummer! Hopefully, the link will work very soon. Sorry about that—it worked last night. (New people: Click on the hot pink story title to go directly to the link.)
Do you see what I mean about the weight of each sentence in a numbered story? Some of the sentences are strange—they begin with a small letter. One sentence toward the end is only a fragment of a sentence. These all help add to the feeling of this woman’s broken, fragmented life—or at least I think they do. None of the sentences are extraneous.
Here’s another story for you to look at:
It’s called “Shit To Do with a Wedding Dress,” by Angela Readman and can be found at Smokelong Quarterly. This story is both a “numbered story” (it has sentences that are numbered) and a list story (it’s a list of… what to do with an unneeded wedding dress). Take a look.
I happen to love this story—the way it takes us on a journey through grief without saying the word “grief.” In fact, the story never tells us what happened, though we somehow understand that the dreams that come with a wedding dress don’t always come true.
THIS WEEK’S PROMPT
Okay, time for your own numbered story!
Here are some possible titles for you to play with (or feel free to come up with your own!):
“Ten Reasons Why…..”
“The Nine Sins of…..”
“Eleven Ways to…..”
“Twenty Things to Tell Your….”
“Top Ten Ways to….”
“Ideas for Making a …..”
“Special Topics in….”
“Seven Times I Tried to…”
“What to do Instead of…”
You can write your story as a list, the way Readman did with the wedding dress story.
You can simply number your sentences, as Pelesky has done.
You can also write in numbered paragraphs, if that seems to fit your story better.
See you in the Comments!
A quick note on accessing earlier prompts: Older posts/prompts are behind a paywall. If payment to access those prompts is a financial difficulty for you, send me a message and I will comp you a subscription, no questions asked.
Bathroom at the Blue Moon
1. In the stall, snorting off the back of our hands.
2. Hair sticking to our scalps, to our foreheads, to our ears and necks.
3. We taste of salt, every bit of us wet and stinging, our limbs so loose we could collapse, we could snap back into place, we could toss our arms to the ceiling.
4. We’re good, we are so good, we are beyond good.
5. Our levi’s hang at our hips, our tits are high and tight on our chests, we wear tiny t-shirts that show our bellies, the skin so smooth and tender.
6. We are clinging to each other.
7. Our teeth so white, our gums so pink.
8. Slick as newborns, eyes flashing, throats on fire.
9. We splash ourselves with cold water.
10. We leap like the baby deer we are back into the bar where all the hunters eye us, hoping for a shot.
On Tour with My Mother
1. Iron Springs. She jumps on the sofa and gives everybody the finger. We drive off without her, and then return and finally she gets in the car.
2. Soap Lake. She puts mud all over her body and sits at the edge of the lake with the fat ladies. At night, there’s a bonfire and she dances and dances with Danny’s dad.
3. Penticton. We swim in the pool while she stays inside the hotel room with the shades drawn.
4. Portland. That’s the house she grew up in. But then everybody died and she became an orphan. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
5. The Space Between Her Legs. That’s where you came out. Right there. She points so you can’t miss it.
6. Her Bed. When she yells for you to come, you have to get under the covers with her and she’ll press your head to her body. She’ll smell like darkness.
7. Your Body. This is part of her comedy routine. Your face! Hahahhahaha!!!
8. The Seventh Floor. Where they take her, more than once. She comes home with decoupaged art. Van Gogh bridges and flowers. For a while, she is calm.
9. [Fifty-odd years with no tour dates.]
10. Cemetery on 145th near Northgate.