Choose Your Own Commenting Adventure

When I was a wee lad of middle school angst years, I enjoyed those Choose Your Own Adventure books, mostly because I felt like I had control of the pending…

When I was a wee lad of middle school angst years, I enjoyed those
Choose Your Own Adventure books, mostly because I felt like I had
control of the pending situation, even if I could never figure out to
keep from shaking the branch to retrieve Carlos's backpack whilst the
Abominable Snowman lurked around.

With that said and because it is the week before the Day of Labor,
which means this blog will be labor intensive, I am trying something
new here, giving you a taste of a writing exercise that you may or
may not choose to do, enjoy, or utilize. I will start off a story and
then pass it along to the comment section. You can continue the story
in the comments (writing up to 4 sentences or just a single line or
whatever you want really) but always leaving the last sentence
partially done, so that someone can come in and pick up where you
left off... you'll see what I mean. Anyway, this just means that you
have to look and see what was written by the person who commented
previously. There is potential for this to be a disaster, or a
masterpiece, or whatever, but I always liked doing these things in
writing workshops, and if I like it, doesn't that mean that everyone
else has to like it as well? Anyways, this is a beta version of
something like this, so just have fun with it, be as ridiculous as
you want to be, and--if it's good-- I will copy and paste this into a
word doc, claim I wrote the whole thing and submit it to the Paris
Review.

Here we go:

"Casey didn't see her coming. He'd just arrived at the Our House for
his blind date with Melinda and was running over the check list of
things he wanted to talk about (her work, hobbies, whether or not
she enjoyed scary movies or better yet Scary Movie, and anything that
would lead back to him talking about bench pressing) when he felt
someone sneak up behind him and squeeze his sides. He turned around
and..."

Yeah, so the first person to comment start by finishing this stellar
sentence and then go on for a few, and leave it hanging for the next
person... and we'll keep going until we figure out just what got real
with Casey's blind date adventure.

I'm literally nervous (for Case). Songs of 1996 ensue.

Give me one,
reason

Tracy Chapman

Jane Friedman is a full-time entrepreneur (since 2014) and has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry. She is the co-founder of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and is the former publisher of Writer’s Digest. In addition to being a columnist with Publishers Weekly and a professor with The Great Courses, Jane maintains an award-winning blog for writers at JaneFriedman.com. Jane’s newest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press, 2018).