Story Forge Poem – A Web of Lies

A few months ago we used the Story Forge Cards to come up with a story outline for Film Noir. Several of us in our writing group each looked at the same card layout and created individual  stories. Three stories already been posted. Our group decided we should test out Story Forge to aid in writing poems.  Below is the outcome.  Take a look and let us know what you think. We continue to enjoy experimenting with Story Forge Cards. It is  a good process to generate story or poem ideas.

A Web of Lies

The ring was not lost
He finally realized
Like pieces fit together in a puzzle,
His wife had strung a web of lies

The 3 Karat platinum diamond ring
Was pawned to pay her gambling debt.
Totally different version from her story
It was in the shop for a cleaning and reset

The past six months of the marriage
Had been very lonely for him.
He begged her to come home early;
She argued overtime was best for them.

What she did not account for
Was the circle of friends in his life.
The pawn shop attendant, his fraternity brother,
Immediately knew she was his wife.

Although the attendant was held into secrecy
By his company’s code of conduct rules.
He had experienced a similar hurt
And didn’t want his brother made into a fool.

The brothers maintained a bond
Since their time together serving in Germany.
We fight each other’s battles,
In the air, on land, and sea.

With clarity of her lies
He left the marriage; divorced his wife.
She sunk into a deep depression
And with no hope in sight, she took her life.

Story Forge – Opportunities of War

A few months ago we used the Story Forge Cards to come up with a story outline for Film Noir. Several of us in our writing group each looked at the same card layout and created our own story. Two have already been posted, and here is mine. And I’ll mention it has some NSFW language in it, since we don’t normally have that on here.

Meet Me... by DomiKetu

Meet Me… by DomiKetu

The man in the long coat took a deep pull from his cigarette and blew the smoke in towards the tavern across the street. Bright light and raucous noise spilled from it out into the night. There was other noise on the street that night, but none other sounded of fun. “Are you going to go? Or no?”

The young woman next to him bit her lip, but her eyes were firm. “Yes,” she said. “I can do this.” While the man leaned casually against the wall at the end of an alley, she stood at his side tense and stiff. As if she might bolt at any moment.

The man smiled at her. Not a warm smile, not a comforting one, but a thin smile of agreement. “Good. There will be many soldiers there tonight. Many have not seen a pretty woman in a long time, so you will be… popular.”

The woman nodded. “I can handle randy men.”

The man shook his head. “No, their lust isn’t your problem. Most of them are fodder. They know nothing. You want to make this work, you need to get to someone important.  Then let your wiles do their work.”

“I’m supposed to be a serving girl, how do I ignore everyone wanting ale?”

Shrugging, the man took another drag from his cigarette. “This is not my problem. I only get you in there, get you hired. I create opportunities. That is me. How to spy? That is you.”

“You say you don’t care about either side in this war, but I know you do. Getting me in there with the new offensives coming will be invaluable for us. This name, this job, had to be nearly impossible to do. You care. I know you do.” She touched his arm.

“It was not as difficult as all that,” the man said, smiling again.

“You care. I know you do. Now… I must get to work. Thank you,” she said, sliding across the dirty and noisy street to the tavern.

The man in the long coat watched her enter the tavern. He blew smoke up into the darkness, listening to the yells and catcalls from across the street.

A few minutes later another figure appeared in the alley behind the man in the long coat. The new figure stayed deep in the shadows.

“She will give you what you need, Captain?” asked the man in the long coat.

“She’s perfect. When I uncover her as a spy we will not only get valuable information, but I will surely get a promotion.”

“And what of her when you are done?”

“Kill her, of course,” said the Captain. “What of it?”

“I could use her. A woman like that could fetch a good price.”

“Good price? As one of your whores?” The Captain laughed. “After we interrogate her she will not be nearly so attractive.”

“This is wartime, Captain. Even you might be surprised what men will pay good coin to stick their cock into.”

“So you will make money selling her again and again. You are a harsh man. You fit this war well,” said the Captain.

The man in the long coat flung his cigarette butt into the gutter. “Your war means nothing to me, but it does force me to get creative in finding… opportunities. Good night, Captain.”

 ###

This ended up being a bit darker than the things I usually write, but that’s one thing I like about writing exercises like this – they take you in directions you don’t normally explore on your own. The hardest piece of the story to work out for me was the “betrayal” in the first card, but once I sorted that out the rest fell into place, and I think I covered every card in the layout.

Story Forge – Scales and Betrayals

The following was written from a Story Forge card layout.  To see what Story Forge is all about, see the first post in this series. You can see all of our Story Forge inspired pieces here.

Bacon-wrapped filet mignon

Bacon-wrapped filet mignon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I should have known it couldn’t last.  Who was I kidding?  Myself, apparently, and others, as well.  But, I was in so deep that I started believing the lies I had spun each and every day, the lies that had kept me as close to safe and sound as anyone in my line of work could hope to be, hour after hour, day after day, case after case.  One last job, one last collar, one last bad guy to put away, and I, so my boss had said, was the only one that could pull it off, the only one that had the trail of credentials to get in, get close, get it done.  They just forgot that there should have been one more “get” in there: get out alive.

That last one was pretty important to me, of course, but it wasn’t looking too good as of late.  I had let my guard down, actually trusted one of Don Gardino’s crew, someone I thought was a kindred spirit, as close to a kid brother as I had ever had.  But, like a kid brother, he’d tried just a little too hard to help me out, got them just a little paranoid about me, led them to discover the faulty chink in my otherwise solid armor.

Still, I couldn’t give up and risk the mission, not with so much on the line.  Don Gardino, we’d been after him for way too long and he’d tipped the scales way too far toward the evil side, like some butcher with his thumb in the mix, charging filet mignon prices for ground beef.  I chuckled thinking just how apt an analogy that was, given the number of witnesses that had been laid out cold along the way.

There was no way I could have known that Big Jim Fairbanks, Gardino’s former lieutenant was going to be my downfall.  He’d been put away, far away, at least that was my understanding.  Not that I was going to be getting any answers about how, what, who, when, why.  He was here, and looking straight at me, just one of those bum rolls of the dice that life sometimes throws your way.

All my training, all my carefully built up persona, it all came crashing down, and here and now was all I had left.  And that smug bastard, Don Gardino, he’d get away with it, probably even profit by it in some way.

***

This was my first exercise utilizing the Story Forge cards.  I would say I got hung up a little on the process and tried to adhere very closely to the touch points, one at a time, versus taking in the whole bunch and letting them drive a complete story.  I did make one full editing pass through to improve flow a little after getting all the ideas in place. I thoroughly enjoy writing in the film noir, hard-boiled detective style and have used that type of voice in a number of previous pieces.

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