Prompt: Your Last 10 Words

Posted by David Duhr in ABCs of Writing      42 comments

Oct
3

Discussion questions: Not a question, but write a story or poem or *something* using the last five to ten words you’ve looked up on your dictionary app or online or, if you can remember, in your actual dictionary. (If you don’t have such a log, you can use my words.) Also, share with us why you looked up these words, if there’s an interesting reason.

Here’s my story, with the 10 words bolded:

The first thing she saw was a group of construction workers reinforcing an outer wall with what looked like gunite. The man wielding the hose shuffled back and forth, trampling the creosote bushes underfoot, his face steely as if the situation outside were more exigent than any inside. It didn’t inspire confidence, but what sense of confidence did she deserve, here in the middle of this patently absurd American desert at the bottom of the world? The beauty of the landscape was dulled by the memory of the sound of her bones snapping like cracknels. While one EMT performed his auscultations, the others wheeled her through the ER’s glass doors, which, as they slid apart, showed a patulous crack that reminded her of much of I-15 running from her littoral bungalow to — in theory, though she may never make it — Vegas. With her garbage health insurance, cutting off that semi had been worse than any gamble she might have made there.

Here are my 10:

littoral: I read some article covering littoral combat ships, and I didn’t recognize the word.

bottom: Sense 9, something about a fundamental quark. (See below)

beauty: I looked this up because of a passage in A Swim in A Pond in the Rain. The final entry says, “Bottom, sense 9.” (Something about a fundamental quark.)

cracknel: A hard brittle biscuit. From a Tolstory story in the Pond book. (I’m leaving that typo because I like it. A Tolstory!)

gunite: Before starting the Saunders I considered rereading Two-Up, about a gunite worker.

exigent: Because someone said “exigent circumstances.”

auscultation: Listening to heart, lungs, etc., through a stethoscope. I do not remember why I looked this up.

patulous: Spreading, like the branches of a tree. I don’t remember how this came up.

patently: On a news show the anchor said something was “patently absurd.” I wondered what the actual definition read.

creosote bush: I went to look up creosote because of something I read, and “creosote bush” was offered as an autofill.

In the comments, write a story using the last five to ten words you’ve looked up in a dictionary. Below that, let us know what made you look those words up.

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WriteByNight writing coach and co-founder David Duhr is fiction editor at the Texas Observer and co-host of the Yak Babies podcast, and has written about books for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives