Concrete details anchor a story to believability
Last week’s blog post was titled “Surprise Yourself.” This week, Diana Leszczynski takes the whole idea of surprise on a perfectly rational jaunt into a very irrational, possibly insane time travel. She chose to write directly to the (definitely surprising) image we offered as a prompt: Marcus Gheeraerts II’s portrait of Captain Thomas Lee, dated 1594.
For a story to be believable, it doesn’t have to be entirely plausible in terms of everyday reality. A few concrete details anchor the most bizarre imaginative flights to the reality we all share. The rational mind recognizes them as real, and so, helpless to resist (and goaded by the imagination, which loves implausibilities), it buys in to the fun.
He’d woken up in this condition and for the life of him, he did not know how he’d gotten here. This forest he’d found himself in was unfamiliar. A sign on a tree read 1594 AD. His surroundings bore a resemblance to a Henri Rousseau dream-scape, but if this was 1594, there was no Rousseau, so was he even allowed to think that? The clothes he wore, what there were of them, were strange.
The last thing he remembered he was with Josh and Matt at the Viper Room seeing trust fund baby Adam Levine. It was a Saturday night, so things were bound to get out of hand, but this, this was entirely unexpected.
He was barefoot. His Doc Martens were gone, which really pissed him off since they were the old type, the ones still made in England, not China. He’d never be able to replace them.
Even worse, his trousers were gone, along with his underpants. He’d never worn a tutu, had no reason to wear a tutu, but apparently, that’s what he was currently wearing, a pale blue chiffon tutu. A brisk breeze rifled through his bits. He tried to hold down the skirt, but found his left wrist was broken. His long white legs bore no hair, neither did his torso, or his arms. He’d always felt like a bit of a misfit, but this was over the top.
He was holding a spear with his right hand, which he promptly dropped, having no clue what to do with anything longer than a kebab stick. When he rubbed his chin, he discovered a pointy goatee. The wind kicked up again, and the tutu flew around him like Marilyn Monroe’s skirt. He pressed it back down with his good hand, and desperately searched the horizon for something, anything, familiar. Where was the city? Where was, anything? The last think he’d remembered was piling into Josh’s convertible, with everyone agreeing they should drive to Nashville. He swore he would never, ever do ecstasy again.
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