Saturday, November 12, 2016

Writing Challenge 2016 #11 - Bad Writing

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NWC #11- "Bad writing" DUE Nov 12th at 8am

Challenge: Write as badly as you can. No, worse. Cliches. Bad dialogue. Predictable behaviors and plot lines. Exposition? Obvious.

Giggle as you do this. Or hate-type your anger out at the page. Write the way no body should ever write.

Warning, sometimes this trech-ercise accidentally results in brilliance. If that happens, let it keep flowing out of you. Don't try to control it.
Don't try to help it or preserve it. This isn't you writing! This is opening yourself up to the possibility of being terrible- because once you do that you're also open to unexpected brilliance.

Bonus- include an animal or child on stage.



THAT'S MY FETUS!

BETTY and BOB.

Their living room.

                          BOB
As you know, Betty, you and I have been married to each other for seven years.

                          BETTY
Yes, Bob, my husband.  I am aware of that.

                          BOB
Seven long years.

                          BETTY
Wouldn't have seemed so long if they'd been good years, would they, Bob?

                          BOB
Yes, Betty, it's been tough.

                          BETTY
By tough, do you mean the abortion you've never forgiven me for?

                          BOB
Now, Betty, what did I tell you about ending a sentence in a preposition?

                          BETTY
I'm sorry, Grammar Nazi.  I meant, of course, the abortion for which you've never forgiven me.

                          BOB
It's not a choice, it's a child, Betty.

                          BETTY
Well, it wasn't your child, Bob, and if I'd let it live, probably even someone as stupid and selfish as you would have figured out the baby looks nothing like you.

                          BOB
Who would it look like, Betty?  Perhaps Pablo, our groundskeeper?

                          BETTY
You should know, Bob.  You slept with him, too.

                          BOB
Bisexuals are so confusing.

                          BETTY
You should know, Bob.  Why didn't you screw your secretary like any normal man?  Heck, I'd fuck her.  Oh wait, I did.  I borrowed one of the dildos you and Pablo were temporarily not shoving up your bungholes together and gave that minimum wage slave the ride of her life.

                          BOB
Her short life.

                          BETTY
Not as short as my baby's.

                          BOB
Why did my secretary kill herself?

                          BETTY
Aside from the fact she was working for you, you mean?

                          BOB
Yes, aside from that.

                          BETTY
She's a woman in America, Bob.  Do the math.

                          BOB
Misogyny killed my secretary?

                          BETTY
No.  Her Protestantism did.  Protestants are pussies.  They can't cope with the supernatural.

                          BOB
I love that TV show.

                          BETTY
Of course you do.  It features four attractive men who are all in love with each other and REALLY tortured about it.  But I meant the actual supernatural, Bob.

                          BOB
Oh, you mean like the fact that the spirit of your aborted fetus still haunts our house?

                          BETTY
Yes, Bob.  Exactly.

Betty's aborted FETUS starts dragging itself across the stage with the bloody stumps that would have become its arms and legs.

                          BOB
There is it now.  Hi, baby!

                          FETUS
Fuck off, Bob.  You're not my daddy.

                          BOB
I still love you.  All life is precious.

                          FETUS
Stuff it, you useless old fuck.  Go sodomize the gardener.

                          BOB
He's a groundskeeper.

                          FETUS
You still pay him more for servicing your shriveled dick that you do for trimming the hedges, so I don't think he much cares what you call him.  And I don't feel like reinforcing your sense of superiority by adopting your pretentious vocabulary, so, you know, eat me.

                          BOB
I wish I'd gotten a chance to know you.

                          FETUS
You'll have plenty of time.  I'll be haunting your ass the rest of your life.

                          BOB
I meant, really know you.  As a baby.

                          FETUS
Life begins at conception.  I am a baby.  Was a baby.  Will forever be a murdered baby dragging my bloody carcass around your house and ruining your hardwood floors.

                          BOB
It's what we deserve.

                          BETTY
You see, we can have a conversation with the spirit of an aborted fetus and not lose our minds.  We're Catholics.  We still believe in exorcism.  We expect the devil, the actual devil, not a fictional construct, to come to our front door and knock.  We see our entire lives as a struggle against a real enemy, actual evil in the flesh.  And of course we believe in saints and angels.  It's a pity the vast majority of decent churchgoing folk don't believe in things like ending poverty or hunger or healing the sick or visiting those in prison.  Things that, you know, might actuall;y help.  Keep us from being bored.  Fucking the help.

                          FETUS
Aborting fetuses.

                          BETTY
Exactly.  What if we actually did good instead of insisting we ARE good without any proof to back it up.

                          FETUS
I enjoyed driving your secretary insane, Bob.  Now she's in hell, with all the other suicides.  And me, and all the aborted fetuses.  And one day you, too, will join us, burning in the eternal flames.

                          BETTY
Your theology is troubling, dead baby.

                          FETUS
You should be troubled, you adulterous murdering bitch.

                          BETTY
Finally someone sees me for who I truly am.

                          FETUS
I have a name.

                          BETTY
What is it?

                          FETUS
Fuck you!  You'll never know.

                          BOB
That seems like an awfully long name.

                          FETUS
Now I know why you fucked the gardener and the secretary.

                          BOB
Groundskeeper and executive assistant.

                          FETUS
Fuck your vocabulary of privilege, non-daddy.

                          BETTY
Why will I never know your name, dead baby?

                          FETUS
Because God gave me my name.  And God will never speak to you again.

                          BETTY
But we'll be together again in hell.

                          FETUS
And I will make your life here on earth a living hell until then.

                          BETTY
I'm already married to Bob.  There's not much more you can do to me.

                          BOB tries to clean the floor.

                          BOB
Where does all this blood come from?  How do you keep bleeding?

                          FETUS
It's my blood, mixed with the blood of Christ, and all the Christian martyrs and saints, condemning you with the bright red stain of retribution and God's unforgiving justice.


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