I took a class several months ago and we did an exercise where we had a writing sprint based on a story in the news. We had a list to pick from and I went with this juicy tale.
There wasn’t much to the exercise, just write whatever came to mind in 10 minutes. I’d read someone else’s work a few months prior that had a crime-solving chicken solving the theft of some vegetables on a farm that was one of the funniest things I had ever read, and it absolutely influenced this little piece.
I don’t know how much more I’ll go with this, I think I can get a short story out of it, but this is a good example of what my first drafts look like and I thought I’d share. I hope you enjoy it!
The murder, as usual, was watching.
Satchel was up today, and he’d been dreading it. If he was going to be accepted into this gang of thieves, then he needed to steal something. And not just steal, he needed to make a show of it.
Piper had gotten in by stealing the collar off of Mr. Bodinger’s black lab, Mabel, while they were on a walk. How he had gotten the leash unhooked from the collar was the sort of magic trick that had kept the whole troupe aflutter for weeks.
He’d only just fledged!
He tied them in knots!
I haven’t seen flying like that since my third migration!
So now Satchel had to come up with something equally daring, not just that, it needed to be the crime of the season. He had Edgar Allen to thank for coming up with the original seed of the idea. Why not take something from Costco?
It wasn’t a half-bad thought, but it needed something … more. All those humans buzzing about, trodding on everything, certainly deserved it.