Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Writing Prompt 2

The prompt this week:"Write your character doing two things at once, both of which are plot-specific." Examples: walking and chewing bubble gum, talking and sewing.  I suppose if I want it to be plot-specific, I should take a character from one of my stories.  But which one?

"Hey, Mari," Nikolas said, jogging up to the wagon.  He had a piece of the strange purple grass of the Passage in between his teeth.

"Oh, hi, Nikolas."  Mari scooped some of the corn out of one of the grain bags in the back of the cart.  "Hm," she mused.  "How much farther did you say we had to go?"

Nikolas rolled the stem of the grass between his fingers, watching the tufty seeds on the end swirl and twine.  "It usually takes about two and a half months to get through the Passage.  Don't know but we might be able to shave some time off with this lovely lady."  He walked to the front and tickled Inga under the chin.  She rolled an eye at him, then stuck her tongue out and wrapped it around the piece of grass.

"Hey!" Nikolas protested as the cow placidly chewed on his grass stem.  He rolled his eyes back at her, then dropped back to where Mari was distributing corn kernels into the pens of frantically clucking chickens.  "Why do you ask?"

"Well," Mari said, hefting the corn bag and eyeing it skeptically, "We might run low on corn before we get there.  I think we might want to consider finding some forage for the chickens, too.  Inga obviously doesn't have a problem with the vegetation here, so it shouldn't hurt the chickens, either."

"You're the expert," Nikolas said.  Just then, the alarm call sounded from behind them.  Mari looked up at Nikolas, concerned to see his face drain of color.

"Please let that not be her..." he muttered, shaking visibly.


This is from my re-telling of The Bright Falcon, right about at the part where I'm writing right now.  I think I've got both of them doing more than one action pretty frequently.

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