Sunday, April 17, 2016

Writing Prompt: The Free Write: Hop to It

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

This week’s prompt is a free write, so take the seed below and run with it. It doesn’t have to turn into anything (unless you want it to, of course), just let the words flow and see where they go.

Continue this opening sentence:

It was just a tiny, green, frog.


Write as much or as little as you’d like.

PS. This prompt is dedicated to the frog who has moved onto my patio--and my pool.











6 comments:

  1. It was just a tiny, green frog, but boy could it move. My first thought involved keeping it out of the new landscaping in my yard, but then I thought, what can it hurt? They eat bugs, don't they?

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  2. It was just a tiny, green frog, but boy could it move. My first thought involved keeping it out of the new landscaping in my yard, but then I thought, what can it hurt? They eat bugs, don't they?

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  3. It was just a tiny, green frog at first. A little amphibian weighing a mere few ounces and less than two inches long. I noticed it (how do you tell the gender of a frog?) on Thursday as I set out on my early morning jog. It sat on a dew-moistened rock near the edge of my front yard, its head cocked towards me, watching. When I returned, it was gone.
    On Friday, it was there again, and, gosh, was it larger than the day before? I must be imagining that. Again, its head was tilted in my direction and staring at me.
    By Saturday, it had increased in size tenfold and was now appeared menacing. Its eyes squinted into slits, staring. It was not my imagination. The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I hurried out to the street, glancing back before breaking into a run. Each day it was gone when I returned.
    By Sunday, this tiny creature had morphed into a quivering mass that covered the rock and, indeed, parts of my yard. I was bold and marched up to it, waving my arms and yelling. It moved not a whit, its body tensing, and, in a flash, I saw his tongue.
    "Get out of here, whatever you---

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  4. It was just a tiny, green frog. Just one of the many Pacific tree frogs that fill the evening with their raucous voices. He was just one, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I flattened him as I drove out of the garage. Poor little green frog.
    A few days later I found another tiny green frog in the garage. "Oh, you shouldn't be here, you'll get flattened like your brother." I picked him up and took him out to the back yard where all his tiny green relatives were chirping along the irrigation canal. "Go now, and be with your own kind."
    (This is a true story and happened just last week.)

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  5. It was just a tiny green frog. One that, at one time, lived in the small mud puddle below the patio next to the pool. He liked cool damp places with plenty of flying insects to snack on like many of his kind. but unlike others of his kind he had been displaced, again, by those pesky seelie girls. They had ridden three of the field mice who lived in the garden across the yard through his mud hole. Scaring away the delirious flies and moths that buzzed around the mud there with their wild behavior. The tiny green frog croaked his displeasure. The hard ground next to the human dwelling gets plenty of shade this time of year, and the strange pond the humans bathed in attracted plenty of mosquitoes and gnats during the evening. Perhaps it was time to move to a place those rotten fairies wouldn't dare intrude....

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  6. It was just a tiny, green frog. Not noteworthy in the least. Sadie knew better than to carry on with her little fantasies. It was probably just a coincidence, anyway.

    The frog emitted a single ribbet. Solitary. Lonely. Pathetic. No, no, no. He wasn't worth her time. /He?/ No. It.

    It looked at her and blinked. In that blink she could see a hundred words worth of pleading.

    She was imagining it.

    It had green eyes.

    /Coincidence./

    But...it couldn't hurt, Sadie reasoned, conveniently forgetting her recent illness attributed to kissing unsavory frogs. She leaned down and scooped him into her palm. Then she looked at him, eye to eye. Yes, she decided. It was him. It had to be.

    She closed her eyes and delicately kissed the top of his head. It was slimy. She wrinkled her nose. Any second now. And second at all. Would it matter that she didn't kiss him directly on the lips? Sadie hoped not, but pixies were notoriously particular with their spells.

    Sadie opened her eyes. She'd had the right idea earlier. It wasn't right for princesses to kiss frogs. It was improper. She turned and hiked her skirts up, hurrying back to the castle. If there was a tear on her cheek, no one was around to see it.

    And if the frog shed a tear too, well...

    It was, after all, just a tiny, green frog.

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