One Word Titles- Ossuary

Ossuary

Henry pulled the small hand off the forearm. He shook the hand and looked at how nimble the fingers were. Turning to the young man in a t-shirt next to him, "Tyler, you see these hands can be off of any damn Bot, you never know where they come from or what they're wired for."
Tyler looked on, sipping a soda. He covered his mouth as burped.
Henry squinted his eyes and lifted the hand and forearm off the table and placed the pieces into a hole in the wall. He pushed a button next to the hole, and a glass door sealed the hole shut. "This here is the Ossuary, Tyler," said Henry, then looked to notice Tyler staring out the window. "Tyler! Tyler"
Tyler snapped his head around.
"Tyler you payin attention? This is important, I don't want to see you just cleaning parts your whole life."

Fiction Challenge - The Idiomatic

The Idiomatic basically mashes up a few idioms into something new and very possibly inane, and very possibly wise. This was the backbone for this fiction challenge.
Length: ~1000 words

I clicked the Idiomatic and I got the following phrase for my story:
“Give a man enough rope and he is a friend who cares.”

Enough Rope
by Martin Perlin

My grandfather always said to me "Give a man enough rope and he is a friend who cares." I hoped to be that friend.

Sam was either going to be the next mega success or destroy himself. We finally saw each other at Walter's wedding. It was the first time since high school. Sam was always the class clown, making pranks and drawing attention to himself. Once he glued a lesson plan to the teacher's desk and she spent five minutes trying to pull it up. The class was on the floor and Sam was smiling like a Hollywood director watching his big scene projected in front of an audience.

At Walter's wedding, I had arrived alone, fresh out of college and just starting my first job at Deloitte. It was a foot in a door. Not glamorous, and really just a starting position but I had student loans to pay. Sam stood against a wall. I was about to call out to him, but he put his finger to his lips and shook his head to be quiet. I turned around and looked in the direction that Sam was looking. I guy stood next to the hors d'oeuvre table talking to a blond woman. The guy shook his head as she spoke, while leaning on the table. Sam smiled and covered his mouth.

Suddenly there was a loud blast of flatulence from behind the guy. He froze and the blond woman turned, calling out to a friend across the room.

"Wasn't that great," Sam said, holding up the small remote he held in his hand. "I hid the speaker behind that cucumber salad. Nobody ever eats that."

"Good to see ya Sam," I said, "what's up?"

His face went to stiff and serious. He asked me what I'd been up to since high school and where I was working. He told me how he'd been working for his uncle selling industrial washing machines to hotels. "But I'm about to go out on my own and I could use someone like you."

He told me about he was tired of selling the washing machines and had an idea for a new venture. "Bicycles," he said. The way he presented it, I couldn't argue with him. Gas prices were shooting through the roof and everyone was looking for alternatives for getting to work. The bike trade had come a long way since I was riding a BMX in high school. Now people had 18 speed mountain bikes and cruisers, with heavy-duty lightweight frames. Not only were these cool looking but they were damn expensive. If remembered paying $300 for a bike in high school, now commuters would pay as much as $2500 for a medium of the line bike and could even go as high as $9500.

Sam said that he had a supplier that could get the trendiest bikes at a deal. The business couldn't be better, a bonafide sure thing. So by dessert at Walter's wedding, I was hooked and we were talking about merchandising and promotions. The next day, I gave notice at work. Within a month, I was sitting in a 300 square foot office with Sam.

He had set up an office for a king, with a big oak desk in front of a big leather office chair. I was put up in a more modest office next door, with standard furniture from Office Depot. The rest of the operation consisted of storage units where Sam kept our merchandise.

In our first month we were pulling in a 300% profit, selling bikes for top dollar to shops all over town.  We were the best bike source around, edging out larger established players. Within a few months I forgot about my student debts (even though they were still hanging around) and took at financing on a BMW convertible. Sam had a big Lexus SUV, always bigger than my wheels. We hit the clubs and picked up women every week.

One morning I came into the office early, and I found Sam hunched over his desk. There were lines of white powder across his desk. He rolled his eyes up at me. "Get out!" he said. I stood there in surprise. "You heard me? Get out!"

Later he came into my office and asked about the upcoming orders. He was totally casual, playing with the pens on my desk. He didn't mention or even hint at what went on earlier. "We got to put aside all the orders," said Sam.

"Why?" I asked, "this will be a great month."

"I've got a big order to fill. This will cover the year."

"How will we fill it?"

"Don't worry, I've been branching us out. I've got more than enough channels."

I've always said that I should listen to my hunches, and I guess I shouldn't have ignored my own advice but that's what happens.

I spent the rest of the day talking to all of clients, backing out of all the orders and trying to save some face for possible future deals.

"You got a suitcase," Sam asked. Sure, I said, and then Sam told me to sit down in his office. "I've cornered a big shipment of bikes out of California, but we'll need to fly down and drive the shipment up. We need to go tonight."

"If it's more bikes, then why cancel all our orders?"

"Don't you get it? Don't you get it college boy. How do we have the cheapest bikes in the market?" Sam said.

"You said you had connections."

Sam stood up and slammed his hand on the wall. "Connections! Connections! It's gangs, petty thieves, and drug addicts. They're stealing bikes across town and I'm paying them off to get this stuff cheap."

I guess I just wanted to go along and pretend this wasn't possible, that my old friend Sam wouldn't pull me into an illegal operation. It was obvious all along that this was too good to be true. How else could we be the cheapest source of bikes in town. It was too good to be true.

"Come on, get packed we're going," he said, "we're hitten the big leagues. I got a connection to make us the biggest cocaine dealers in the Northwest."

"Got all that," I said. A radio crackled.

"What the ..." Sam looked at me. The front door of the offices crashed open. Officers and agents poured in, pinning Sam against the wall, and pulling his hands behind his back. I unbuttoned my shirt to pull off the recording equipment. I just needed to give Sam enough rope because I was a friend...who cares.

Take Small Steps

Take small steps. That is both the answer and the challenge. Getting up the courage and strength to sit down and write another entry sometimes feels exhausting but also fills your veins with a rush of adrenaline. This is the rush of creativity. Within a few moments, a thick fog dissipates and ideas start to flow.

Writing a Story

Saw this advice and really liked it. This is simple straightforward and doable.

• Give the character a problem, no matter how small. 
• When the character tries to solve the problem, make the attempt fail. 
• Make it fail in such a way that things get worse.
• Now the character has a bigger problem. 
• When the character tries to solve that one...
• ...add another try/fail cycle.
• To end the story, have your character put everything on the line in one last big try, which either succeeds or fails.

Irony Builds Character

Recently heard, Matt Bird on the Narrative Breakdown talk about how irony is central to character and storytelling. He writes, "When stories seem meaningless, it is usually because they lack irony. When stories are especially powerful, you can be certain the author has packed it full of many different types of irony. "

Ten Reasons to Write Short Stories Even Though the Pay is Peanuts

New article:
Ten Reasons to Write Short Stories Even Though the Pay is Peanuts

Writing an Interactive Story

I really liked how Terence Eden broke down and outlined how he built a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' style interactive story on Twitter. You can go in to the whole process in his blog post: Writing A "Choose Your Own Adventure" Story On Twitter.

21 Fast Hacks to Fuel Your Story With Suspense

The Writer's Digest has a great guest article from Elizabeth Sims called 21 Hacks to Fuel Your Story Suspense. This is a great collection and terrific resource to turn to.

Write the Ideas Down

Neil Gaiman's advice for being a writer, in response to a recent question.

"I have been trying to write for a while now. I have all these amazing ideas, but its really hard getting my thoughts onto paper. Thus, my ideas never really come to fruition. Do you have any advice?"

Neil Gaiman responded (in good humor):

Write the ideas down. If they are going to be stories, try and tell the stories you would like to read. Finish the things you start to write. Do it a lot and you will be a writer. The only way to do it is to do it.

See the full response at Neil Gaiman's blog.

What can I do to re-start being a writer?

Great question on Quora "What can I do to re-start being a writer?"

10 Ways To Turn Your Real Life Experiences Into Science Fiction

An article from iO9 explores 10 different ways to turn our own life experiences into science fiction stories.

See the full article at: http://io9.com/10-ways-to-turn-your-real-life-experiences-into-science-1672787624

Thoughts on Writing

I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.

Flannery O'Connor

The Ultimate Source of Writing Prompts - Reddit

I discovered this week a writing prompts treasure. Reddit has a dedicated section to writing prompts called Reddit Writing Prompts. This section is constantly being updated and enriched with comments. Definitely worth coming back!

10 Free Online Creative Writing Courses

Here are free online creative writing courses that I found in my web search

Thoughts After NaNoWriMo

Credit: Melissa McPhail

This graphic just about sums up the kinds of feelings I have after having jumped into November's National Novel Writing Month. I didn't make the 50,000 word goal, so I didn't finish this marathon, but I did learn about writing and storytelling.

Hardwired for story: Sarah-Jane “SJ” Murray

At TEDxSanAntonio, Emmy-nominated screenwriter Sarah-Jane explained how to think about why insanely great storytelling matters and why it’s the key to our future.

Charles Yu on Writing

http://suvudu.com/2014/08/sdcc-2014-charles-yu-on-street-fighter-science-fiction-and-bobs-burgers.html

8 Insights taken from Michael Arndt for Setting a Story into Motion

I saw the post on John August's site, Michael Arndt on setting a story in motion, and was inspired by the short video that John shared where Toy Story 3's screenwriter Michael Arndt explores how to get a story started.

Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators

This week The Atlantic had a spot-on article about the writing condition, called Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators.

Writing Prompt: The Button Factory

I joined an online writing group.
The organizer gave a few writing prompts.

I chose this one:

The button factory had gone utterly silent. All eyes were on the birthday cake and it's 50 candles. Slowly, hesitantly, George...