Modern Wastrel: A Fifty Word Story
Evonne moans into her wine. "I can't make my rent this month. It's so unfair."
She looks pointedly at the check then pulls the latest iPhone out of her purse and taps it with manicured nails.
"Grow up." I take my thrift-shop dress and worn shoes and leave.
This week's prompt from @jayna is money. After some brainstorming and a lot of editing, I ended up with this one. Special thanks to Andrew J. Savage (@thinknzombie) for coming up with a way to cut words and tweak my arc so it still worked.
Fifty word stories aren't easy and sometimes the ideas we have just can't be condensed effectively into the short format. That happened for me last week and my rough draft hit 900 words quickly, so I didn't share anything. This week it again cries out to be longer, although I feel okay about this variant.
I don't really mind, though, when I end up with a story that needs to be longer, because it still means I am writing. Also longer stories have more mainstream potential than the tightest ones. But the tight ones are such good practice in word economy and the impact of word choice that they are well worth the investment of time to do them right.
I will have to see with time what happens with my longer story from last week. It's still in editing.
Cover art based on photo by Alfonso Scarpa on Unsplash
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://www.rjeanbell.com/2018/09/01/modern-wastrel-a-fifty-word-story/
Really nice, @bex-dk. You did a great job of capturing the debutante-like attitude of one character, and the disgust of the other. I'm glad to hear one of your stories took off and couldn't be contained. That's a positive outcome!
Very very good.
Gets me hooked on the theme. This scene shows how people perceive other people. Actually, I don't feel pity for the one with thrift-store clothes. I see it as a chosen form of lifestyle not to envy what's shiny & new but to respect matter in the form of reusing it and therefore form a new Avantgarde of lifestylers who are sensible enough to see every matter as cyclical. What a waste otherwise, to buy new stuff which ran through a full production chain only to end up used once or twice.
I feel compassion towards both of them.