Tuesday, 3 February 2015

The bright-blue helicopter

The writing exercise on my course tonight was “partner writing”. We partnered up and told each other a quick real-life story.

Here’s the story I was told by... well, let’s call her Susan.

Susan was driving down the M4 having just returned to the UK from a holiday trip to New York. The car was a Ford Ka – little more than a go-kart with an engine. She was overtaking a truck when suddenly the car went into a skid. After a terrifying few moments of scraping along the central reservation, Susan came to a halt facing the central reservation. Thankfully the motorway was pretty much empty at the time. Shakily, she got out of the car, and stood in the gap between the two barriers that make up the central reservation, wondering dazedly if she could call the police. And then from nowhere the motorway was suddenly full of traffic. Three lanes, all completely chock-a-block. Susan had no idea what to do. All of a sudden, someone came up behind her and gave her what felt like a hug from behind. She was grabbed and pulled all the way across the motorway to the hard shoulder. “I think we got you just in time, luv,” came a voice. At that very moment the car exploded. Pieces of Ka flew all over the motorway. The resulting pile-up was horrendous but thankfully the only injury was one man with a broken leg. The police later told Susan there had been a diesel spill, which is why the car skidded. Her saviours – the men who had grabbed her and pulled her away from the car just before it exploded – were two guys who had seen the accident, stopped their van, and then bravely ran across three lanes of traffic (and back!) to grab her and pull her to safety. Susan called them her guardian angels.

The exercise was to take your partner's story and play around with it, changing it as much as you wish, to create your own short story. We had about 15 minutes for this task.

I tried to think of something serious to write but as usual my mind rebelled and insisted I write something daft. So here goes.


The bright-blue helicopter

[EDIT: Oh no, where's the story? It's not here because I'm trying to get it published! Sorry!]

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