Day 1
Come up with 25 synonyms or images for the color red (examples: apple, fingernails, rose-colored glasses, ketchup). Just off the top of your head, no peeksies!
Set a timer for 15 minutes. Try to use all or most of these 25 in a story.
Don’t overthink it; just let the images come to you and put them down without judging yourself, the plot, the ideas, cliches, word choice, or anything else.
For example, I do NOT watch horror films EVER or like anything dark and grisly. Yet, as you can see from my own attempt at the exercise below which I wrote in under 20 minutes a few days before Christmas 2024, I was certainly “seeing red,” lol. This is some grade-A-dark-AF shit right here coming out of me. I literally disturbed myself. What in the heck had I tapped into?
But oh, well… it was certainly a chance to practice pushing my creative flow. And that’s what we’re doing here. So just let it come as it will.
The redheaded woman plunged into the Red River, beating a frothy carnation path as she fled to the far scarlet bank, now overgrown with hibiscus bushes baubled with apple blooms. Her blood pounded in her ears as she cast a hasty glance back over her shoulder to see if he would follow her.
Somehow, it was more frightening to see that he was not.
Instead, he stood welded on the edge of the brick red waters behind her, a demented clown’s smile twisting his face. A tattered, dirty, oversized Santa’s coat hanging from his tall, emaciated frame, his eyes bloodshot and wide, unblinking. Silent. He was still carrying a solitary red balloon in one hand, and she gasped and thrashed as she saw him reach into one vermillion velvet pocket, his eyes igniting with a dark flame.
But he pulled out a wedge of watermelon, and took a huge bite with yellow teeth, smile staying put, ruby juices dripping down his chin. As he watched, and she swam with all her might through the strawberry waves for the other side, a candy apple sports car sped past on the bridge to her left, the driver tossing a cup of chewed and spent pomegranate seeds into the waters below, and she sobbed out as the water carried them past her.
Finally, she reached the other side… but her stalker was gone! Left behind laid a single red rose.
Shuddering, she glimpsed from side to side, blinking, unbelieving, but no hint of carnelian spotted the banks of the river, save the weedy wild rhubarb stems.
She jumped as a pair of cardinals flittered past, snapping her back into blind survival mode. She climbed the muddy clay banks of that Oklahoma-Texas border stream back up to the road, waving down a Red Cross van passing by.
Warm and safe at last inside the van, one tall volunteer passed her a gift-wrapped box topped with an over-sized Christmas bow.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, with a dark smile.
Hesitating, she opened the package. Then stopped to stare, mouth opening with a sharp inhale, eyes darting back to the volunteer to see his bloodshot eyes cold as dry ice as he slammed down a rock into her skull, her life like blended beets garnishing the van’s white interior as he raised the rock over… and over… and over again…