This week: Puce! Edited by: Legerdemain  
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The purpose of this newsletter is to help the Writing.com short story author hone their craft and improve their skills. Along with that, I would like to inform, advocate, and create new, fresh ideas for the short story author. Write to me if you have an idea you would like presented.
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Puce!
When writing, trying to describe something can sometimes be difficult. But in my mind, finding just the right color of a puddle of drying blood is fun. Who doesn't love a good challenge? As an interior designer, I go through a lot of fabric, paint swatches, and design ideas. The people who work with these items love to name their color collections and fabrics some crazy names. But a lot of the time, you can see right off how the collection works.
For example, a wallpaper collection named "Botanical Wonders" is going to have colors from nature, right? It will have colors like emerald, blush, gilver (yes, gilver), ivory, noir, mineral, midnight, and dove. You can imagine what the "Barcelona" collection colors are.
Does anyone know what the color puce actually is? It's a reddish brown, or a brownish purple. If you're curious, the hex code is #CC8899, RGB values of R: 80, G: 53.3, B: 60, and CMYK values of C: 0, M: 0.33, Y: 0.25, K:0.2. If you're really that curious.
Think about your descriptions, can you find a more accurate word? Can most readers relate? Is it too obscure? Would they know what a warm and juicy aureolin fabric color is or a cool, comforting skobeloff paint is? (They're yellow and teal.)
When writing, think about what word would accurately describe something, rather than a lengthy description that doesn't have terribly important relevance to the story. Yes, there's blood, and it is drying under just the right lighting conditions...it's puce.
As always, Write On!
This month's question: What are some of the best descriptions you've written? Send in your answer below!  Editors love feedback!
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Excerpt: That’s when I remembered the rose-colored glass bottle. “You know I have just the thing for you and it's cheap too.”
Excerpt: It was never quiet here, but as the Queen observed her troops, the orange glow from the streetlamp overhead glinting off their inky black surface, she supposed this was as close as it would get.
Excerpt: A crumbled piece of paper arched through the still air and headed for the trash can. At the last second it found the rim and bounced into a growing pile of errant tosses. Sharon sighed heavily. She couldn't shoot baskets either. So much for a career in basketball after art.
Excerpt: Water, matter, and actually all forms of energy follow gravity. The older you get, the more you give in to gravity. That’s why we old men walk bent toward the earth. It is the earth pulling us to itself, inviting, saying, “Come this is your future.” Isn’t future an extrapolation of the past? Or has past really passed?
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Excerpt: A clam shell is a functional work of art, much more than a simple purse to hold a living thing. From a point at the edge -- a beak, it's called -- a whole intricate structure fans out in waves. Near the beak, a hinge opens or closes the shell, and from there a tooth-and-socket arrangement firmly secures the shell against predators. You have to look at both sides of the shell to see how all the parts fit together. Once the shell clamps down tight, the clam is safe from anything that would want to bother it.
Excerpt: “You were drilling to collect environmental samples and when you reached 30 feet, you started pulling up bones?”
Excerpt: Herman continued to spew his disapproval. "Brown versus the Board of Education. Hmph! They ought to call that damn fiasco Clown vs. the Board of Miscegenation is more like it!"
Challenge yourself!
The task is simple: Write a short story using the video prompt as inspiration!
Give me a link to a piece of music, (YouTube or similar). Please put the link in your entry. Write something about that music. Anything you like, be it a story; a poem; a biography of the artist; why you love it; why you hate it; or why it always reminds you of kumquats, anything goes.
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This month's question: What are some of the best descriptions you've written? Send in your answer below! Editors love feedback!
Last month's "Short Stories Newsletter (June 22, 2022)" question: Where do you hide your bodies? The dead ones, I mean. 
Boston  : For me I take a body, severed or whole, naked and saturated with heated water and lye. Then I wrap it up in plastic and drop it off in a secluded mountain area (shallow grave.) The lye not only decomposes the body quickly but it also has an added benefit of keeping the scent away from the police hounds who may be searching.
However, now that I live in S. Fla I just drop them off in the everglades where the gators make a quick meal of them. Much easier, right? Of course, I just jest. Or do I?
{suser:nfdarbe: That depends, if it's anything larger than a mouse in a trap I suggest the basement. The two senior citizen ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace were able to bury several bodies there, until their adopted nephew found out and committed them and their brother (who was his adopted father) to a retirement home.
{suser:adherennium}: I could tell you, but then I'd have to invite you to come and have a really close look at my begonias, that always look so lovely, it's the 'compost' I use. 
TheBusmanPoet  : I have a giant lake where I live. It's where the majority of them are. 
Dave  : If I told you, I would have to kill you.
Elisa the Bunny Stik  : The clarification indicates that someone hides live bodies, which is giving me Buffalo Bill vibes.
Leslie Loo : A meat locker, or any locker.
GeminiGem survived GoT  : Now why would you ask such a personal question? What's next, asking me what my favorite breakfast cereal is? Hmphf.
Khola Mousethyme : Way out in the desert away from the roads or where anyone might go.
Jayne  : I prefer to display my trophies.
daninidaho: The last time one of my characters had to dispose of a body, he stuffed it into the back of his boss's pickup truck (out in the parking lot, when no one was looking). The boss was in need of some payback, anyway...
DevilsBargin : "What kind of question is that?" The Old Devil asked stepping closer to the speaker. "Where do I hide the bodies?" The Old Devil the spat violently foward. As his spit hit the ground A brilliant volley of Crimson Flames sprang to life on on the ground. From the very spot. The Old Devil's voice growled in full disgust of the question. "Do you really think I'd take issue with someone and leave them remains to be buried?" The Crimson Flames then began to dance and eb slowly closer toward The Speaker. Who began to nervously back away. "Oh there's no running here friend the old devil snapped. His body turning in to a pile of yellow smoke only to reform next to the Speaker one arm wrapped around their shoulders. Not till you and I go get us a Milkshake brand Milkshake. After all their Devilishly Delicious.
Tannus : From the wise words of Brick Top (Alan Ford)(Snatch):
"You gotta shave the heads of your victims, and pull the teeth out for the sake of the piggies' digestion. You could do this afterwards, of course, but you don't want to go sievin' through pig crap (word change), now do you? They will go through bone like butter. You need at least sixteen pigs to finish the job in one sitting, so be wary of any man who keeps a pig farm. They will go through a body that weighs 200 pounds in about eight minutes. That means that a single pig can consume two pounds of uncooked flesh every minute. Hence the expression, "as greedy as a pig"."
What bodies?
s : You need to remember that not everyone has the trunk space or gas money to drive way out in the middle of nowhere to dump their bodies. Not everyone can afford shovels or plastic bags. Not everyone lives in a place with a nice back-yard. Check your privilege. We're all doing the best we can out here.
MysteryBox : Burying dead bodies is amateur. Mr. Poe taught me better than that!
graybabe : I had my villain put a dead body in the trunk of his car and take it to far trash dumpster.
keyisfake : In a large pot covered with dirt with a plant on top.
Thanks to everyone for your creative responses! I'm fortunate to be able to share ideas with you all. Now hand me that shovel... |
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Short Stories: July 20, 2022 Issue [#11464]
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