A while back, I promised you that next time I wrote, we'd have more fun. In that time, the world in general and my life in particular have become much grimmer. Therefore, in my opinion, the Fun is even more necessary.
So we're going to try an experiment. It might not work. But the last time I said that, we made PA Story, which is the most fun I've ever had on this website mostly sober.
Let's try to use this site and this community to write a story together in a kind of Exquisite Corpse/line at a time way. I'll give you the beginning, and you guys add the rest, a bit at a time in the comments. So the first person reads what I've written, and adds the next couple of paragraphs of the story as a comment. The second person reads all of that, adds the next bit, and so on.
This is an imaginative, and largely ridiculous, exercise. There are no restrictions on content, as long as the start of your bit follows from the end of the bit before. Add or remove characters, change genre or tone, throw in an unexpected plot twist (to the degree that there is any plot anyway). Play with it. It's not about end result, it's about playing together, having fun with the process.
Just to note: if you're typing straight into the comments box, please refresh to check that nobody else has posted before you do. If we get into tangles from simultaneous or contradictory additions, I may close comments briefly while I try to weave the disparate branches together into a single – though possibly not coherent – narrative.
And above all, have fun.
Renowned secret agent Stud Lampjaw woke to the bright Venice sun reflecting brightly from the hotel ceiling. Turning to the side as he lit his breakfast cigarette, he saw the warm, moist presence of Tatiana Rolanovski, her blonde Russian hair tumbling across her exhausted shoulders. She looked so peaceful now, such a contrast to her desperate flight last night, in four-inch stilettos and a lab coat, from her underground nuclear physics bunker.
A soft sound from the next room made his senses snap to attention, and he slid noiselessly from the bed, for some reason wearing boxer shorts even though he'd clearly recently had sex. He took the Walther PPK from the hollowed-out copy of Unspeakable Secrets of the AroValley next to the bed and slid the clip in with the practiced dexterity of a man who could undo the clasp of any bra while he was wearing it.
As he stepped quietly through the door, another sound greeted his ears; the gentle clink of someone stirring a martini so as not to bruise the gin like any right-thinking person. Incensed, he raised the gun and stared at his visitor through the sights the Walther clearly didn't have. "Clint."
The other man twisted his face into what might have been a smile on another man. "Lampjaw. You have something of mine, I think. And as it turns out, I have something of yours. Hand her over, and no-one gets hurt. At least, not here in this room, where the cleaning will be charged to your credit card."