60 Words - A Luncheon Unfinished

Wired magazine said:

Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work.

We've all heard it. Short, sharp, and most importantly, poignant. At NAW some of the students have elected themselves to run a 60 word short story competition, and I, in my infinite wisdom, chose to enter, but rather than just scoot off an entry, I sat on it, and toyed with the idea (quite the way I don't normally toy with an idea before writing it). So, here's the brief:

Write a story with a 60 word limit and you can use the word 'lunch' as often as you like without it counting toward the word limit.

And here are the break downs of my entry from original version to final:

Title: A Luncheon Unfinished

Lunch, she thought, had done her in. Lunch, she forsook, half eaten; discarded like a Queen fearing poison. She struggled to the bathroom, tasting lunchtime’s heartburn. Her tablets, within reach – BANG – like an egg in a microwave! She crumpled in the hallway, a shrivelling soufflé… Still. Lunch was her last breath. Lunch, strewn upon the coffee table, waits on; a luncheon unfinished.

It didn't help my inspiration that Laura's nan had passed away recently - a shock that left the family reeling, God rest her - and as you can see my output is of the same ilk (though lunch had nothing to do with her death). I had this great sense of loss, and I couldn't help the thought of her having got up to go to the bathroom and simply collapsing there all alone at 4 in the morning, dead in a heartbeat, with no one to know until many hours later. In a way it feels like I'm sold out to use her as inspiration at all, preying on such a vulnerable subject, and certainly twisting the reality to include the sillyness of "lunch", but that's the nature of the beast of writing isn't it?

Anyhoo, I felt the need to work lunch into the frame of the story - since that was the theme (if you will) of the competition, and so decided that it would be lunch "what done her in"... or so she thought. Queens fearing poison, microwaved eggs and shrivelled souffles all came to me inspirationally. The death itself has its obvious origins.

I don't like the first line though - it's a waste of words - and though it's a nice contrast to the Queen reference, it's all implied by the remainder of the story. I could spread those words elsewhere to evoke some senses - gas and tightening. And though it has a poetic feel, "Lunch was her last breath" doesn't really work. So:

She forsook lunch, half eaten; discarded it like a Queen fearing poison and struggled to the bathroom. She could taste lunchtime’s heartburn in her throat, its gas on her breath. Everything was tightening. Her tablets, within reach – BANG – like an egg in a microwave! She crumpled in the hallway, a shrivelling soufflé… Still. Lunch, strewn upon the coffee table, waits on; a luncheon unfinished.

I continued to play with the Queen motive and the structure of that sentence, developed further the taste/smell of the gas (foul) - gas, egg, souffle all help to conjure this singular idea of eggs doesn't it (doesn't it?) - and made the microwaved egg and crumple and souffle into a single, run-on sentence to see how it sounds:

She forsook lunch, half eaten, like a Queen fearing poison. She struggled to the bathroom, tasting lunchtime’s heartburn in her throat; foul gas on her breath. Everything tightened. Her tablets, within reach – BANG! Her heart gave out like an egg in a microwave and she crumpled in the hallway, a shrivelling soufflé… Still. Lunch, strewn upon the coffee table, waits on; a luncheon unfinished.

"Everything tightened" isn't a great line. It's a waste really, and her heart "giving out" is woolly at best. It's interesting to see what lines I feel are the spinal cord of the piece and that I seem to refuse to change - Queen's poison, the actual fall, and the final sentence (for what I feel is it's poeticsm). But in particular I now have a new power word:

She forsook lunch, half eaten, like a Queen fearing poison. She struggled to the bathroom, lunchtime’s heartburn in her throat; foul gas on her breath. Her tablets, now within reach, would relieve lunch’s venom – BANG! Her heart blew like an egg in a microwave and she crumpled in the hallway, a shrivelling soufflé… Still. Lunch, strewn upon the coffee table, waits on; a luncheon unfinished.

"Venom" - isn't that better? Venom links in with the Poison. It gives the egg feel that definite sense of salmonella. What is still unnecessary however is the very last three words - it's the title for crying out loud (and the title has a free wordcount), so I shouldn't waste them, but utilise three words elsewhere. Also, we don't need to know that lunch is "half eaten" it's implied by being forsaken. Aha:

She forsook lunch like a Queen fearing poison. Lunchtime’s heartburn was in her throat; foul gas on her breath. She struggled to the bathroom, reaching for the tablets to relieve lunch’s venom – BANG! Her heart exploded like an egg in a microwave and she crumpled in the hallway; a shrivelling soufflé… expelling not just air… still. Lunch, strewn upon the coffee table, waits on.

I also played with the sentence structure and order there too. Did you see? And now we have "expelled air" which replaces the "lunch is her last breath" line from a couple of edits ago. But this still doesn't have the kind of punch I'd like. Time, I think to get some more power words in there:

She forsakes lunch like a philosopher fearing hemlock. Lunchtime’s heartburn is in her throat, its sulphurous reek on her breath. She flees to the bathroom, scrambling for tablets to relieve lunch’s poison – BANG! Like an egg in a microwave, her heart explodes. She crumples in the hallway; a shrivelling soufflé… evacuating more than mere gas… still. Lunch, strewn across the coffee table, waits on.

And so I reached my final version. I swapped Queen for philosopher because I could use a specific poison, and since hemlock has connotations of Socrates, therefore... philosopher works, right? Consolidating the egg leitmotif the foul gas becomes "sulpherous". I want her to be in a hurry, already in fear of her life, so she now "flees" to the bathroom. "Lunch's venom" is allowed to become "Lunch's poison" - previously I didn't want to repeat the word, but since the first instance has become "hemlock" I can throw out venom - which has the feel of specific intent to kill rather than the more naturey course feeling we get with poison (our bodies can poison us). To give a change to the structure I decided to explode the egg before the heart and from there, after the crumple it felt better to "evacuate" more than gas because it wouldn't just be gas heading out the door would it? And finally, to make it more immediate I changed it to the present.

And there we have it. My breakdown of changes. What would you have changed?