This week, we asked you to focus on dialogue and body language to set a scene or move a story forward, limiting your use of narration.

We gave you an opening line: His crossed arms answered her question before he spoke.

We gave you space to bend the rules: Incorporate the idea of crossed arms as close to the beginning of your piece as possible.

We gave you a word limit: 450 words

His crossed arms answered her question before he spoke. Sarah wasn’t ready, though, and before Carter could finish saying “Hello,” she silenced him with a finger to his lips.

She leaned against the car next to him, dropping her bag of papers to be graded at their feet.

She hip bumped him. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself.” He bumped her back.

She exhaled, making her bangs fly up and said “I want to know, but I don’t want to know. You know?”

He chuckled. “Believe me, I know.”

“My students thought I was losing my mind. I started to cry during the lesson on gerunds.”  Her bag had tipped over against her leg, and she nudged it back upright. “And then I tried reading essays, but after four times through one paragraph, I gave up.”

The bag had leaned toward Carter’s leg, he tried propping it up. “What was so sad about gerunds?”

“The first two examples were ‘acting’ and ‘singing.’  Stupid sentences like ‘George is fond of acting’ and ‘Singing is Susan’s favorite activity.’ All I could think of was you…” she held her hands out in front of her, palms up.  “And now, I’m going to cry again.”

He shrugged. “You win some, you lose some. Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.”  He glanced at her. “I can keep going, if you would like.”

“How can you joke?” Sarah punched his arm, but then softened her fist and started rubbing the spot she had just jabbed. “It just kills me that you didn’t get the part.”

She dropped her head in frustration and then swore. Her bag was on it’s side, the contents spilling out. She bent down to pick the papers up, attempting to neaten the pile before shoving it back in the bag. Carter pushed his sunglasses up on his head and bent down with her.

“Who said I didn’t get the part?”

“But I thought…the whole bug and windshield thing…you actually got it?”

He grinned at her. “Yep. Us actors call that ‘acting.’ I’ll be doing a lot more of that. And singing, too. Maybe some dancing.”

Sarah threw her arms up in delight, forgetting the stack of paper in her hand. The essays went flying, and a breeze carried several of them down the street.

“Oh, help! Grab those papers, Mr. Fancy Pants Actor. Quick!”

Carter pulled Sarah up and spun her around, giving her a quick kiss before she pulled away and started chasing her papers. He was glad she was so happy, he’d let her keep that for now, before he told her the rest of what he had learned that day.

Oh, I almost gave up on this one. I had too many ideas.

And then once I settled on a scenario (the news he has for could have been…a scholarship, a job offer, a baby up for adoption, a house…you name it, I thought of it…), I had trouble ending it.

I very nearly went with “They never saw the car coming.” But decided on something a little less, um, final, but I realized that the story as it was, was too happy…

I’ve also reached a point where I just need to stop dithering and push publish. Any second now…just watch me…here I go…you know how scary this is for me to post this stuff, right? OK. Pushing…publish…now….

I almost gave up on this one, another entry in the writing challenge, partly because no amount of brainstorming was generating a good idea, and partly because once I did come up with an idea, the rough draft started at about 1000 words, nearly double the requirement of the prompt I was using. I think that I have figured out that I’m trying to cover too much ground in the stories that I’m trying to tell, and if I want to get more descriptive detail in, I’m going to have to brainstorm smaller nuggets of story, or come back to them later to flesh them out. This one feels like I ended up with just an outline of a longer story, but it weighs in at exactly 450 words.

The Prompt:

core
noun

1 the earth’s core: center, interior, middle, nucleus; recesses, bowels, depths; informal innards; literary midst.
2 the core of the argument: heart, heart of the matter, nucleus, nub, kernel, marrow, meat, essence, quintessence, crux, gist, pith, substance, basis, fundamentals; informal nitty-gritty, brass tacks, nuts and bolts.

adjective

the core issue: central, key, basic, fundamental, principal, primary, main, chief, crucial, vital, essential; informal number-one. ANTONYMS peripheral.

My story:

Mr. Weber opened the door before I could ring the bell. It was 5:45. He did not look very happy to see me. Apparently, when he had called to ask me to babysit, he had been serious when he told me arrive at 5:30 for a half hour orientation.

His wife was right behind him, and she was friendly. “Megan, I’m so glad you could help us out. Grant, let her in. Give her a quick tour and then we must get going.”

He glared at both of us, but stood back. “Fine. We’ll do the short version.”

I scrambled to keep up as he strode off down the hall.

He tapped a thick binder on the kitchen counter, saying “This is your instruction manual. Anything you could want to know is in here.”

Mrs. Weber grabbed the binder before he could open it and start reading to me. “Let’s take this upstairs so Megan can meet Josie.” He sighed, but followed us back out into the hall and up the open staircase.

We found Josie playing in her big, pink toy room. She grinned shyly at me and gave her parents kisses and hugs.

Mr. Weber had ended up with the binder again and handed it to me before his wife dragged him out of the room. “At least read the table of contents.”

Josie seemed pretty happy with her dolls, so I let her play while I opened up the binder and started skimming.

It was a core dump of every fatherly worry from small to epic.

Vomiting, fire, tornadoes, hurricanes, choking.

“What to do if Josie falls down the stairs.”

“In case Josie is run over by a car.”

“What to Do in the Event of a Nuclear Bomb Attack.”

I had started to read that one when the sound of someone pounding on the front door startled us. Josie said “You’d better go tell them to stop banging. Daddy doesn’t like that.”

I almost checked the binder for “how to handle people pounding on the door.”

The front door has large windows on either side, so I could see the crowd on the front porch. I stared, dumbfounded, taking a few moments to register the bloodstained clothing, ruined faces, and vacant stares. The pounding grew louder when the creatures outside saw me.

Josie had followed me down the stairs and her scream startled me in to action.

I checked the lock on the front door and then ran back upstairs, dragging Josie with me in to a closet.

I had carried the binder with me and found myself hoping there was a section called “What to Do in the Event of a Zombie Attack.”