Pickles

If you’d like to see spring in all its glory at our house, just click on my husband’s website on the right. And scroll down to see the latest (two) photos of Reggie. The second one shows his maniacal glee in a play fight with his BFF Demi.

On to the post. On February 11, 2013, Kenzi Anne wrote, I have trouble finishing stories because I get my characters into pickles and I'll think "wow! this is great!...snap, now how do they get out of it?" In other words...I'm not clever enough to get my characters out of their pit. If I'd been in most of my characters' situations, I wouldn't have a clue what to do, and probably would have just thrown up the white flag--not a very interesting story! So I guess my question is, how do I write a character that's cleverer than I am?

And writeforfun replied, I tend to have that problem, too! My current story is a spy novel, so I have to get my characters in and out of pickles all the time, and it gets tricky! Lucky for me, I have a genius brother who can usually think of a way out when I can't. So, although this may not be an option for you, my first piece of advice would be to find someone you can trust (that won't tell you "forget it - this is terrible!") who could help you brainstorm a way out. Another method I've found is to give the characters objects in advance that will help them out of the tricky situation. I have one character who always carries a file with him (long story), and when he was put into an old jail, he used the file to break out. It would have been weird if he had been in the jail and said, "Oh, well would you look at that? I have a file in my pocket!" but he's been carrying around a file since he first showed up in my last book. Since it was already there, it doesn’t make you think, "Seriously? A file?" but rather something like, "Wow, who would have thought that would actually come in handy?" It seems that if you mention the thing (or person, or animal, or whatever) that will help them out BEFORE they actually need it, it seems clever instead of cheesy. And, if all else fails, I usually alter the situation a tad so that my impossible situation has one little escape hole in it to work with. I know, all of these suggestions might not necessarily help – maybe even none of them will – but I hope this gives you some ideas. Good luck!

I’m entirely with writeforfun. I don’t have a brother, genius or otherwise, but I do use her other two ideas: arm my MC in advance with something that will get her out of trouble, and build an escape hatch into any pickle I put her in.

You don’t have to see ahead to do either one. If she doesn’t already have a file in her pocket, you can go back fifty pages and give her one. The file in writeforfun’s example works especially well because it was planted in an earlier book, so it’s really well established.

It’s particularly nice if the instrument comes as a surprise, if it’s not obviously a weapon or a means of escape. For example, suppose our MC, Rona, is wearing a ceremonial sash that has to be tied in a particular way, and it’s very long because it has to go over her shoulder, around her waist three times, and over the other shoulder and then hang behind her almost to the ground. The reader has seen the tying-of-the-sash ceremony and worried with Rona that it will slip off her shoulder and trail through something disgusting. There may even be taboos about this. In the next chapter, she’s imprisoned. Despondent, she thinks of hanging herself with the scarf until her own thoughts frighten her, and it occurs to her to use the sash as the means of her escape. There’s a grate overhead and one in the floor, and the window is barred. Plus, the guard comes in once a day to bring her bread and water and remove the chamberpot, and he has a neck the scarf could wind around and - mnah hah hah - tighten.

This scarf has more charming possibilities. Suppose Rona, in preparation for her ceremony, whatever it is, has learned The Dance of the Sash, which involves snapping it, making it ripple in the air. She could even have mastered tricks that cause the sash to tie itself into knots in the air, potentially weaponizing it.

Or maybe she’s even been taught how to turn it into a python!

But we don’t want to make things too easy for her, either. The snake may do that, unless the reader knows that it’s just at likely to strike Rona as her enemies.

Or the escape hatch. Rona is imprisoned in a cell with a tin roof, solid wooden door, solid plaster walls, and windows too high to reach. No scarf. Nothing that could be a weapon, not even a spoon. Through the high-up windows, she sees the sky darken. Rain starts, and the cell ceiling leaks a lot. She realizes this has happened many times before, and it occurs to her that the floorboards may be rotten. She takes it from there.

We writers have one advantage that enables us to write characters who are cleverer than we are. It’s time. Our characters can snap out sharp comebacks in an instant - because we’ve taken hours to think them up. They’re definitely smarter. In real life we could never answer so fast.

I bump into this constantly with my dragon detective, Masteress Meenore, who is totally brilliant, which makes IT great fun to write. I’m always figuring out ways to make IT shine. IT’s teaching my MC Elodie to deduce and induce and use her common sense, and when IT questions her, she often gets a headache.

Here’s an example from Stolen Magic. The background is that this item, the Replica, has been stolen from within the Oase, which is like a museum, with many rooms of shelves and cupboards. If the Replica isn’t found the consequences will be terrible. I won’t say what they are. This little bit includes Masteress Meenore, Elodie, and another character her age (twelve), Master Robbie. The three are in a stable outside the Oase. Masteress Meenore is the first speaker:

“When you return, do not waste your energy searching shelves, although there are many and a month could be spent combing them. Let others do it, because it must be done, but the thief, who is no fool, will not have hidden the Replica there, not even in the most shadowy corner of a cupboard in the most distant chamber. Why is that?”

Can you think of the answer? Close your eyes to think, think, think.

You may have come up with something else, but this is my solution:

The two were silent. Master Robbie’s face wore a strained look, which Elodie recognized.
“Think, Lodie, Master Robbie!”
She wanted to be the one to realize. Think! she thought. Prove I have an original mind!
Ah. “Because, Masteress, the thief couldn’t guess where the searchers would look first. Anyone might stumble on the Replica in an unlikely spot just by luck.”

We’re forever giving our characters powers we don’t have. Ella in Ella Enchanted has an amazing talent for languages. I don’t. Areida in Fairest can throw her voice beyond the ability of any ventriloquist. Why not intelligence?

Here are four prompts:

• You were expecting this. Imprison Rona and get her out using nothing but her sash.

• Try an underwater rescue. Your MC, who doesn’t know how to swim, is tied up in the trunk of a car that goes off a bridge into a river. Write a preceding scene or two to set up what will make her able to survive, the escape hatch or her special ability. Then get her out of there by her own efforts and have her save herself. I mean, she can get an octopus on her side, who can open the trunk and untie the knots, but she has to persuade the octopus.

• This one is sad. Write an argument between two characters, maybe they’re romantically involved, maybe they’re siblings, whatever. One of them feels betrayed; the other feels falsely accused. Make them both brilliant, much smarter than any of us. The fight never gets physical, but have them wound each other emotionally, because neither holds back. Depending on where you want to take it, you can bring them to reconciliation, or they can wind up estranged.

• Too bad Easter is over. This is an armchair Easter egg hunt. You have rivals or two teams of rivals. Twelve eggs have been hidden. The challenge for the contestants is to write down - without going to look - where each egg is hidden. The winner is the one (or the team) who predicts the location of more eggs than the loser. You can make the stakes high even though they're just eggs. A life may hang in the balance. You probably should use a setting you know very well, either a fictional setting you’ve been writing about or a real place. The place will help your characters guess and so will the nature of whoever is doing the hiding, but the contestants will have to be very clever.

Have fun, and save what you write!

On Being a Writer

Thanks again to Jane Collen for her informative blog post on intellectual property!

Sarah wrote this on the website in January: I've loved writing stories for as long as I can remember. Even before I could write actual words, I'd draw pictures and make up stories to go along with them. I've always hoped that one day I might be able to be an author.

Now, I'm in high school, and I still love writing. I'm getting to a point where I need to begin thinking seriously about what I want to do. I'd still like to be an author, but I'm not sure that's possible. I write all the time in a journal, and love it, but I'm hesitant to share my writing with anyone else, because I'm scared of what others might think. I know that when someone sends something to get published, it's very likely to be rejected. I guess I'm afraid to pursue a career where I might never get anything published and never be successful. So, my question to you would be, do you think I should pursue a writing career, or continue to enjoy writing for my own enjoyment but look into a different career. Any advice you could offer for an aspiring writer would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Let’s start with careers. If your goal is to be a novelist, few people who aren’t very wealthy can graduate from college and devote a year or two or four to writing without some other source of income. During the ten years it took me to get published (nine to get an acceptance), I worked for New York State government. I wrote mostly on the train during my very long commute. So I think it makes sense to prepare for a job while you also continue to write. I’m not a career counselor, but I am certain that good writing is an asset in almost any job. If any of you reading the blog know something about this, please weigh in. You may want to prepare for a career that will use your writing skills directly. Public relations, grant writing, technical writing, and advertising leap to mind. I have no idea what the opportunities are in those fields. There must be more fields for writers, too. If there are career counselors at your high school or college, I suggest you consult them. And again, if you’re reading the blog and write on the job, please tell us what you do.

I say, look for a field that interests you, that you think will be fun to do most days. And - I hope this isn’t presumptuous - cultivate in yourself the capacity to have fun in whatever you’re doing. One of the charms of being a writer, professionally or not, is the ability to stand outside what’s going on. You can satirize it or dramatize it. You can invent backstories for the players, your fellow toilers, the boss, the boss’s boss. You can imagine the meetings that led to the insane employees’ manual.

You may need to decide whether you want the kind of career that will engage you fully, that will demand sixteen hour days of you, or the kind that will let you go home at night and write. There are pluses and minuses of each.

I must confess that I did no such planning. I graduated from college during a recession, and I had been a philosophy major, and I took the first job I could get, which was with an economics research firm, a very bad fit. I took a test for a government job and began to work for the long-defunct WIN Program, placing welfare recipients in jobs. I loved it, because it fulfilled a need in me to be helpful. But it really was dumb luck. Then I got promoted out of what pleased me, and the second fifteen years of my twenty-seven years in state government were only intermittently satisfying. I stayed because I needed the security - not a good reason. However, my job didn’t demand much overtime, and I started writing in my last ten years there, and you know the rest.

The point is, life is full of surprises. The path you start down may be the right one, but if not, you can veer off, change your mind, do something else. I was almost fifty when Ella Enchanted was published.

Onto success. I am extremely lucky (because of the Newbery honor, the movie, the Disney books, the confidence that HarperCollins had in me from the start) to be able to earn my living as a writer. Not many writers do, and they are still successful. Let me repeat that: They are still successful. In the arts, where competition is extreme, success needs to be defined in other than monetary ways. If you’ve written an entire novel, that’s a measure of success. If you’ve gotten something published that is success too. If someone - one person! - has read your work, has been moved by it, even changed, that’s success. You don’t have to have the whole enchilada to be successful. And no matter how much success you do accumulate, someone else will have more.

An aside. You may be thinking that the Newbery honor wasn’t luck because I’d written a good book. But plenty of good books don’t get the recognition they deserve. I once judged picture book texts for a contest. My fellow judges and I had to come up with one winner and, if I remember correctly, one runner-up. The book I loved the most didn’t appeal in the slightest to the other judges, so it was out. From the other ten that I adored it was almost impossible to choose which was best, and yet we had to. If I had eaten a different breakfast on the morning when we decided, if one of the judges had seen a different movie the night before, if the day had been rainy, we might have made a different selection. There was definitely an element of luck.

And now onto, criticism, which is everyone’s lot in life. I confess that I can tolerate writing criticism much more comfortably than I can take criticism of my character or of the stupid things I sometimes do or the thoughtless remarks I sometimes make. Being called up for those really makes me cringe. If the criticism is on target I endure a period of miserable shame.

Some writing criticism I actually like, if it shows me how to improve my work. If it lights a path to a better story, if it inspires new creativity, I’m ecstatic.

And some writing criticism I dislike. If I start to feel that my whole effort was a failure, I find that as hard to tolerate as the personal criticism. But once I see how I can make my story better, the pain fades.

For most writers criticism is essential. Few of us bang out perfect prose, and few of us can see all our flaws. We need an objective eye.

If writing criticism is intolerable to you, I’d suggest you reassess your position. Try to take the criticism in, in a way that’s less painful. You might read some of my other posts on criticism and rejection. However, if you try and you just can’t deal with it positively, then writing professionally may not be for you. You may be happier keeping it as a hobby.

From criticism to rejection. We all experience it, as writers and not as writers. In ordinary life, we get rejected by our first choice school or by a crush or by a potential friend. In writing, rejection is as common as the flu and just as welcome. I’m still experiencing it. Not too long ago my editor turned down a picture book project I wanted to do. And my poetry is garnering more rejections than acceptances. It’s hard not to take it personally, but writing rejection is affected by many factors. One, of course, is the quality of the work. But others may be the market or similarity to something else the publishing house is putting out or the personal preferences of the editor. The problem is, you may never know what the real reason is. It may be impossible not to feel bad, and it’s fine to wallow in your misery - but not forever. It’s important, probably crucial, not to let a rejection make you dislike your work. The trick is to send it back out and keep writing and using criticism to get better.

Whew! Time to get off my soapbox! Here are two prompts:

• Write a journal entry about yourself and your future and your attitudes toward success, criticism, and rejection. Assess yourself. Consider what you think will make you happy in your professional life. Write about what you need to do to get there. Do not heap criticism on yourself in the process!

• You know The Rule of Three? Cinderella goes to three balls. The queen in “Rumpelstiltskin” guesses his name three times. The evil queen in “Snow White” visits her in her home with the dwarves three times. That’s three examples, but there are lots more, because three seems to be a satisfying number. Write a fairy tale about an aspiring writer using The Rule of Three. If you like, turn her into a toad (or anything else), bring in a dragon, an actual fairy, a talking wolf.

Have fun, and save what you write!

Copyright, the Double-Edged Sword

Here is the promised guest post on copyright, very kindly contributed by Jane Collen, who asked me to add the website of her law firm, where you'll find more information: http://www.collenip.com/. I visited the site and found it most helpful to click on "News and Events" and then on "Podcasts and Blogs" and then on the blog on copyrights. It's wonderful for those of you who have a legal bent and like getting into the weeds. 

If you have questions about the post or about other aspects of copyright or about projects you're working on that make you wonder about copyright, you can get in touch with Jane directly in the ways she suggests at the bottom of the post, or you can post your questions here, which I'd prefer for this week, so we can all learn from them and from Jane's answers, because she's going to keep an eye on the blog and respond. Ta da! Here it is:

I had the pleasure of meeting Gail at the recent Author’s Tea in Chappaqua, NY.  We began chatting and I mentioned I was a lawyer practicing in the field of Intellectual Property – patent, trademark and copyright law, and she mentioned her readers had a lot of copyright questions.  I quickly volunteered for the honor of doing a guest blog – two of my favorite things, which go hand in hand: writing and copyrights!

COPYRIGHT PROTECTION – AUTHORS SEE THE DOUBLE EDGE OF THE SWORD (which is still not mightier than the pen (word processor))

 by Jane F. Collen,

            The right to a limited protection of the fruits of our creativity is so fundamental that it is guaranteed by our Constitution.  This blog post is meant to serve as a primer on how to capture those rights bundled into Copyright, without inadvertently trespassing on anyone else’s rights, and does not serve to provide legal advice.

            Beginning at the source, Article 1 Section 8 states “Congress shall have Power. . . To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times, to Authors and Inventors, the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

            In order to be protectable by copyright, a work must be an original work, fixed in any tangible medium of expression.  The protection covers the work – whether it is a novel, a picture, a photograph, a motion picture, a dramatic work, a dance, sculpture, music, sound recording or architectural work—it does not cover the idea behind it. 

            There is no way to protect the idea with a copyright. (That is the job of patents – a much more complex form of protection.)  We can protect what we call it (that is the brand or the source indicating language by a trademark registration), how we present or perform it, how we write about it and how we manufacture it.  But we cannot we protect the title of a book, or characters.  You CAN protect the brand of a series of books (I am working on book three of the Enjella™ Adventures) but not the title of a single creative work.  Nor can you completely protect the plot of the book.

            Therefore, sometimes it is not easy to establish if the work is an “original work of authorship”.  To be original, the work must be produced by “the author’s own intellectual effort,” as opposed to merely copying a preexisting work.  But it does not necessarily have to be novel (meaning new, innovative); it just must have an appreciable amount of creative authorship.  Usually, however, the level of creativity required is exceptionally low.   You can’t protect a one word “composition” or a short bumper-sticker phrase. But just about anything else you write will be original, as long as you’re not copying the writing of someone else.  The best example of work which may not qualify for originality purposes may be just compiling a list, for instance. As the courts see it, “the sweat of the brow” that you put into your work won’t necessarily make it original.  But writing just about anything in your own words satisfies “originality”. The gamut of protection runs from courts finding a compilation of non-protectable facts is copyrightable if it “features an original selection and arrangement of facts” to finding even an original expression not protectable “when there is essentially only one way to express an idea”.

            Copyright protection actually conveys more than just one right.  The author has the right to reproduce her work, prepare derivative works, distribute copies of the work to the public (by sale, or lease, or rental or lending), perform the work publicly, display it publicly and perform it publicly by means of digital transmission.  As you can imagine there have been all kinds of lawsuits concerning the definition and extent of these rights.  The Copyright Law was recently revised (1998) to make the rights clear in the digital millennium.  In fact the revised law is called The Digital Millennium Copyright Law.  (Our forefathers did not foresee ebooks – as omniscient as they seemed to be.)

            “For how long do these rights last?” you ask.   For works created on or after January 1, 1978 for individual authors, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.  (This term was just recently extended from author’s life plus 50 years by the 1998 revision).   For corporate authors, the term was extended to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication. 

            The author owns the copyright.  Simple, right?  Not so fast!  What about your web site that you paid a graphic designer to create copy and art for?  Do you own that?  Are you sure?  There is such a thing as a “work for hire” if someone is explicitly hired to prepare a work, then the employer, or person who hired the author owns the copyright.  But sometimes it is difficult to establish that the arrangement truly is a work for hire.

            A work for hire usually is defined as a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or a work specially commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work.  Are you thinking author/illustrator?  Well, you are right, but unless the parties agree in a written instrument signed by each party that the work shall be considered a work for hire, the illustrator, even if hired by the author, probably still has the right to make derivative works and reproduce the illustrations apart from the published book.

            And to add to your agita, websites created by independent contractors are NOT considered works for hire, so if you don’t want anyone else to have the same logo as you and the same web design, you must be sure to require a written copyright assignment from your web designer.

            Gail recently featured an interesting audio clip from NPR about the fact that the song Happy Birthday still enjoys copyright protection.  Even though the music, originally composed by the Hill sisters who were savvy enough to obtain copyright protection, just recently went into the public domain, the words are still protected since the copyright was assigned to a publishing company.  Which leads me to my point – copyrights are transferable by written agreement. 

            These days it is possible to claim copyrights in a work simply by putting the author’s name and the date on the (ideally) first publication or public display/performance of the work.  Unlike the old days, it is not necessary to register the copyright with the Library of Congress.  But registration brings additional rights, and makes the copyrights more easily enforceable.  Hence the double-edged sword – be careful where you garner your ideas and your material – there are only limited circumstances that allow you to use copyrighted material without permission of the author, like for educational purposes, news, or parody.  You cannot use any copyrighted material for your own economic benefit.  The simple rule: Always make sure your work reflects your own creative intellectual effort.

Any questions? Gail has invited me to stay tuned to help you process this information.  And you can always reach me through the website for my Enjella™ children’s book series – www.enjella.com, or jane@enjella.com. 

Robin’s Merry Band of Secondary Characters

I recently met an intellectual property attorney (patents and copyright) at a fund raiser for a book festival. We started talking - she’s writing for kids, too - and I told her about the blog and the questions that sometimes arise about copyright, and she offered to write a guest post, so that’s coming up in the next few weeks.

Now for today’s post. On January 26, 2013, Anna Marie wrote, I let a very close friend of mine read a story I wrote and she has recently gotten back to me. One of the things she mentioned was character development, she says I could go a little deeper. I totally agree, but I'm not sure how to effectively and smoothly go about adding deeper details about my characters. The story is in first person present tense, and it switches between two different characters. I've tried to tell the story in easier ways (3rd person, 1st person past only one character, etc.) but I keep coming back to the way I've got it. Very much like your story EVER which I hadn't read when I first started but have read since (I must say, it's pretty awesome). Can you give me any help? It'd be much appreciated.

The problem is with my other characters, my friend said that my MCs came to life very well, but that the others were still just words on a page. My story is a flip off Robin Hood, my MCs a female Robin and a boy who joins the band. The story jumps between their points of view. My trouble is in working character descriptions into the story through them. If that makes any sense whatsoever...

One of my favorite moments in Ella Enchanted, which is told in first-person, past tense, comes when Ella, Hattie, and Olive are in a carriage chased by ogres, and Hattie shrieks, “Eat me last!” If she were in the book for only that moment (she’s not), the reader would still know her: selfish, self-centered, self-involved, self-important, self, self, self.

One trick is to give your minor characters the opportunity to express themselves. Ella could be so frozen with terror in the carriage that she’s oblivious to what’s around her. Instead, she’s scared but she’s thinking about a way to save herself, and the one she comes up with requires the help of her stepsisters. Thus she gives both Hattie and Olive the chance to be their horrible selves.

Another trick, which I think is critical, is to make your MCs observant. If you’ve got an MC who isn’t (that’s fine), you may need to write in the third person - or your reader is going to miss a lot.

Elodie in A Tale of Two Castles and Stolen Magic has to be observant for her job as assistant to a detective dragon. Plus, she’s an actor, and acting calls for observational skills. Addie in The Two Princesses of Bamarre is fearful, and fear calls for heightened alertness. When she goes off to save her sister, her survival depends on her observations.

Power relationships affect the observations of people, and this works for characters, too. We watch those who have power over us the most closely. Teachers and bosses are the victims of this hyper-vigilance. If a teacher, for example, habitually adjusts her bra strap, or if he rubs his nose, or she pulls her ear, pupils notice. They notice everything. If they don’t like the teacher, oy!, these mannerisms become the butt of jokes.

In the Robin Hood story, the boy who joins the band, let’s call him Thomas, may be low in the hierarchy. Say he wants to  be accepted, so he pays sharp attention to everybody. If a chapter is told from his POV, he’s going to think about who says what, how it’s said, how the others behave, how they relate to Robin, and his thoughts are going to show up on the page.

The first three out of these five tools of character development - dialogue, action, appearance, feelings, and thoughts - are available for non-POV characters. Suppose the band is walking through Sherwood Forest and we’re in Robin’s POV. She notices that Simon is stepping carelessly as usual and Jack is falling behind. She wonders if Jack's fever is back. She sees that Melanie’s lips are pursed, which means she’s whistling in her head. These are actions that reveal character, filtered through Robin’s perspective.

Dialogue next. Let’s take careless Simon. The band reaches the safety of their hideout. Robin says, “Simon, if the sheriff had been within a mile of us, he'd have heard us and we’d be trussed up and on our way to the dungeons.”

What Simon says is an opportunity to reveal him. Here are some possibilities, but there are a million more:

“You’re dreaming. I was as quiet as a clam.”
“Your whipping boy at your service. Who would you pick on if you didn’t have me?”
“Sorry, chief! I didn’t mean to.”
“I’ll get it. You’ll be proud of me next time.”
“I can’t keep my mind on my feet. I try. You know I try, don’t you?”

If I were Robin, I’d probably find the last one the most annoying.

More action: Is Simon meeting Robin’s eyes? Is he blushing? Folding his arms across his chest? Tapping one foot? Each is an opening into his character.

Onto appearance. Let’s move into Thomas’s POV, because a character who’s new will have the freshest perspective on everybody else. He’s in the hide-out for the first time and seeing the band at their leisure. Maybe he’s thinking, What am I getting into? This is the legendary band that gives the sheriff apoplexy if even its name is mentioned? Simon is so knock-kneed it’s a wonder he can walk at all. Jack looks like the first strong breeze will blow him away. And I don’t like how caved-in his cheeks are. The band may be short one merry man by next week. I don’t see what the sheriff doesn’t like about Melanie. A smile permanently glimmers in the corner of her mouth. Nothing menacing about such a round, jolly face.

The POV characters can speculate about the thoughts and feelings of the secondary characters, too. If Robin knows that Simon is sensitive, she can think about his easily hurt feelings and couch her criticism in a way that doesn’t distress him - or that does. And characters can say how they feel and what they think. Not as direct a source as actually being in the head and heart of a POV character, but useful.

If you think about these tools, you’ll find yourself building them in, and your secondary characters will put on depth and weight.

Three prompts:

• Maid Marian is being held in the sheriff’s jail. The band that I’ve described needs to get a message to her without being discovered. Write the scene from Thomas’s POV. You can make them succeed or fail.

• Write the christening scene in “Sleeping Beauty” from the POV of one of the fairies. Use her narration to reveal the characters of the king and queen and at least two other fairies. Everyone is trying to keep the evil fairy from doing her worst.

• The next time you go to the supermarket or any big store, watch everyone you see. Notice how they reveal themselves and think what you would do with them if you put them in a story. When you get home, imagine some crisis in the store, whatever you like. Maybe there’s a large rat or a thief, or the power suddenly goes out. It’s night, and it’s suddenly dark outside and in and the power doors won’t open. Or somebody has a heart attack. You pick. Write a story.

Have fun, and save what you write!