Three-Word Scenario: Everything about you

Since I’ve been working on my current manuscript for a while now, I occasionally like to take a short break and do this exercise to stretch my creative/brainstorming muscles. I call it Three-Word Scenario. I take three random (sometimes odd) words and write whatever scenario comes to mind, using each word at least once, and keeping the entire scenario to 200 words.

It might end up as a snippet that could become a longer story. Or maybe a character or setting description. Anything that pops into my head when I mesh the three random words together.

Last time I was here at Loose Ends, Barbara offered up these three words for me to play with.

I went over the word limit but decided to keep it the way the scenario came to me rather than start chopping. Actually, I almost kept going and wrote a sex scene too, but I figured I’d save that for another day.

Definitely more of the sweet than sexy in this m/m romance.

I stopped with the jigsaw puzzle piece held in mid-air and stared back at Joe. I couldn’t have heard him correctly.

He was on the couch across the room from me, leaning forward with his elbows propped on those strong, muscular thighs. He had a crooked smirk on his face, that innocent, yet wicked expression usually reserved for the moment right before he was about to attack my dick with his lips. I could almost see a halo over his head and a red pitchfork in his hand. Maybe I had heard him correctly after all.

He added, "I think that piece is part of his beak."

"What?"

He pointed at the puzzle piece in my hand.

"Oh." I inserted the three-sided section into the last empty space that made up the red-winged blackbird’s beak.

Now that Joe had asked the question, and the words were hanging there between us, I felt like the biggest dork with the folding table before me covered in puzzle pieces sorted by shape and color. For weeks now I’d been putting together the puzzles my grandma had left behind when she’d passed away. I met his gaze again and studied him.

"What?" he asked.

"Why now?"

"I’ve been watching you put together these bird and rabbit puzzles since the funeral, and I realized something tonight."

"What?" That I’m the biggest dork on the planet who can’t figure out how to say good-bye to his grandma?

"I love everything about you, and I want to marry you."

Thanks, Barbara, for the inspiration!

Would anyone like to throw out three words I can use next time?


Sloan Parker has been writing and playing with fictional characters for years, but she finally found her true passion when she began telling stories about two men (or more) falling in love. Now she spends her writing life creating m/m erotic romances and romantic suspense. She loves to explore the lives of people who are growing as individuals while falling in love. Her greatest moments in life are spent with her family, her friends, and her characters. www.sloanparker.com 

Three-Word Scenarios

As much as I love playing with words, I’m really a visual person. A candid photo of a stranger’s life, a run-down abandoned building, a snippet of a news story, or the physical gestures between two people I’ve never met are usually the kinds of things that spark an idea for a new story. Yet, sometimes it can be words that inspire new ideas and stretch my imagination like nothing else.

I enjoy writing novel-length stories, but the time between the initial surge of creativity for new storylines and characters never comes quickly enough to please my imagination. In an effort to exercise the creativity of brainstorming new ideas, I’ve started a topic on my blog called three-word scenarios.

The idea came out of an interview I did at author Julie Hayes’s blog. One of the questions she asked was Take these three words and give me a 100 word or less scenario using them: concert, documented, broadcast.

Here’s what I came up with for Julie’s words.

Today, I thought I’d share my next three-word scenario, the first of the new segment I’ll be continuing at my blog. I’ve decided to limit my scenarios to 200 words or less.

My sweetie picked the three words this time around. I don’t think she went easy on me. Since I write contemporary and usually think in those terms, the first one was definitely a challenge. The words are:

Aliens
Candy Canes
Blue

The scenario I came up with is more the start of something, or perhaps the ending of an m/m romance between friends, a sweet moment in time that could lead to more.

Christmas Eve. Out first together in a real home.

Outside it was raining, the ground covered in mud—not the snow I’d always imagined—and Tommy was late getting home from work. I shouldn’t have been this happy. I shouldn’t have been sitting on the floor of the living room staring up at the Christmas tree with its blue twinkling lights and candy canes, smiling like peace on earth really was just a wish away.

I carefully secured the end of the wrapping paper around the 1970’s alien action figure set. A garage-sale find that had taken me four Saturdays of walking through one suburban housing development after another, scouring through boxes of old toys in search of the little plastic green aliens. Tommy’d had the same set as a kid. Since we’d both run away from less-than-stellar homes as teens, neither of us had any childhood mementos to remind us of the few good days we had in our youths.

The smile grew as I imagined his face when he opened the box.

My first gift for him. The first time I’d had money to spend on something this frivolous. Only, to Tommy it wouldn’t be that at all.

Word Count: 200 (just made it!)

Dang, now I have a new story I want to write.

Anyone have any ideas for what three words I can use next time around?



Sloan Parker
www.sloanparker.com