Friday, November 30, 2012

Writing Exercise: Vowels for Thanksgiving

I went to my writing group the day after Thanksgiving and we had a choice of two prompts. The first prompt was to write a paragraph where each sentence starts with a vowel, going through the vowels in order, A-E-I-O-U. The second prompt was this: "Write about the only time you hosted Thanksgiving--and how it went so terribly wrong. Start with the line 'For my first Thanksgiving as host, I bought the biggest turkey they had in the store,' and end your story with 'And that's why we all ate hamburgers.'" The leader said we could blend the two prompts if we wanted, and this is just what I did. My first paragraph was this:
As host for my first Thanksgiving, I acquired the biggest turkey they had in the store. Ever the optimist, I left off defrosting it till the last minute which was the first (or possibly second) huge mistake. Interior ice in the form of frozen giblets informed me that drastic measures were needed, such as microwave defrosting. Opening the microwave, the beast was too large to put in as a whole; chopping it to chunks would make it fit for microwaving but unfit for oven roasting. Under the circumstances, we all ate hamburgers.
Then I thought that I could keep the sentences from the second prompt and just have the A-E-I-O-U sentences in the middle:
For my first Thanksgiving as host, I bought the biggest turkey they had in the store. Assuming it would fit in my oven, I took it home after all the shopping was done, with a smile on my face and drool dribbling from my mouth. Everything went smoothly: stuffing the bird, basting it, wedging it into the roasting pan. Into the oven it was supposed to go and I tried with a mighty heave-ho! Obstructing the ovarian was the small opening into my obviously inadequate oven. Useful ideas like measuring before buying hadn't occurred to me at the store. And that's why we all ate hamburgers.
Another suggestion was to rewrite each sentence with more words that start with the particular vowel, which I did more in my second attempt. Also, I tossed in a lot of alliteration, which is using the same initial letter for words.

The exercise was a lot of fun. Another person also had the defrosting problem in his paragraph. I guess that's what guys think of first? Or maybe it is based on life experience...

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