Dinner for 500

Hello, readers and writers!

I know it's been a while. I had a whirlwind of a Christmas break and was back at college early to take a two week course before the regular semester started. Needless to say, writing has not happened much the last few months. However, this semester I'm taking a creative writing class, and I'm eager to share my responses to various writing prompts with you! Each prompt provides a unique challenge, some of which I have come up against before and some of which I have not. In the few posts to come, I'll be sharing the prompt, my response, and asking for those of you who are interested to post your responses to the same prompts in the comments section. I'm looking forward to see how my fellow writers out there meet these challenges!

Prompt #1: Five Hundred Word Story
Create a character who seems to have it all. The character would be perfectly content if only . . . Establish the character's desire or goal, and define the obstacles to that goal. Voice the overarching question to your short story (Ex: Will Belle be able to break the curse on her before her nineteenth birthday?). The question should be answerable with a yes, no, or maybe. Write a short story in five hundred words or less in which the reader is given an exposition (beginning that introduces your character), development (middle where the conflict is introduced and tension escalates), and resolution (end where the character has or hasn't gotten what he wanted).

My Response:

"Dinner for One"

Tory scanned the cafeteria once again. Her food was cold, and her appetite was dwindling. Finally, she gave up searching for people she knew and sat down at a long table beside a rowdy group of juniors playing bananagrams. Sighing, she began shoveling lukewarm green beans into her mouth, intent on finishing this meal quickly.

This is so dumb, she thought. She was three-quarters through her freshman year, and she still hadn’t managed to make any real friends. Back at Coldwell Christian High, she’d been class president, NHS president, and varsity women’s basketball captain. Everyone knew and loved her; she was at the top of her class. Granted, being valedictorian of a graduating class of ten people wasn’t that much of an accomplishment, but her good grades had certainly carried over into her college biochemistry academics.

She’d joined several clubs—IM Quiddich, Intervarsity, Chapel Choir, CupCake Squad— and been elected to SGA, but Tory still felt disconnected. Maybe it was because she’d never really put down roots. Most of the people in the groups she’d joined she saw only once or twice a week. Her hall had proved to be rather unpromising as well; from the start, most of the girls had their hearts set on sorority life and had pledged a few weeks ago.

Despite her social lifestyle, Tory was tired of eating by herself.

She remembered her mother’s advice to her over Christmas break—Don’t spread yourself too thin. You can get a lot done without going deep, but you’ll be worse off. Sitting there staring at her cold meatloaf, Tory realized the wisdom of those words. She’d been living at college for seven months, but she knew it was finally time to settle in. Still, that old fear came back as she remembered her last real friendship and how it had ended. As she got up to put her tray away Tory thought perhaps she’d kept herself so busy because she was afraid of investing in a deeper friendship. What was the point if it all ended in pain?

The next day, after a tearful talk with her mom on the phone, Tory decided to take her advice. Spread out in front of her on a table in the SAC was a list of all her clubs and activities with sub-points of why she’d joined each one. She began reading down through the list again, methodically crossing out certain groups as she went. “CupCake Squad can go, and Quiddich and Poetry,” she muttered to herself. Her pen hovered over Intervarsity. Just then, Eliza, one of her Intervarsity mentors, walked by.

“How’s it going, Tory?” Eliza asked with a bright smile. As Tory reluctantly opened up about her struggle, Eliza’s smile waned. “Well, I’ve got an hour. What do you say I grab us some tea, and we can talk about it? Sounds like you’ve had a lot on your mind.” Tory thanked her and looked down at her list again as Eliza walked away. Maybe Intervarsity could stay.

What I thought of this prompt:

I've always heard that if you want to challenge yourself as a writer, you should try limiting your word count. People shrink back in terror at the thought of writing a 80,000-word novel, but I think we also underestimate the difficulty of writing such a short story. Can it be done? Dr. Seuss wrote "Green Eggs and Ham" with a vocabulary of fifty words, and Hemingway prided himself with his six-word story. And, yes, I felt a lot like Hemingway after I'd finished writing this very short tale. I decided to go ahead and write the bare minimum I thought I would need to effectively tell this story. How many words would it really take to show without telling? How much concrete example and color was necessary for the story? I ended up with just under six hundred words, and from there I cut. And then I cut and cut some more. I used contractions everywhere I could and made my thoughts as succinct as possible, and although the story isn't exactly what I'd originally intended, I feel that the integrity of the characters and the message was not sacrificed in the process. It can be done!

Will Tory actually be able to find her niche and make strong friends at college? Although the resolution is not definitive, I think the reader can safely say yes.

Your turn! Get writing, and share your five-hundred-word stories below.

PS: For more tips to improve your creative writing, check out Writing Fiction. It's the textbook for my Creative Writing class, and I highly recommend it! (I promise, I'm not getting paid to say this . . . ) The book has lots of great tips and writing exercises for creative fiction, no matter what level of writing prowess you're at.