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Exercise #53

Exercise #53: Interactive
Posted 4/29/04

A lot of our listmembers have submitted a character and an item to choose from. The time has come!

Review all the SUB: Exercise #53 Prep posts and choose at least one from each category; character and item. They cannot be your own offerings, nor can they both be from the same contributor. If you take Sara's t-shirt vendor, you'll have to choose someone else's item. If you choose more than one from each category, you still can't use your own, but you can use both of the offerings from another listmember. In my example, if I chose Sara's t-shirt vendor, I could also use her item if I've chosen either a character or an item (or both!) from someone else as well. Clear enough? If not, email me privately. :-)

Got your choices? Now, you get to choose again:

a) Take your character(s) and item(s) and tell us a tale, or

b) Fit your character(s) and item(s) into one of these two quotes by replacing items and characters already there, and use that as the basis for a tale (for a sample, see bottom of email):

"Successful innovators recognize that discovery of great ideas come from looking at the same thing as everyone else and observing something different." -- Reed Markham

"Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest."  -- W H Auden

Word limit: 1200
Please use the subject line:
             SUB: Exercise #53/yourname

Sample for quotation replacement

Original quote: "A people with no sauces has one thousand vices; a people with one sauce has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven."  -- Ambrose Bierce

Character: policeman
Item: egg

New quote: "A policeman with no eggs has one thousand vices; a policeman with one egg has only nine hundred and ninety-nine. For every egg invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven."

 

Website note: I no longer have the original emails from listmembers with their items and characters. I only have the combined list of everyone’s submissions. So if you’re doing this exercise from the web, you can choose one from each list, no matter who submitted the original:

Characters: a court jester, a female PI, a troll, a sea captain who is the son of a poet, a garbage man, the flu virus, a female Elvish rogue, a crop duster, a middle-class housewife who secretly works as a high-class hooker, a beachcomber, a T-shirt vendor from Minnesota, Iron Chef America Wolfgang Puck, or a Company First Sergeant.

Items: a unicorn's horn, a Palm Pilot, an arrow quiver, a glass of poisoned brandy, a broken lamp, a thermometer, a sword, a gun [Model 29 S&W .44 magnum (Dirty Harry's iron)], a bag of marbles, a bucket, an MRE [Meal, Ready to Eat], a box knife, or a sock full of quarters.

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