Writing Prod - For Starters

            Another week stands before us and with it another opportunity to forge a heroic path through the wilds of creativity and literature. That sounds much more exciting than just saying that it’s Monday again.

            Today’s writing prompt I call – For Starters. You take a specific sentence and start your story with it. This could be a line of conversation you overheard at the store. You could also modify the last line of your favorite novel. Basically, you can grab a sentence from anywhere and use it to open your story.
            Obviously, this is meant as an exercise to help you generate story ideas. If this turned into a full-blown novel or short story that you wanted to submit to an agent you would want to revamp the first line to be a real attention grabber.

            For my example I chose the last line from one of my favorite novels. From Damnation Alley, by Roger Zelazny is the line: “But coming upon the Common, the winds still break about him, and the heavens still throw garbage.”

            I am going to break from my normal routine and in addition to the pitch for the basic story idea I am also going to include the first paragraph so I can show how I modified the original line.

            Down and Out on Earth

Once upon a time, Sam was an angel in heaven. And not just any angel, but the leader of the crack legion of Avenging Angels. For millennia he served faithfully. Then a week ago, he discovered a flaw in heaven’s charter and was cast down to Earth. Now mortal and without his angelic powers he must find a way to stop the inevitable spiritual war before it destroys mankind.

 

“The winds broke around him as if they feared to touch him and the heavens threw garbage. They served as constant reminders of his current status with God. Even the humans took part of this grand snubbing and crossed to the far side of the street as he approached them.”