As I mentioned last week, I’m going to concentrate a lot more on the novel and less on writing new sequels & prequels to my published 101-word stories, but…I don’t plan to stop sharing them each week. Since I still have a large inventory of stories that have never made the Story of the Week category, I’ll probably present a lot more of these than new stories—at least during this next heavy novel writing phase.

This week’s story was inspired by a prompt generously provided by reader Susie Myerton.

Please Don’t Kill Anyone

If Crestview Elementary (“Training Tomorrow’s Serial Killers”) had any hope to pass the accreditation visit, bribing the students was their only hope. In exchange for good student behavior (i.e., no major felonies committed during the audit), they’d get pizzas every Friday.

Defying all odds, the students were angelic during inspection week.

“I have good news and bad,” the auditor said afterwards. “The bad news is that we did a secret audit last week. You failed epically.

“The good news is that we want to fund an acting academy. With the performance your kids gave this week, you’re training tomorrow’s Oscar winners!”

Prompt: Semblance of control

NOVEL update…Questionable Characters continues to shape-shift right before my very eyes. Lots of scenes will not make the next draft, to be replaced by brand new ones that will be much more focused on my protagonist’s new and stronger mission. I’m excited about where I’m headed, but I gotta tell you… when I’m in the early story construction stages, it’s hard to see how much progress I’m making because I’m not writing pages of action and dialogue—I’m still outlining. My best analogy is that this heavy-lifting phase reminds me of a kid eating his dinner. He’s got to eat his vegetables, before he can get to the really good stuff—the dessert. For me, the literary equivalent of the veggies is the outlining process, while dessert (the fun stuff) is writing the action scenes and especially the dialogue. That’s my dessert, but I’m not allowed to touch it until I nail down my outline.

Until then… guess I gotta stay hungry, my friends.

Thanks for listening.

Scotty out