My100: One-Paragraph Story Hooks Twenty and Twenty-One

in #writing7 years ago

The challenge wasn't hard enough, so I decided to mate my love of history with the challenge to write 100 story hooks in sixty days, plus the challenge from my editor to write twenty straight hooks of pulp noir. Could I write pulp noir starting with the earliest human civilizations and working forward, without losing the noir feel or tone?

Thus today we go to the river valley of the Indus to meet Ugnat, a slave in the Harappan city of Mohenjo-daro (home of the first flush toilets), and to China to find Dou Hu Hai, third secretary to his Imperial Majesty Qat, standing over the mistress of the general of the dynasty.

Twenty:
Ugnat was downwind when they flushed the toilets. Always a problem, always a stench that was hard to shake. This time was worse than ever, drawing the shortest of straws and having to stand just to the riverward side of the opening meant he'd be splashed as well as nauseated, and probably his robe would have to be burnt. The foreman gave a shout, the sluice gate was opened at the far end, and the effluent gushed out in a hideous brown and gray slush that stank of the pits of hell. Stench and slush coated Utnat from waist to feet, and then something blocked the opening and the spray, seeking any release, struck him in the face. He shrieked in horror, not because he'd been defiled--though he had been--but because the obstruction was a body. And Ugnat knew him.

Twenty-one:
The Mandate of Heaven sat like a pregnant sow on the Qat, fourth of his line. Dou Hu Hai had the task of keeping it there, and would have had no difficulty had he not been passing underneath the Doorway of the Ancestors when Meng Ji dropped from the sky onto the cobbles. Ji was beloved of no one, and that she should have been defenestrated was no great surprise. But she was the appointed wife of the general. That was one problem. She had been carrying his child. That was another. And Hu Hai found, clutched in her hand, a small scroll bearing the seal of the Qat. That was the worst. Nothing inside that scroll could possibly strengthen the dynasty. But what was actually inside could destroy it in the fall of a cherry blossom petal.

Seventy-nine to go.

~Cristof

P.S. The original impetus for this challenge comes from The New Creatives, a BYUtv show about creativity and drive, which challenged us two weeks ago to create 100 of something as a step toward mastery. This is my attempt. #TNCmy100

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I don't know if this happens to you, but I'll be doing some mundane task such as shaving and I'll realize after a few minutes that a steady stream of narrative had been flowing through my head.
The source of inspiration is mysterious, but sometimes we just need to get still and listen.
Good thought pictures and photos today.

Thanks. I have to admit, I was pretty happy with both of these, though they are way out of my normal writing style.

out of my depth for me would be writing the screenplay for a pirate movie ...Arrr

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