Note Entry (Note)

Recently I wrote a short story titled "Note Entry". The short story was written by combining small pieces of writing I did each day. Each day I picked a prompt from my Pinterest feed and wrote whatever came to my mind. Some days I only wrote a short paragraph, some days I ended up writing a couple of pages. My initial reason for starting this challenge was I noticed I was more productive throughout the day when I did a creative task first. Eventually, I thought it would be a cool idea to make all these small pieces of writing into one short story at the end of each week. Throughout this project, I learnt a lot about my creative process. So, I decided to share the extracts I wrote along with some notes I made to connect all the prompts and things I noticed about the writing process in general. I hope this can inspire more people to start writing and if you want to join in on this writing challenge, feel free to do so! I will be continuing my challenge so please look forward to seeing more chaotic stories that were based around 7 random prompts! I have added the link to the short story, Note Entry at the end of this post.

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Writing Prompts (Extracts)

Monday

“You guys are early as always,” A person wearing a black leather lace up boots and black skin tight dress walked into the art studio and sat next to two girl. One was wearing a long black dress with purple flowers printed all over it and was wearing a black turtleneck underneath it and a black leather lace up boots. The girl next to her was wearing an oversized, dark green flannel shirt over a short black dress, long black socks and black ankle boots.

“Yeah because we can’t rely on you to save a spot for us in the workshops.” The girl wearing an oversized flannel shirt sarcastically confronted her friend.

“Hahaha, my bad,” The person laughed it off. “And [insert character name] is late as always.”

“Looks like it,” The girl in a green flannel shirt agreed.

“Come on, we know she has a busy schedule.” The girl in dress defended.

It was a few minutes until the class was about to start and they heard the door open. Another person in black leather, jacket, stockings and flats all in black walked in.

“You’re late, again!” The girl in green flannel shirt sarcastically exclaimed.

“It’s just my brand,” The person smirked and sat with them, taking out their sketch book from their bag. “It’s better than wasting my time chit chatting about others to our degree. We’re mostly sad and repressed queers or retired people looking to pick up a hobby.”

“I want to say that is a harmful stereotype but…” The girl in long dress stated awkwardly as she looked around the room.

With that, their teacher walked in and the class started.

Tuesday

As their tutor walked in, they gave the class the instruction for that day’s workshop. They were to choose any medium which they were comfortable working with, pair up with someone in the class and paint their partner’s portrait based on the conversation they have while painting.

The four of them split into two, took out the equipment they needed for the workshop and sat down facing each other.

“Are you going to make my painting entirely based off non-binary flag colour scheme?” The person in the tight black dress sighed as they saw the colours their friend took out.

“Well, it is part of who you are.” The girl in the long floral dress giggled

[insert character building conversation]

[the nb friend is very outspoken about their orientation and will win against every discriminatory argument no matter how long it takes them]

[the girl is often overwhelmed with the amount of information she can naturally soak up from her surroundings. Occasionally disappears out of people’s lives.]

The girl in the floral print dress painted the background yellow to show the sunset, and drew her friend as a victorious knight with a frog companion.

The person in the black dress sighed with a small smile as they saw not too many colours were added to the initial 4 their friend had chosen. They were only doing a pencil sketch of their friend. They were better with acrylic paints but considering they already had an idea of drawing their friend running off into a misty forest, they decided a charcoal sketch might fit the atmosphere of the portrait better.

The other two were sitting close by. The person who came last adjusted their glasses as they continued to paint their friend sitting on a windowsill, looking out the window with a packed suitcase.

“Hey, what colour do you see the sky in?” The friend wearing a green flannel shirt asked.

“It’s a grey-ish colour I guess.” Her friend replied as they took off their glasses and looked up at the sky.

[build the conversation even more]

[friend with glasses is colour blind]

[A friend with a flannel shirt feels stuck being around people who thinks and sees the same way as the majority. Does not enjoy her life feeling like a monotone.]

[express it in the painting by making the inside of the room she’s sitting in b/w and the landscape outside the window colourful.]

They continued on their portrait. The friend in a flannel shirt painted their friend dancing around in a landscape with mismatched colours.

Wednesday

Prompt: He leaned back a little, a lazy lock falling over his eyes. “Sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth it you know?”

“What?” She asked softly.

“War. The battles. Life. All of it,” he looked over at her and their eyes locked. “But then I remember you.”

Her face turned bright red. Not being used to direct, sincere compliments. He smiled as he sighed and messed around her light brown, curly hair.

“You’re too innocent for this world,”

She just averted her eyes, remained silent, and her face still bright red.

Thursday

Prompt:

She jumped as she felt someone’s arm wrap around her. She turned around and saw him.

“Did I catch you off guard?” He asked with a smirk.

“A little.” She responded with a gentle smile.

He let go of her and took a step back.

Friday

[lacking reason for the villain’s retirement]

Prompt: A superhero and a villain have been fighting for years. Until, the villain unexpectedly decided to retire.

The hero doesn’t believe the story and follows the villain around. One day, the hero followed the villain to a children’s hospital and discovers they have been a volunteer there since long before his retirement.

The hero stopped and thought about it for a moment. All the places which the villain has been attacking were toy factories and other companies that manufacture medical equipment and medicines. Realising this, the hero decided to head back to their base and take a look at all the villain’s cases to see if they have missed anything.

Once they were at the base, they walked straight over to the cabinet with the case files in, pulled out all the files on the villain’s case and laid it all out on the table. For hours, the hero carefully read through the papers. Trying to connect what they were reading to what they have just seen at the children’s hospital.

The more cases they went through, the more the connection became obvious. The companies the villain has been attacking were taking part in things like illegal animal testing, had slave worker over seas and operating under unsustainable practices. Even if they were companies with more resources, the villain never laid their hands on ones that had a clean record. Some irregularities in the villain’s plan which they originally thought was an act of recklessness was done to avoid causing harm to neighbouring non-profit organisations. All this time, the villain was playing Robin Hood.

The next day, the hero waited in front of the villain’s base. As the villain walked out of his house he bowed politely.

“Finally deciding to talk to me in person?” the villain asked as he walked up to the hero.

“So you knew I was following you.”

“Just how many years do you think we’ve been fighting each other? Even a cliched air-head comic book villain could tell you were following them.”

The Hero stood there, feeling completely hopeless. Everything that has been happening the past 24 hours made it feel like all of their effort up until now was for nothing.

“Can I ask why you decided to attack those companies? Weren’t there any other ways like suing them? Or becoming a politician? Police officer?”

“I’m a med school graduate, I’m broke. And if being a politician or an officer could stop those companies then those companies wouldn’t exist in the first place. But also, you know how much kids like seeing hero vs villain. The city already had a hero so I figured why don’t I become the nemesis? Afterall, most villains have better outfits than the heroes. Oh, no offense.” The villain quickly apologised realising what they were saying.

To this explanation, the hero gave a defeated laugh.

“Well, good luck with your volunteer and paying back the student loan.” The hero said to the villain with a smile.

“Thanks, and good luck on protecting this city,” the villain said as he walked off towards the children’s hospital.

Saturday

Prompt: Hamas

The 4 went for a walk around the park in the neighbourhood. They looked at different plants trying to identify the species and took photos of them. As the sun started to set, they walked up the hill to watch the sunset.

As the sun completely set over the horizon, they headed towards the bus stop to go to one of their houses.

When they got home, they lit brown and green candles. They ate the food they bought from markets and other dishes which had onion and bread. They ate and chatted for a while, cleaned up the dishes and burnt sandwood in cleanse as they drank chamomile tea.

“So what’s the point of doing this again?”

“It’s for hamas. One of the harvest festivals celebrated for wicca.”

“Wait, so we’re cursing someone?”

“No, it’s supposed to be a celebration for harvesting grains and stuff like that. It was originally started by the vikings.”

“Well thanks to mass production we don’t really need to worry about seasonal harvest. We’re not exactly living like vikings so why do we still celebrate this?”

“No one said we can’t live like vikings? Who wants to raid villages after this?”

“Is appreciating the tradition too much to ask?”

“Well we got to spend some time with each other.” She cut in, hoping to ease down the conversation before it broke out into an argument.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” They said giving in.

“We have similar schedule so we’re going to see each other at uni anyway.”

“You little…”

Sunday

“Fighting for our lives is getting a bit tiresome. Maybe we should try bowling?” He made a sarcastic remark.

“Seriously? We’re in the middle of a meeting.”

“But think about it. None of this is actually our responsibility. The villain even retired. Why aee we still doing any of this? It’s all pointless!”

“Just because that villain retired doesn’t mean the people who are supposed to be protecting us are doing their job. So we have to…”

“So we have to what? Do their job for them?”

“Exactly!”

For a moment, nobody spoke. Everyone has a little doubt behind the purpose of what they were doing all of this for.

“Can’t we just make our own life happy? Just make our own space safe?”

More silence.

“What are you…”

“Do we really need to be trying to make the whole country a better place? Is that really the burden you want to carry?”

“What are you talking about? Of course I want to make the whole country a better place. Why are you saying all of this now? What happened to you?”

“Changing my perspective is what happened,”

General Note:

Week 1 only used the first writing prompt that showed up on my pinterest feed

Week 2, going to use any first post that shows up on my feed as a prompt

If I don’t have time to write out the full story/idea, leaving a note is good enough

2nd week is easier to write

Tomorrow I should try writing while listening to music

I forgot to listen to music while writing

Without music: occasionally stops writing

If I’m going to start using photos as a prompt and planning to make the notes public, maybe I should have saved the photos so I could post the photos along with the notes.

Remembered to write while listening to music this morning. Not much difference

World Building Note:

Same social constructs as Earth

Heroes uses weapons developed by media company

Some heroes can become villain

Megamind

Make one of the character from first 3 prompts an intern at the newspaper company

Plot line note:

Plot line from the prompt:

1. Hero villain fight

2. Uni

3. Sleep over (Viking theme)

4. Revolutionary group

• one of the character is intern at press

• She's always in the background

• She's the one dating a guy in the revolutionary group

• She's planning something

• One of her friend is a retired super villain

• Her friend was a villain because they wanted to show the children real life hero vs villain fight and donate enough materials to the hospital they volunteer at

• This really is giving me durarara vibe

• Write the story in journal style?

• Won't be able to get the scene on revolutionary group

• She's dating one of them so she could do get the info that way

• Don't think he told her?

• Or she met him through one of the intern?

• He's undercover for the case?

• Write it in note style and she sells the information to the press

• That can be the plot twist?

• Write the story in note format,

• She rips out the page on what happened at uni and the sleepover and sells the rest of the notes to the press

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Link to Note Entry: https://vocal.media/fiction/note-entry