Writing Challenge - Taste

[in_the_blue]

Those of you who know me understand that I tend to get random inspiration for writing in the shower and yes, there is a physiological reason for that and no, I won't go into it here because it's been done before. Today's inspiration: the senses, particularly the sense of taste.

Since so many of you who read this journal are writers, I thought a drabble challenge was in order.

It's not a contest, it's a challenge. Read that as an exercise in concise writing. I was thinking primarily for roleplayers as a way of getting to know tiny details about your characters, but you don't have to be an active roleplayer to join the challenge. Everybody is welcome.

Rules (Captain Barbossa reminds me that they're more like guidelines):

• Fandom: any, so long as it's one you know well. I play at Dogstar with Harry Potter characters and milliways_bar with HP, Cowboy Bebop, and Twin Peaks characters; for my purposes I'm keeping it to one or more of those worlds because really, doesn't FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper just cry out for talking about a damn fine cup of coffee and his quest for the world's best cherry pie?


• Word count: 300 or less


• Main theme: sense of taste


• Ratings: No restrictions


• Duration: 1 week. Challenge opens today and closes Sunday, April 24.

Post your drabbles as comments to this entry. And yes, you can comment on other peoples' work. Feedback is always nice.

Ready?

Go.

Comments

Fandom: Bebop / Spike

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Smoke.

They say smoking is bad for you, that it kills your lungs one tiny bit at a time. I’ve been smoking since I was fifteen and I’m not dead yet.

Well, fuck, that’s up for grabs, I guess. Depends who you talk to.

I like smoking. I like the way unsmoked tobacco smells and I like the feel of a smoke between my fingers and I love to watch the way a girl plays a cigarette between her lips, so sensual. But mostly, I like the way it tastes.

What does smoke taste like? Close your eyes and let me explain how it is for me. It tastes like places you’ve been but know you shouldn’t have gone. It tastes like everything that’s forbidden and every cold damn planet with a fake manmade atmosphere. It tastes like back streets late at night and snow as it’s melting and stuffy rooms with fireplaces burning into embers.

It tastes like power and control.

If blood was an ethereal thing, it would be cigarette smoke and I’ve been shot enough times to be able to make that comparison. They’re both metallic and they’re both fluid and they both numb your tongue, and they both make you think about fear and shock and mortality.

Smoke tastes like struggle and lust and passion and like getting thrown out a church’s stained-glass window and falling. Falling. Falling like that tastes like smoke in my mouth and looking up at the sky fading away is like watching the smoke from your last cigarette leaving your mouth and dissipating into nothing.

Into nothing.

Smoke’s like that.

Re: Fandom: Bebop / Spike

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

I th nk iwatna cigaret now. NO really .This ws very stylish and ful lof the good kind of Metaphores 9as uppsoedt snflakes falin lie khe teas of pfill i ngreek goddess] if you get my drifts.) and i"M glad your'ealso conecting taste to actiosnand memries.
I toppeld over withe smoke-blood connectin though (that's also what I meant with good metaphores. or is it comparison. or simili? euphorism? I'm lostin terms now...)
I liekd htis!

Re: Fandom: Bebop / Spike

[in-the-blue.livejournal.com]

Thank you, my dear. I appreciate all the comments on so many of the pieces, by the way. This has been a curiously satisfying exercise for me, and some of the stories that came out were not the ones I was expecting. But it's good, it's all good, and if it gets people thinking about their characters in unexpected ways, I'm very happy about it. That was the whole point.

Re: Fandom: Bebop / Spike

[erised1810.livejournal.com]

I fee lait guilty for not comenting on some others. soem wer jsut to obscure because they invovled backstory I didn't know (ther was just one case where I ggled to much to keep silent.)
I had two more ideas but I'll save te mfor my own lj tomorrow .i thnk i've spammed this thread enough.