A Time of Innocence

Hey Everyone!

We have been super inspired lately to get words on the page for both our novel and the blog. We even bought a book (The Write-Brain Workbook) to help us get started and to keep us on track. This book is full of interesting prompts and has required us to think about things we never would have on our own.

Today, we are going to share one of the prompts we used with all of you. The exercise is called Not Guilty. It was a very simple prompt:

Finish the story. Start with: It was a time of innocence...

It's Alice's turn to go first, so here is the story that she came up with:

It was a time of innocence. I laid back and looked at the sky. The clouds resembled shapes and I was creating a story in my head. The sun was warm on my face and arms. The field was overgrown and the smell of daisies filled my nose. I could hear my sister calling in the distance. Soon she would join me and the circus in the sky would continue and we could play along. We would be the dancers, soaring through the air like we had wings. We would walk the tightropes high above the crowd, daring gravity to pull us down. And we would tame the lions, pacing the cage and exciting the crowd. The world was ours, and we could be anything we wanted.

I heard Elizabeth's voice from far away. Soon, it dragged me back to reality. The fields and clouds and daisies are gone. They are a time of the past. The time we all tried to hold on to, the time we all desperately missed. We knew there was no going back. We could only relive it in our heads. But now that so much time has passed, its hard to figure out what was real and what we just need to believe. I ran through my stats like I did every morning: My name is Kristen Hall. I am 5'7”, 120 pounds. Brown hair, green eyes. As of yesterday, I have 127 kills, 150 assists. I imagine my face on a trading card and kids excited to have mine in their deck. Somehow, that makes the world seem less bleak. I get out of bed and scratch another line in my notebook; one more day survived.

Elizabeth is already geared up for battle. She hands me my bow and we step outside. The world is different now, but it is going to be ours.

And here's Quinn's story:

It was a time of innocence before they had become fully aware of what was going on. While the intent of their job was hidden from them, they went about their business, believing that their research was in fact being used to help people. In fact though, everything that had been done was done for motives that were not so pure, and their ignorance on this matter made them accomplices. Trying to create a fail-safe once they had discovered what they were helping to develop, the girls began the day with large cups of coffee. “I can’t believe we are about to do this,” one of the girls looked over at the other, who was bent over a computer screen on the lab bench. She looked up, “Me either, let’s just pray that they don’t catch it right away. We need to be long gone before that happens.” They both nodded silently. They both knew what was at stake, yet somehow this didn’t seem like enough to completely redeem them just yet. They still had no idea what it was going to be used for, so their next course of action was vague.

“It’s almost done.” The door to the lab opened just as one of the researchers finished speaking. It was their boss. Both girls froze, not knowing what to do next. They couldn’t shut everything down, that would be suspicious, but they needed to hide it somehow. Their boss walked through the lab to where they both sat at a bench, working with some of the lab equipment. One of the girls had quickly changed the computer screen to show a microscope image of the Petri dish she was looking at. “How is everything going?” The boss looked at both girls. “Good, moving along. Should be finished in the next day or so.” “Good.” He walked back out of the lab, not having found anything suspicious like he had originally thought. He had thought catching them off guard would present him with concrete evidence, but it didn’t. Satisfied, he went back to his office. Both girls took a huge sigh of relief, and went back to what they were doing to complete their project, and prevent anyone from being able to replicate what they had created.

#NailedIt #PracticallyProfessionals

As usual, we really enjoyed this writing exercise. And we (of course) recommend that any of you writers out there give it a try and see what happens. Who knows? It might be the start to a best-seller! We would love to hear what you guys have to say, so feel free to message us with your own attempts!

Until some later date,

-Alice & Quinn

Peace.