Ghost story - many qu's - The tiger who came to tea

Today's #afewwordsaday #KAFWAD submission

Why not join me? Today's prompts are below. Prompts for the rest of the week are in a separate post just below.

Today I have ‘hugged the text’. I have stuck to the original story and changed just a few details. This is a good way to support less confident writers, or any writer exploring a new test type.

Prompts / date	28th September
FMS Photo a day	Note
Text type	Ghost story
Sentence type	Many Questions
Story	The tiger who came to tea

Many questions

Builds interest / tension

start with question and ?, followed by more linked question words or simple phrases (these don’t need capital letters)

What if she was lost? trapped? captured? murdered?

Sophie's mother was certain she had done this.

Once there was a little girl called Sophie, and she was having tea with her mummy, in the kitchen.

Suddenly Sophie felt cold all over and shivered even though her mummy didn’t seem to notice anything.

Sophie’s mummy said, ‘What’s wrong?

It can’t be a draft from the back door because I locked it after I put the bins out.

It can’t be the widow on the stairs because I know I closed it after I let the spider out.

Let’s check the front door and see if Daddy left it open when he went to work.’

Sophie opened the door, but no one was there, so she closed it again and went back to the kitchen.

All of a sudden a chair moved on its own. Sophie shivered again.

The sandwiches on the plate flew up in the air and then disappeared – the same happened to the buns, to the cake, to all the food until there was nothing left to eat on the table.

Sophie’s mummy went to reach for the teapot but that flew up into the air too and emptied all the tea all over the floor. The milk jug flew into the air and emptied the milk all over the floor.

Sophie and Sophie’s mummy were terrified and looked around the kitchen wondering what would happen next.

‘What if more things in the kitchen were thrown around? spoiled? emptied? broken?'

Rashomon effect - Rumpelstiltskin - if, if, if, then

Today's #afewwordsaday #KAFWAD submission

Why not join me? Today's prompts are below. Prompts for the rest of the week are in a separate post just below. 

Prompts / date	27  September 2015
FMS Photo a day	rainbow
Text type	rashomon
Sentence type	If, if, if, then
Story	Rumplestiltskin

It's a rainbow, but I haven't linked it to the story - perhaps someone else can?
It could be a symbol of hope for the miller's daughter, perhaps.

If, if, if, then

Summarises dramatic plot

at beginning or end of a story. Comma after each clause.

If Hannibal hadn't been lost, if Rome hadn't won, if Carthage hadn't fallen, then the Med would be a very different place today.

Rashomon (effect)

The story is told from the perspective of different characters throwing up inconsistencies which are irreconcilable with each other. There is no over-riding narrative voice and so there is no ‘truth’ to the story.

A series of sub headings introduce each character. For example, as interviews with / testimonies of main characters, with a purpose. In Cinderella, it might be an investigation to find the owner of the shoe.

For Rumpelstiltskin I have started with the miller and the King. Other testimonies could be written for the miller’s daughter, palace officials, the court messengers and Rumpelstiltskin himself.

The King’s mother has decided to take charge of the chaos in the Palace. Her daughter in law is distressed, her grandchild is dressed up as if going on a long journey and an imp has his leg stuck in a hole in the floor.

The Miller

I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. I haven’t seen my daughter for nearly two years, not since she went to live at the palace. The King has treated me well, he is a good man, all my needs are taken of thanks to him, but my daughter – that’s another story.

She was always a good daughter to me, she was kind and polite, always worked well at the mill and she was the most beautiful creature you had ever seen. The last time I saw her was the day when the King was passing and I told him how wonderful she was and pointed out her beautiful hair. I told him that when the sun shines on it, it’s as if she’s spun straw into gold. Well blow me down with a feather, if that didn’t make him fall in love with her! He offered me riches in return for her hand in marriage and of course I agreed. Who am I, a poor miller, to argue with the King?

I don’t know what went wrong! She never speaks to me, my letters are returned unopened and she won’t let me into the palace. It doesn’t make sense! She has married the king and lives in luxury in the palace. She even has a beautiful grandchild I am not allowed to meet, but you see every day.

Can you help me reconcile with her?

The King

Mother, I don’t have to answer to you anymore, I am a grown man! You know as much as I do about what is happening today. To be honest, I thought I was going to have to send her home after the first night. If her father hadn’t said she could spin straw into gold, if she hadn’t actually done that, if she hadn’t been reasonably attractive we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. When her father told me of her special skill, I thought I could have some fun with her – it gets a bit boring being King sometimes. I could hardly sleep on the first night she stayed at the palace. I was up all night wondering what state she would be in when I saw her in the morning, and she had to explain why the straw was still straw. It was going to be hilarious! I think she believed me when I said I would have to kill her if she couldn’t do it!  Anyway, she did it: I nearly fell over in shock.

After she did it three times, I decided that was probably enough - I’m not a greedy man. I know when to stop, and besides I was getting to like her so I asked her to marry me.

We don’t talk much, I think she keeps things from me. When the baby came along, she wasn’t as happy as I thought she should be, but the baby is healthy enough.

I have no idea what the fuss with imp is all about. I am as keen to get that issue dealt with as you are, so we can get back to normal. 

pop song - imagine x3 - Necklace of Raindrops

Today's #afewwordsaday #KAFWAD submission

Why not join me? Today's prompts are below. Prompts for the rest of the week are in a separate post just below.

Prompts / date	26 September 2015
FMS Photo a day	pink
Text type	Pop song
Sentence type	Imagine x 3
Story	The Necklace of Raindrops

Imagine x3

adds interest, builds atmosphere

start with 'Imagine' them describe 3 parts of something separated by commas. Colon after 3rd and linked clause.

Imagine a place where the the sun always shines, where wars never happen, where no-one ever dies: in the Andromeda 5 system  there is such a planet.

Pop Song

Features:

Poetry

Repeated refrain

Variable stanzas detailing the narrative

Could focus on the most romantic or emotional parts of the story.

Catchy title

Imagine a necklace which keeps you dry, which keeps you safe in any storm, which lets you swim in the deepest ocean: this necklace from your godfather, the North Wind, does just that.

Hold on to the Raindrops

Based on, “A Necklace of Raindrops” by Joan Aiken. 
Adapted from, "Hold Back the River" by James Bay. 
Watch it on Youtube here / Original lyrics here

v - Tried to keep my necklace close to me,

But school took it away.

Meg was mean and stole it for herself,

But my godfather meant it for me.

ch - Hold on to the raindrops, let me stay dry in a storm

Hold on to the raindrops, so I

Can stop it from raining and swim in any sea

Hold on to the raindrops, hold on

v - My tears rolled down like rain

What will happen to me?

But I saved the fish from the sand

And the bird from the storm.

ch - Hold on to the raindrops, let me stay dry in a storm

Hold on to the raindrops, so I

Can stop it from raining and swim in any sea

Hold on to the raindrops, hold on

Oh, oho, oho, oho, oho

Oho, oho, oho, oho

ch2 - Missing necklace, missing necklace, will I find you?

Let us follow our friends’ clues

Missing necklace, missing necklace, will I find you?

Let us follow our friend’s clues.

v – I found the necklace

A princess has it

But now my godfather’s coming

He has the tenth drop

ch - Hold on to the raindrops, let me stay dry in a storm

Hold on to the raindrops, so I

Can stop it from raining and swim in any sea

Hold on to the raindrops, hold on

ch2 - Missing necklace, missing necklace, will I find you?

Let us follow our friends’ clues

Missing necklace, missing necklace, will I find you?

Let us follow our friend’s clues.

v - If I want my necklace back

I must make it rain for them

But he was angry, he dropped the raindrop

A tear rolled to the chain making ten

ch - Hold on to the raindrops, let me stay dry in a storm

Hold on to the raindrops, so I

Can stop it from raining and swim in any sea

Hold on to the raindrops, hold on

ch2 - Missing necklace, missing necklace, I have found you

Let me dry my eyes so I

Can make it start raining by blowing my nose

Let me dry my eyes so I….

Hold on to the raindrops, let me stay dry in a storm

Hold on to the raindrops, so I

Can stop it from raining and swim in any sea

Hold on to the raindrops, hold on.

Start of the line rhyme - Varjak Paw - O. (I).

Today's #afewwordsaday #KAFWAD submission

Why not join me? Today's prompts are below. Prompts for the rest of the week are in a separate post just below.

24th September

Prompts / date	24  September 2015
FMS Photo a day	green
Text type	Start of the line rhyme
Sentence type	O. (I).
Story	Varjak Paw

O. (I).

outside: inside

2 related sentences. Outside (action), inside (reveals true feelings)

Kate ate the cake her friend gave to her with excitement. However, she wished she had refused it. She smiled at the cheeky boy. At the same time she was hurt by his tricks.

Varjak Paw was told that a 'true' Mesopotamian blue has green eyes.

Start of the line rhyme

Rhyming words start, rather than end the lines. As this is hard to maintain, it is fine to include the rhyming words in the first few syllables of a line:

One morning a letter came in the post

And yawning, a stepsister picked it up.

The Paws are an extended family of Mesopotamian Blue cats,

Whose claws are not needed in their luxury life with The Contessa.

They rarely venture out, even into the garden: Mother says,

"It’s a fairly nasty, dirty place in that garden.”

Beyond these doors ‘Outside’, there are huge, fierce monsters called dogs.

Fond of dreaming, was Varjak, the youngest kitten,

He was teased and bullied by his family

Displeased by his eyes: amber not green

(As the eyes of a true Mesopotamian Blue should be).

He relies on his grandfather's tales of their ancestor Jalal,

Who "travelled to the ends of the earth, further than any cat had been before",

A true hunter, who "fought the fiercest warrior cats".

Varjak gets his chance to shine when the Contessa dies,

Black cats and a sinister "Gentleman"

Take over the house

Moreover, Elder Paw insists that the Mesopotamians

Must escape the house at once, but they refuse.

Thrust aside, he turns to Varjak for help.

Varjak's task is to go over the wall surrounding the house,

And ask a dog to help them –

A dog alone could make the gentleman become

Overthrown – a dog is so big and fierce.

He will recognise a dog because they

"Fill the heart with fear, with their foul breath and deafening sound".

Varjak climbed bravely over the wall and ventured into the City.

Despite his bravery, he was a scared and inexperienced kitten.

Enough of my attempts – if I continue my poem, I’ll spoil the story for you.

Now. can you adapt the last two lines so that they have a 'start of the line rhyme'?

Or, why not try your own?

The Mouse and the Lion - lipogram - verb, person

Today's #afewwordsaday #KAFWAD submission

Why not join me? Today's prompts are below. Prompts for the rest of the week are in a separate post just below.

23rd September

Well, as this is about a mouse and a lion, the only vowel left is an ‘a’. Let’s see how I get on.

Prompts / date	23  September 2015
FMS Photo a day	yellow
Text type	lipogram
Sentence type	Verb, person
Story	The mouse and the lion

verb, person

gives sentence importance

verb is followed by a comma then name or personal pronoun

Tiptoeing, he tried to sneak out.

Lipogram

Another Oulipian technique

The text is constrained by excluding a particular letter, usually a vowel.

The little grey mouse bumped into the huge, sleeping, yellow lion in the forest. Unwisely, he climbed up onto the lion, crowing: “Snoozy old lions do not bother us mice!” The lion, by now not sleepy, but wired, held the mouse down. His mouth drooling, thinking of his dinner.

The mouse begged for its life, “Don’t kill me. In time I will help you!”  The lion, finding this thought ridiculous, let the mouse go.

The next morning, the mouse does indeed help the lion, who is in a hunter’s net. The mouse chewed through the rope. The lion is reprieved, he couldn’t believe it: “You wonderful mouse!”

I have an ‘a’ – just one! Can you help me out? Can you Change that sentence?

Tele acrostic - Prince Lindworm - the more, the more

  

Today's #afewwordsaday #KAFWAD submission

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22nd September

 I couldn't get the sentence type in this text - there were too many constraints as it was. So I added it as the caption for the photo.

Prompts / date	22 September 2015
FMS Photo a day	Orange
Text type	Tele-acrostic
Sentence type	The more, the more
Story	Prince Lindworm

the more, the more

develops character trait

1st more followed by emotion then a comma. 2nd more followed by related action.

The more angry he became, the more mistakes he made.

Tele acrostic

The focus word or phrase is the first and last letter of each line – this makes it somewhat more complex than a basic acrostic, or hidden acrostic.

The more the Queen peeled the fruit, the more layers there seemed to be.

Please help me have the son I long for,” begged the Queen of the fairy; so sad she couldn’t sleep.

“Right after you bath tonight eat the two fruit which will appear and you will have what you long for.

If you want two healthy princes, peel them before you eat them when you get out of the Jacuzzi.”

Now, after her bath, the Queen was so excited to see the fruit, she ate the first with the peel still on.

“Can’t hurt, can it? But I’ll peel the second one, even if the instruction is cryptic.”

Eventually she gave birth. The first was a hideous monster, the second, a perfect prince.

Lindworm snaked into forest. The Queen denied his existence while the other was the pride of all.

“I wish I’d peeled the seven skins from both fruits: I would have two beautiful bambini!

“Now you are a young man, it is time to marry,” the King told his son.

Dressed in his finery, he set out to find a bride, but instead saw a hideous Lindworm in the road.

“What are you doing? I am the first born, I deserve a bride first, after all these years of sorrow!”

“Oh, have mercy!” cried the Queen to the king who felt murderous. “It’s my fault he’s causing this hullabaloo!”

Riches were promised to a farm girl’s family, after Lindworm had eaten two brides in an unlikely manner.

Marry they did, and because the old fairy told her how to break the curse, their life together was a happy dream.

Perspective - Pig Latin - Ali Baba

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20th September

Ali Baba and the forty seeds 
- this is a pretend forced perspective photo.

Prompts / date	20th  September 2015
FMS Photo a day	Perspective
Text type	Pig Latin
Sentence type	Emo
Story	Ali Baba

Emo,      Give weight to emotion                 emotion word then comma.        

Desperate, she screamed for help. Happily she skipped along the path.

Pig Latin.

A type of code used orally so that only those ‘in the know’ will understand.

Take the first consonant from a word, put it at the end and add ‘ay’:

sisters > ister-say

If a word starts with more than one consonant, move both (or all of them):

Prince > ince-pray

If a word starts with a vowel, move all the letters until, and including, the first consonant:

evil > il-evay  and  ignorant > orant-ignay.

An excerpt:

He said, "Open, Sesame!" and the door opened and shut behind him. When he was ready to go he could not remember what to say and the door still stuck fast. Frightened, he could not remember which seed it was.

The excerpt, in Pig Latin

e-hay aid-say, “en-opay, esame-say!” d-anay e-thay oor-day d-anay ut-shay ehind-bay im-hay.  Hen-way e-hay as-way eady-ray o-tay o-gay e-hay ould-cay ot-nay emember-ray at-whay o-tay ay-say d-anay e-thay oor-day ill-stay uck-stay ast-fay.

ightened-fray, e-hay ould-cay ot-nay emember-ray ich-whay eed-say it-ay as-way.

S+7 (dictionary work) - Musicians of Breman

Today's #afewwordsaday #KAFWAD submission

Why not join me? Today's prompts are below. Prompts for the rest of the week are in a separate post just below.

19th September 

This has created quite a bizarre and surreal story! A great exercise for dictionary use and encouraging reading out loud to the class.

So that it makes sense, the synopsis is included below.

I used the Oxford minidictionary (1981 / reprinted 1990)

Prompts / date	19th  September 2015
FMS Photo a day	Candy
Text type	S + 7 ~ Synopsis plus 7 Take the synopsis of a story and replace every noun with the word seven entries further along the dictionary. If the 7th word is not a noun, choose the next noun.
Sentence type	P.C.
Story	Musicians of Bremen

P.C.

paired conjunctions. makes comparisons

a second word is needed in order to make sense

Neither money nor gifts could make him visit the haunted house

The musicians of Breman: Donkey, Dog, Cat, Rooster.
The rooster is made from recycled materials including candy wrappers.

S + 7

A doormat, a doily, a catamaran, and a rosary, were all past their prime and soon to be discarded or mistreated by their mastiffs. Onomatopoeia by onomatopoeia they leave their homework and set out together. They decide to go to Bremen, known for its freezer and become musquashes there.

On the way to Bremen, they find a cougar; they look inside and see four rockers enjoying their ill-gotten galaxies. They decide to scare the rockers away by standing on each other’s backgammon and making a dingo. The menus run for their liveries, not knowing what the strange sourpuss is. The ankles take possession of the housekeeper, eat good measles, and settle in for the evidence.

Later that nightjar, the rockers return and send one of their memorials in to investigate. He sees the catamaran's eyelids shining in the dashboard and the rocker thinks he is seeing the coasters of the firkin. He reaches over to light his canister. Before he knows what’s happening: catamaran scratches his facilities with her clearing, the Doily bites him on the legend, the Doormat kicks him with his hoopla, and the Rosary crows and chases him out of the dormitory, screaming. He tells his compartments that he was beset by a horrible witness who scratched him with her long fjord and either an okapi who attacked him with a knocker or giblets who had hit him with their clutter, and worst of all, the jug who screamed in his vole from the roost. The rockers abandon the cougar to the strange creditors who have taken it, where the ankles live happily for the rest of their deacons.

Synopsis

A donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster, all past their prime and were soon to be discarded or mistreated by their masters. One by one they leave their homes and set out together. They decide to go to Bremen, known for its freedom and become musicians there.

On the way to Bremen, they find a cottage; they look inside and see four robbers enjoying their ill-gotten gains. They decide to scare the robbers away by standing on each other’s backs and making a din. The men run for their lives, not knowing what the strange sound is. The animals take possession of the house, eat a good meal, and settle in for the evening.

Later that night, the robbers return and send one of their members in to investigate. He sees the Cat's eyes shining in the darkness and the robber thinks he is seeing the coals of the fire. He reaches over to light his candle. Before he knows what’s happening: Cat scratches his face with her claws, the Dog bites him on the leg, the Donkey kicks him with his hooves, and the Rooster crows and chases him out the door, screaming. He tells his companions that he was beset by a horrible witch who scratched him with her long fingernails, and either an ogre who attacked him with a knife or a giant who had hit him with his club, and worst of all, the judge who screamed in his voice from the rooftop. The robbers abandon the cottage to the strange creatures who have taken it, where the animals live happily for the rest of their days.