This piece is the first assignment for the course The Craft of Plot, the fourth course out of five in Wesleyan University’s creative writing course aimed for NaNoWriMo participants on Coursera. The instruction:
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.
They soon noticed her coming, snickering behind her back , showing attitude just because she’s a plus size. She ignores them while greeting her mother and starts searching for a dress. A black tiger print short dress catches her eye. She runs her hand over the silky fabric until her fingers find the tag attached to the collar. The size is way too small and price will make her credit card explode, so she moves on.
There were many bodycon dress, covered in glittering silver sequins, so short it will no doubt inspire filthy thoughts among the groomsmen and also mocking from the bridesmaids for looking like a fat cow. As she moves further in the aisle , she sees another dress that can either make her look classy and sexy or turn her into a giant carrot cosplay and there’s only one way find out.
After five long minutes, she manages to struggle her extra flabs into the dress and zip up. Turning around to the mirror sees a giant carrot.
Maria finds The one when she walks out of the changing section, a black plain dress with feathers around the sweetheart neckline, summoning a memory of black crow which she used to see above in the tree near her father’s grave whenever she visited him. She immediately turns to the closest attendant.
“Hey, do you carry that in size XXL?”
Twenties Unscripted 