One day, three chimes
One rule first · 20 minutes · Published
Read this first
For having lived in Westminster--how many years now? over twenty,--one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925). Project Gutenberg #71865
The prompt
Before you write a word, set one rule at the top of the page: everything happens within a single day, and a clock you can hear strikes at least three times. Then follow a character between two of those strikes, letting what they think in the gap do the storytelling. Do not break the rule to explain anything that happened on another day.
Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write the stretch between two strikes of the clock, rule written at the top first.
The move
One rule first. Set a formal rule before the first sentence and hold to it to the end.
Tags: constraint and structure.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Only what works. Anyone reads who wants to. In this format, responses name only what works in the first draft, and every text is treated as fiction.
Where the page goes next
Scrin is a home where pages grow into books: you keep writing, from an untitled line to a chapter, and Scrin keeps the rest.