Creative Writing

I started and did not finish a Coursera course on Creative Writing. Here is one of the exercises and my submission. Peer feedback was only available to paying customers, not for us auditors. If the story sounds derivative and familiar, that is intentional. Your challenge is to guess the source of my inspiration.

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Instructions

Write a scene of 250-350 words featuring a character with one concrete want (a table, a moose, a toothbrush, anything physical is fine!) and one weakness. Use these two features to drive the action of the plot. Set up the story where every other sentence is a rising action. To help you come up with rising actions, use one word from the following list of twelve words in each sentence that has a rising action. In other words: Write your first sentence introducing your character. Make the next sentence a rising action using one of the following twelve words. Write your third sentence, which may introduce the weakness, then write your fourth sentence with a rising action that includes one of the remaining eleven words you haven’t used. And so on.

• trick
• memory
• aboard
• tiger
• pretend
• carrot
• appliance
• cage
• rings
• crow
• filthy
• explode

You must use at least 6 of the 12 words, but you are encouraged to challenge yourself to use as many of the words as possible while still meeting the word count.

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Walter’s Tiger

by Mike

It wasn’t the kill that was important to Walter. No, a dead tiger was only the proof. For Walter it was the act itself. The real carrot was standing and facing the animal in its habitat, its dominion, and bringing it to supplication, obeisance, even in death. And to show that filthy bitch Martha that for once he more than deserved her respect.

Out on the open veldt there were no apologies and no expectation of compassion. The trick, according to his guide, was to stand very still downwind. Time to climb aboard and get with the program, Walter thought to himself, as his guide pointed out scat and tracks leading into the dense brush ahead of them.

He swore. Was that a tail flickering up over there? No, there! Damn things are smart, they’ll run rings around us if we let them. Breathe old boy, breathe. This isn’t a dental cleaning, this is hunting. There!

Walter, his hands shaking, jerked the heavy .303 to his shoulder and took aim. Breathe, he muttered, trying to crowd out the sudden imposition of a childhood memory – a playground beating. The bigger boys had pounded him for lunch money and he’d wet himself in the process. Martha crowed for years over his cowardice. But no longer. Today, right now, this moment would change it all.

Unnoticed, Walter’s guide slid up and stood beside him. Gauging the situation, he reached out and touched Walter’s elbow in warning. The .303 exploded, shattering the early dawn sky, sending a wake of buzzards cawing high into the air.

Dust billowed out of the ground a hundred yards directly in front of the two men. What the…? What the…? There, Boss! There! He almost had you! Walter followed the guide’s outstretched finger to his left and saw the lingering rustle of the tall grass as it closed behind the retreating tiger. He raised his rifle again, only to lower it, not knowing where to shoot. The moment was gone, fading like so many before. But I was there, Walter thought, and I stood my ground.