Bones Writing Exercises

6/16/08:

Finish these sentences: Love is... How I wish... Baby, please... Only a fool... When we’re together, I... Then use this sentence as the first line of a scene.

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L.

So, while I'm waiting for inspiration to strike for the newest exercise, thought I'd try my hand at one of the older prompts, and this one looked like fun....how many sentences beginning with 'at least' can you write in 5 minutes?

At least she didn't say no.
At least the gun was pointing in the other direction.
At least he told her about the spinach caught in her teeth before the interview began.
At least he hadn't lost every cent this time.
At least she cried when she broke his heart.
At least he forgave her for not being strong enough yet.
At least he had a child to love.
At least he had a child to be proud of him one day.
At least she wasn't responsible for a child.
At least they hadn't destroyed their partnership.
At least he hadn't eaten the lobbyist.
At least they had time for pancakes before the shooting started.
At least they still met for coffee. Sometimes.
At least she remembered that he was allergic to peanuts.
At least that is what she thought he said.
At least that was the way he remembered it.
At least she still had her work.
At least they caught him.
At least they had time for one more drink.
At least didn't make a mistake. This time.
At least he remembered her birthday.
At least he told her the truth.
At least she could have been embarrassed.
At least she could have tried to understand.

Time's up....so one more.....

'At least five steamboats' wasn't nearly enough.

At least he told her about the spinach caught in her teeth before the interview began.

LOL, AnaG.

The prompt for today:

Alternate universe.

L.

Yay! Another prompt!
This tidbit originally started out different, but the prompt prompted me (??) to rework it and post it here. It's an experiment with second person POV, it's meant to be humorous and it's not 100% IC I will gladly admit, but hey, it's fluff, and we can always use more of that to cheer us up, right? It grew from an Ally McBealism.

One gloriously sunny afternoon--it must have been about eight months into your partnership--you and Angela sat on the steps outside the Jeffersonian; knees drawn up and arms slung around your legs, looking all of sixteen years old again.

But your private thoughts as well as the topic of conversation were decidedly more adult, while you both admired Booth playing shirtless volleyball on the lawn as a pastime, with Hodgins and other squints on their lunch break, the sun painting a very aesthetically pleasing picture of honey-gold skin and sinewy muscles under his wifebeater.

"Oh!" Angela sighed lustfully, "How can you work with that gorgeous hunk of man every day and remember any of your professional training...or your name?"

You knew her statement was harmless fun, because she was head over heels for that cute singer—but that didn’t mean she’d suddenly gone blind.

You snickered quietly, but refused to be baited and shrugged. "I’ve got it memorized. It's my job."
You flubbed your words more often than you liked, actually. Not to mention all the times when there was no explanation for that fact that you remained speechless when you could easily think up a dozen comebacks afterwards.

"And look how wonderful the man is, always taking care of you, making sure you eat when you forgot to again? Making you laugh. Opening doors for you and putting his hand on the small of your back…”

She mimicked the gesture and you had to repress a shiver. It’s not that you were averse to Angela’s tactile habits, not in the least, but anyone else’s hand there just felt…wrong.

“Coming all the way out to the desert at your beck and call, rescuing you from an abductor, always looking out for your safety…” she continued.
Too bad it often felt more dangerous than safe to be around him.

“He’s just a colleague. How many guys like him are too busy just being professional to care so much about their co-workers. How amazing is that?" she extolled.

You listened with growing amusement. Well, *somebody* has a crush on Booth...

"He's a nice guy," you conceded cautiously.

Angela stared at you, wide-eyed, sighed irritably and punctuated every other word in her next exclamation with wide, exasperated arm gestures, your constant denial and subterfuge driving her crazy.
"Can I for the love of God please just ONCE hear you admit that your partner is smokin' HOT??"

Okay, let's hope that wasn't loud enough to be overheard on the lawn...

You seemed to remember your best friend pressing you on this issue before, about how denial just wasn't a healthy way of dealing with things. But you also made it to clear to her, repeatedly, what your position on the subject was.

"I just don't think it would be..." You fumbled for the right word. "...Appropriate for me to say that."

She frowned. "Huh?"

"Well, he's my partner. We work together."

"Well, I wouldn't kick him out of bed, co-worker or not," she provoked, with an impish grin.

"Angela!" you chastised but grinned back nonetheless, "I don’t think your boyfriend would approve.”

She stopped smiling and searched your face for long moments, but then suddenly a twinkle appeared in her eyes.

"Okay, let's try a little thought experiment. Suppose you and he didn't work together--"

"But, we do," you protested weakly.

"I know. But this is alternate universe, okay? Not real, just pretend," she insisted and raised her palms appeasingly. "Bear with me."

She patiently started over. "So, suppose you weren’t partners and you and he were stuck together on a deserted island..." She inserted a suggestive pause and a prompting hand gesture.

Then it dawned on you where she was going with this weird AU experiment. Your eyes went back to the sculpted body stretching, catlike, out to reach a ball, and suddenly the truth came tumbling from your lips like Niagara Falls.

"Oh, yeah, it would be a completely horizontal way of life."

You missed the smirk on her face completely.

6/23:

What's the best advice a given character(s) ever received?

L.

shipperatheart, I really liked your story! Very cute & fun to picture!

6/25 (Photo Prompt):



Hope that inspires someone.

L.

Based on Lerdo's 6/25 visual prompt.....I could never decide if the hand in the picture was pressing into something or pushing outward.....so, in the end, I wrote one of each.....

She went back the next day, not knowing why she felt drawn to the place or why she had to go alone. There was nothing left to learn.

Yet there she was, sitting next to the hole in the ground wondering how it could seem so large now. Only yesterday she had thought it was the smallest place on earth.

She started to rise but stopped when she noticed the small indentation in the soil next to her. It was most likely left by one of the crime scene techs. Maybe Angela. Hodgins. There were so many people that there was no way to know. It was foolish to think otherwise.

Foolish. But she believed it was her mark. She closed her eyes, remembering the feel of the soil compacting beneath her palm, the sweet air flowing over the back of hand. She hadn’t understood the extent of her fear until then, the moment she knew she would live.

She slowly leaned over it, felt the silt against her fingertips and then destroyed every trace of the handprint in the coal gray soil.

***

He reached for the light, trying to shake the remnants of the nightmare still clinging to him. Maybe that was the problem. The darkness reminding him of what it must have been like.

But when he leaned back against the pillow and closed his eyes, there it was again. The image of her hand pushing up through the soil. He could feel the fear and the hope as it pushed against the dirt and gravel.

Then in the instant before it broke the surface, grains of sand away from the light and air, it stopped. He could see the length of the fingers, the curve of the palm molded in the coal grey soil and he knew that he had failed her.

AnaG,
Well-done, that was amazing! Flowed like a charm, very evocative and it was so incredibly ANGSTY! You really got into their heads and into how they experienced the moment in their memory. And very interesting, doing another take with the inverse image.

Today's Exercise: NOCTURNAL

Finish the story. Start with: He haunted the night like a...

Lyric prompt:

"Blizzard Of '77"
by Nada Surf

In the blizzard of '77
The cars were just lumps on the snow
And then later
Tripping in 7-11
The shelves were stretching out of control
On a plane ride
The more it shakes
The more I have to let go
Now the signals
Still getting all mixed up
We're always doing damage control
But in the middle of the night I worry
It's blurry even without light
I know i have got a negative edge
That's why I sharpen all the others a lot
It's like flowers or ladybugs
Pretty weeds or red beetles with dots
[chorus]
I miss you more than I knew
[repeat]

Enjoy, fellow writers.

L.

Those are gorgeous lyrics L *scurries to find song*

TemperTemper wrote:Those are gorgeous lyrics L *scurries to find song*

It's a lovely song. If you want it, [Only admins are allowed to see this link] it is.

L.

shipperatheart wrote:Yay! Another prompt!
This tidbit originally started out different, but the prompt prompted me (??) to rework it and post it here. It's an experiment with second person POV, it's meant to be humorous and it's not 100% IC I will gladly admit, but hey, it's fluff, and we can always use more of that to cheer us up, right? It grew from an Ally McBealism.

This whole thing rocked shipper! Loved the whole premise!

shipperatheart wrote:One gloriously sunny afternoon--it must have been about eight months into your partnership--you and Angela sat on the steps outside the Jeffersonian; knees drawn up and arms slung around your legs, looking all of sixteen years old again.

Can totally picture that!

shipperatheart wrote:But your private thoughts as well as the topic of conversation were decidedly more adult, while you both admired Booth playing shirtless volleyball on the lawn as a pastime, with Hodgins and other squints on their lunch break, the sun painting a very aesthetically pleasing picture of honey-gold skin and sinewy muscles under his wifebeater.

Humminah!

shipperatheart wrote:Too bad it often felt more dangerous than safe to be around him.

Love that!

shipperatheart wrote:Then it dawned on you where she was going with this weird AU experiment. Your eyes went back to the sculpted body stretching, catlike, out to reach a ball, and suddenly the truth came tumbling from your lips like Niagara Falls.

"Oh, yeah, it would be a completely horizontal way of life."

You missed the smirk on her face completely.

Totally my fave part! This was awesome! Never seen Ally McBeal, but this was just too good! Love the whole visual of the two of them sitting there ogling and chatting like this... total BFF moment!
Great job!!
~S

Thanks space! I'm happy to oblige and put an image of shirtless, sculpted, catlike Booth into your head *anytime* ("Humminah!" LOL!), glad you liked it. I figured it would make a nice moment between the two friends. (How come Angela isn't badgering her anymore anyways?)

ROTFLMAO about your sidebar: "Say What You Want: A Time Machine, naked Booth, can of whipped cream, and unlimited libido."
Yep. It seems we have a coupla interests in common...ahem...

7/2/08:

Write a scene involving an overheard conversation.

Happy (almost) 4th of July!

L.

7/7/08:

Prompt: A moment of weakness.



L.

7/8/08 (Yes, I'm posting early.):

Your prompt for tomorrow is nausea.

L.

1. Take a random noun, a verb and an adjective. Write them down and try to form a sentence. Use this sentence as the first in a 500-word flash-writing piece (Example: 'The vermilion frog dies.')

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L.

Posting prompt early for 7/16/08:

Disturbed sleep.

L.

Prompt for 7/21/08:

And I'm so sad
like a good book
I can't put this
Day Back
a sorta fairytale
with you
a sorta fairytale
with you

[Excerpted lyrics from Tori Amos' A Sorta Fairytale]

L.

Well, I started with the 7/21 prompt, but when I sat down to write it took a sharp right turn, and if I'm honest with myself it is hugely overwritten but I can't bring myself to chop it, so anywhoo...here goes...-Ana

When it happened, when it finally happened, it should have been different. Should have been drawn from heated passion or rendered with epic declarations. For so long they had lived within the boundaries, following the rules as the tension built itself into something almost tangible every time they were alone, the reasons why and why not at war behind their eyes. The moment deserved the spectacular and the operatic; they deserved the fireworks or sounds of angels singing or, at the very least, the chance for their hearts to pound in their chests and their breathing to hitch in the their throats because they knew that their world was a fraction away from changing forever. Surely something to define the moment, mark the occasion, announce to the masses that the embers left to smolder had finally grown to flames. Those that knew them would say that it only made sense, and, if the truth were to be told, it was the way they both expected it to happen.

But as often occurs, the things that seem to be inevitably destined for legend rebel against expectation by becoming quite casual. No less significant, in fact, probably even more so, Because when stripped of those trappings, it was left to the essential.

And so it came to be that Seeley Booth kissed Temperance Brennan not long after they walked away from an ice cream cart in the park. He had one arm resting casually across her shoulders, she was occupied with the keeping the melting scoop from sliding from her cone. Then she laughed at something he said, the notes pure and simple, and he realized that he was happy. Not the kind of happiness that was easy and facile and disappeared on a whim, but the kind that stayed with a man and made him content with his life.

Without thinking beyond that, he lowered his head and pressed his mouth to hers. The action was brief, unheralded. A few seconds, just long enough to notice the soft texture and the faint taste of vanilla, the tantalizing constriction somewhere deep inside as her lips moved against his.

When he moved away, it wasn’t because he was thinking of repercussions or consequences, but because he finally understood that this, this simple moment, was enough for them both to know. Later there would be time for discussions and complications, fumbling silences or fiery passions. He wouldn’t deny that those things had their place and time. But for now, he was a man that had kissed the woman he loved and she had kissed him back.

Simple. Unspectacular. But, perhaps the stuff of legend after all.

Instead of posting one prompt on Monday and one on Wednesday, I think I'm going to start just posting two for the week on Monday. So my prompts for this week are:

1. Write about deceit.

2. People are tested in many ways throughout their lives. Write about a time when a character was tested.

L.

My prompts for this week are:

1. Describe a time when a character was given a responsibility he or she was not ready for.

2. "If you judge people, you have no time to love them." ~ Mother Teresa

L.

My prompts for this week are:

1. "Take a scene from your fiction...that you've been having some trouble with. Try writing it in a very different way. Change the point of view, or, if you have been writing it very close up and intimately, try writing with more distance, as if it's being seen from a great distance-- perhaps with the perspective of twenty years having passed."

2. "A character...enters a crowded room. Write it twice, once with a fairly objective description of what is there, then again with the person under some kind of stress– confused by the voices, trying to find an important person in the room..."

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