I am always game for a good writing challenge.  I’ve been doing a writing prompt a day for a while now in order to keep the writing wheels greased (and sometimes they generate ideas for other stories).  The prompt I did yesterday was to write a “dialogue ONLY scene between two characters (NO narrative description allowed).”  I went one step further and picked a picture from my writing ideas picture board on Pinterest. 

https://www.pinterest.com/jenabenton/writing-ideas/

I share my writing results from yesterday here.  Enjoy!

 

I choose this picture (the sources is credited as “25.media.tumblr.com” on Pinterest, but I cannot find the original artist’s name):

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/487092515924877755/

 

“Tell me a story,” the dragon said.

“But I thought you were going to eat me,” Isabelle said. “Isn’t that the whole point of the sacrifice?”

“No. The sacrifice is your life and I get to choose how it’s spent. I’m old and lonely and bored. Maybe I want a storyteller instead of a snack.”

“Uhm, okay. Let me think.”

“Make it a good one.”

“Once upon a time there was a King who was terribly afraid of-”

“Oh this sounds good already!”

“Are you going to keep interrupting?”

“No, no. Go on.”

“Once upon a time there was a King who was terribly afraid of-”

“You already said that part.”

“You interrupted again.”

“Oh. Right. Go on.”

“So … there was a King who was terribly afraid of-”

“Dragons! Oh say it was dragons!”

“*sigh* Actually I was going to say something different. Would you like to tell the story?”

“Oh! Well … yes! Once upon a time there was a King who was terribly afraid of dragons. So when he heard that a dragon was living in a cave just on the outskirts of his kingdom, he consulted his many wise counsellors about what to do. They all agreed that it was written down in past records that a young female must be sacrificed. The King was horrified at the thought of sacrificing any of his own daughters, and he knew he couldn’t very well seize a villager without creating a riot. SO he offered a reward by royal decree. If any young woman would be willing to volunteer to be the sacrifice, her family would never want for anything. So a young female whose rather large family was in great need stepped forward to volunteer. They sacrificed her to the dragon with a great ceremony and special costumes and left her to her fate. Then she walked into the dragon’s cave and met him. The end.”

“Hmm. I don’t think that’s a story. I think that’s what really happened.”

“Sometimes what really happened makes the best story of all. Your turn.”

“Right. Where was I?”

“There was a King.”

“Right. There was a King who was terribly afraid of…”

“Of?”

“I was waiting to see if you were going to interrupt again.”

“Nope.”

“Okay, there was a King who was terribly afraid of women.”

“Really?”

“Yes. He was so afraid of women that when one woman in his kingdom began to talk to the other peasants about how unfair their life was and started to make reforms, that he decided he must punish her and stop her from causing trouble.”

“Ohh interesting!”

“So he created the story of a dragon and needing a female to sacrifice to it. Then he created a ceremony no one had ever heard of before and found a way to dispose of the troublemaker. The end.”

“Hmm.”

“What?”

“So that’s the story then?”

“Well, there are always different sides to every story.”

“True.”