Penning Dangers: Part 1

    There’s nothing like a good thrill right? Sometimes a little violence and horror—with even a little bit of blood thrown in here and there—can scare the shit out of us so much that it makes us stop and think about our own mortality and, in effect, make us more empathetic and appreciative towards life. Some of us already know this, but of course, there are others that may not. Sometimes those very same individuals need a little visual help in order to understand—though, regrettably, some never do. 

    Almost a year ago, I decided to do a little writing exercise. And I would like to share at least two of them. For today’s entry I’ll share one. The other will follow in the next entry tomorrow and, hopefully, more will come after that. 

     I guess you can say what got me started in this exercise was me browsing social media and running into a post by someone depicting a picture or description of a person, place, thing, or idea (in other words, a NOUN), followed by a caption underneath directing the viewer to make up a little story about what they were seeing then post about it in the responses section.

Example:

He’s the main character in your novel. Where did he just come from?

    It was posts like these, plus attending a creative writing Group at one of my local libraries which allowed me to experiment with these exercises and to tell you the truth, I love working with these prompts! It opens up the imagination while also helping build up the skills and ideas I need in writing short stories or flash fiction. However, I must confess that I can sometimes have trouble writing about a particular subject—especially with one that I’m less familiar with. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case with the two scenes I’m about to share with you.

    The two topics that I’m going to talk about here in this entry and the next are based on two very simple subjects that I’ve loved ever since I was a kid. Hell, I’m sure they’re loved or at least intrigued by most children anyway—especially boys.

What are they?    

SHARK

&

DINOSAURS

    Why them? Well, I’ll tell you. Let’s talk about the shark first in this entry.

    The exampled prompt I mentioned about earlier is just one method in starting these exercises. The truth is that any prompt in life can trigger a person into writing a scene or story. In the case of the shark, it was based on something simple . . . the beginning of summer. And being summer, my thoughts dwelled on the cool blue ocean. Also, during the months of June, July and August, I tend to focus my reading on ocean-themed books. 

    As I sat in my room and thought about on what I wanted to write about, the idea of a shark attack on the beach came to mind. But how was I going to write about this topic? Though I loved looking at and learning about sharks through various TV documentaries, movies and reading some books such as

Peter Benchley’s 

Jaws

and

Michael Capuzzo’s non-fiction book 

Close To Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks Of 1916

(which is a great book, by the way), I didn't and still don't know very much about them, at least not the way as many expert scientists and researchers do. After a few minutes of analyzing of how I was going to approach this topic, I finally came to my senses and said to myself that I was overthinking and then reminded myself that this “project” was just a short scene exercise, not a grand novel. So I sat at my table, visualized a beach and—WHAM! It came!

    Written and pictured below is the scene. I hope you enjoy it.

   

I don’t think anyone could’ve asked for a more perfect view than this. The sun setting on the horizon, slowly disappearing beneath the waves; onlookers rushing towards the surf in order to get a closer look—I being one of them. Yeah, on any other normal day this would’ve been a spectacular sight. One could only hope that this was the case for the man being carried out of the water. I prayed that he was focusing on the setting sun’s beauty. Surely this image would be a great distraction from the agonizing pain he was now experiencing along with the sight of blood streaming out from his right calf. Let’s hope the ambulance gets here soon.

That’s it for Part 1. Next . . . Part 2.