Playing with words, constructing sentences, designing sets are thrilling to the storyteller with the pen.
Yes, I have a writer’s group where I “work” the current stories for my upcoming book, Dance Life. And for fun? To keep the word factory well-oiled in a creative swoon of word play, I have another weekly group I meet with where we just write from prompts with no focus on our books. We usually do 3 rounds of prompts, each 5 minutes longer than the last. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. In-between we read the results of our prompt and give each other comments that reflect the positive.
What I find magical about this writing exercise is how a story is built in fluid time from a prompt out of left-field.
Last week one of the prompts was “thundering thighs”. The rule is that somewhere in the story those words must appear. So here you go. The piece is fictional—though long ago I did go to a bar similar to this in Jamaica.
THUNDERING THIGHS
When she clapped her thunderous thighs together under her torn silk negligee the audience set their drinks down on the splintered oak bar, dropped their jaws, and waited. Her show, until that raucous moment of flesh slapping flesh like a tsunami wave hitting a breakwater, had not drawn much attention. She couldn’t dance or even bend over which was always a popular move in these clubs. The skin revealed through the rent seams of her old nightdress was marred with scabbed-over mosquito bites. She lived in a trailor on the edge of a swamp. She was not very attractive and the tunes she choice to wriggle about the stage to were old beer hall sing-along numbers. “Roll out the barrel, we’ll have a barrel of fun”. It was more a comedy act than a burlesque strip performance. They should have served bratwursts and mustard.
But the thundering thighs always commanded their attention and she knew it. She’d wait until the very end of the song when the tuba and accordion had faded away but the chat and roar of inebriated customers shouting over each over still filled the air space.
Dimples appeared on her apple doll face as she poised on the very edge of the stage—an innocent smile lighting up her sallow complexion. She waited and slowly separated her feet leaving a generous gap between her tree trunk thighs and then BOOM! She clapped them together—flesh smacking. The power of her thighs shook the stage. The audience looked up at her and wondered if she would do it again. Should they plug their ears? Hold onto their seat. Cover their eyes? But no, she demurely bowed and walked backward off the stage. She knew they would return next week to fill the sticky-floored club and be startled by the woman with the thundering thighs.
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This was written in five minutes and was really fun to share. Perhaps start your own prompt group with writerly friends. We follow this meeting with a potluck and game of Scrabble—of course!
copyright Lisa Alpine 2019
😊