Here at the CR office we read a lot of submissions. And we like doing it—and even though we can’t take every piece that strikes our fancy, every week we take note of a well-drawn scene, a lovely line, or a pleasingly complex character.
Sometimes we let you in on trends we see in the submissions pile (this winter, we noted a lot of stories set in foreign countries). Our latest? Promising premises that fail to pay off. (Something like this: Man realizes that his wife is slowly turning into a dragon. Files for divorce, moves to the West Coast, considers going to culinary school despite his fear of both fire and really large squashes.)
But! Lucky you: Today, we are NOT looking for a premise that pays off—in the form of a complete piece, anyway. We’re looking for . . . well, a good premise. A really, really good one. Give us your best set-up for a story or poem. We’ll choose our favorite funny premise and the best overall premise.
Winners will get their choice of free back issue, CR thermos, or CR slingpack. To play, leave a comment on this post (click the post’s title) by next Friday, April 13.
Survivor: Detroit.
Vegetables become sentient, causing consternation and confusion among vegetarians.
The female warden of a prison is pregnant by one of the inmates, and one of the guards, who is in love with her, tries to figure out which one.
OR
God, wanting to appeal to feminists, places a girl savior in a virgin’s body. The new god-child is so popular that Jesus, incredibly jealous and needy, materializes on earth and strives to get people to like him better.
The trees are split on who would make the best official spokesperson: The Lorax or Al Gore. Campaigning for the position, the two face off in a public, televised debate.
In a world where literary magazines are regularly purchased in the check-out lane, Hollywood celebrities want nothing more than to have their short stories, poems, and non-fiction published in these esteemed journals. Chaos ensues when Paris Hilton is nominated for a Pushcart by The Mid-American Review and Shia LaBeouf is chosen to edit that year’s Best American Short Stories. The ghost of George Plimpton refuses to tell self-aggrandizing stories to Ken Burns until the situation is resolved, and Jonathan Franzen hosts a half-hour show where he sips from a Big Gulp while talking about clips of Salman Rushdie ordering double chicken in a burrito bowl at Chipotle and Anne Patchett sipping on a Starbucks while going through security at LAX.
A leaf falls . . . prettily.
A Pulitzer Prize winning novelist is threatened with divorce from his non-prize-winning writer-wife, who is taking up with Ted Turner (see “I am Not Sidney Poitier”). Pulitzer Prized author writes a novel-length email to the students in his writing workshop, detailing the private life of his soon-to-be-ex wife while waxing rhapsodic about how generously he supports her, now, as he always has, because he is a class-act. His students each write a novel based on the dissolution of the marriage of their esteemed Pulitzer Prize Winning professor and each wins a Pulitzer Prize for his/her novel.
So not a writer, but a Boston bound runner am I. As we will congregate in the Athlete’s village pre-race, our bib numbers are in order of our best marathon time of the past year, a branded hierarchy. What if citizens were required to display other vital statistics that may or may not define us on a daily basis: GPA, Income or (shreik!) BMI? Sincerely, #18165/27000.
A mummy in Egypt comes back to life, moves into the Luxor in Las Vegas, develops a gambling problem.
Charlene –
I love your idea. And I’m sure it goes without saying that each of these novels will be dedicated to that original novelist (who is super good looking, btw) with something like, “…for teaching me how to yearn.”
Nicolas Cage talks to God.