STORY STARTER
Chaotic
Write a scene where something chaotic is happening.
Mess
Charlie ripped the door to her flat open, roaring, “COME ON, CANDICE! WE’RE GONNA BE LATE!!” Not even waiting for her roommate to reply, the young woman hastily changed from her professional clown outfit into her wrestling uniform right there in the doorway. She didn’t even bother attempting to salvage her now-smeared makeup, and instead began arranging her long russet hair into its signature ‘battle bun’.
The aforementioned blonde in question giggled hysterically and bolted frantically to and fro in the wrecked remains of their sad little kitchen, the two separate grease fires on the stove climbing ominously high despite being taken off the heat as the dishwasher gurgled and sputtered the tell-tale beginnings of an ill-advised sud based detergent from its mechanical lips. All the while, the toaster belched black smoke and sparked electricity, almost drowning out the steady burble of the toilet overflowing down the hall. The fire alarm shrieked over it all, completing the symphony of chaos.
Hi, Windy. Definitely good at capturing chaos and showing just about everything that can go wrong.
In my opinion, I think one aspect that can help would be to ground the chaos in a more familiar setting. For example, something like a parent who needs to do all the morning chores by themselves for the first time and everything is going wrong leading to the chaos you described. For me, I could imagine my father doing this and is how I kind of imagined the story as I read which gave me a good chuckle.
In general, I believe grounding new and fanciful ideas into something familiar help the reader empathize and get into the story more.
That’s true! I’ve always loved writing crazy scenes like this, so I may have gotten a little carried away with making it as nuts as possible. I think you definitely have a good point in balancing the mayhem with believability, though, so I’ll be paying more attention to that next time I write something like this.
I’m flattered (and a little worried) that you could see your dad in a situation like the one I’ve written, that’s very sweet haha. Thank you for the feedback! 😄