Fic Prompt but really, it's a Poem Prompt!

[bleodswean]

The Problem of Fiction ~ Marie Ponsot

 

She always writes poems. This summer

she’s starting a novel. It’s in trouble already.

The characters are easy—a girl

and her friend who is a girl

and the boy down the block with his first car,

an older boy, sixteen, who sometimes

these warm evenings leaves his house to go dancing

in dressy clothes though it’s still light out.

The girl has a brother who has lots of friends,

is good in math, and just plain good which

doesn’t help the story. The story

should have rescues & escapes in it

which means who’s the bad guy; he couldn’t be

the brother or the grandpa or the father either,

or even the boy down the block with his first car.

People in novels have to need something,

she thinks, that it takes about

two hundred pages to get.

She can’t imagine that. Nothing

she needs can be got; if it could

she’d go get it: the answer to nightmares;

a mother who’d be proud of her; doing things

a mother could be proud of; having hips

& knowing how to squeal at the beach laughing

when the boy down the block picked her up & carried her

& threw her in the water. If she’d laughed

squealing he might still take her swimming

& his mother wouldn’t say she’s crazy, she would

not have got her teeth into his shoulder till

well yes she bit him, and the marks

lasted & lasted, his mother said so,

but that couldn’t be in a novel.

 

She’ll never squeal laughing, she’d never

not bite him, she hates cute girls, she hates

boys who like them. Biting is embarrassing

and wrong & she has no intention of doing it again

but she would if he did if he dared,

and there’s no story if there’s no hope of change.

 

*************

 

Now there's a poem after my own grizzled heart. I've played - off and on - over the years with this Idea. That one could pen a poem to preface or inspire a prose piece.

 

Anyone care to try this as a prompt? Take a plot bunny/character you've been holding near and dear but have not been able to translate into fic just yet - it could be original it could be fandom, but I think we should focus on original writing if we can - and write a poem. THEN we can try to write the exploded fic.

 

I'm going to work on this all morning and will return with a post. Please comment with a link if you would like to join in on the agony fun and we can read, comment, and discuss.