Fiction Schmiction. Help.

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So, I have to write this story for my fiction workshop, and it has to be based on the following:
Alfred Red (a horrible character name I was assigned)
London
Ecstatic
Apocalypse
I'm not really sure how to go about writing this thing, but I have to have it done in two weeks. I have been working on some illustrations, but I have no story to go around them. Any ideas? I don't care if they're sarcastic.

― kirsten (kirsten), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:17 (twenty-two years ago)

(All of these elements were assigned. We had to each write a name, a place, an emotion and an image on slips of paper and draw them out of a hat. I do not usually write things like this. That is why I am so stumped.)

― kirsten (kirsten), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Tell the story of London ILXors averting the apocalypse caused by one Alfred Red. Make sure Jel has a heroic role.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmm. But how does he cause the apocalypse? That's where I'm so confused. I don't know if I should have it actually be the apocalypse or have someone just think it is. Or if Apocalypse should be a death metal band.

― kirsten (kirsten), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Wow, you really got some crappy subjects.

― Mandee, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:28 (twenty-two years ago)

That's it! How about the story of a London-based music press person named Alfred Red who's assigned to review the live act of this horrible death metal group called Apocalypse and he ends up moaning and groaning aloud so much during the performance that halfway through it he ends up getting kicked out, to his ecstatic delight?

Er, or something. Oh yes, and note the beautifully precise terminology, please, if you will. ;)

― Many Coloured Halo (Dee the Lurker), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

My illustrations are so good! I even have one of a girl eating a lollipop with the pope's face on it, and those actually exist, or at leat they did in Rome in the summer of 2001. I need a good story.
And yes, Mandee, my subjects blow. On MY slips of paper, I wrote Terry (to allow for sexual ambiguity), Gary, Indiana (to allow for a wealth of telling odors), spatula (because pancakes are great), and drunk (because all writers are drunks anyway, and that would make things easy). I got screwed.

― kirsten (kirsten), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

haha i love the name terry.

― mandee, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:32 (twenty-two years ago)

And also, that's a good idea, Dee.

― kirsten (kirsten), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:32 (twenty-two years ago)

That's it! How about the story of a London-based music press person named Alfred Red who's assigned to review the live act of this horrible death metal group called Apocalypse and he ends up .... throught some unexplainable reason (which the writter does not need to explain) causes the real Apocalypse, to the band members ecstatic delight?

― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:48 (twenty-two years ago)

That's good, too! RJG suggested that Ecstatic be a Christian rock band, which could also be really funny. I just have no idea what to do with this right now.

― kirsten (kirsten), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Ecstatic vs. Apocalypse fight!! to get Alfred "Bongo" Red to join their band. he's a legend but nowadays he walks the streets of London feeding the pigeons. Who will lure him out of retirement? Or will he cause both bands to implode, their members to become fellow pigeon feeders?

― oops (Oops), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Alfred Red, a Londoner, is a modest man, and deeply religious. Since being a young child his Catholic beliefs (thrust upon him by upbringing) have conflicted with his yearning for fact and scientific truth. This has caused him a great deal of comfort and internal turmoil, but he has nonetheless unfailingly adhered to the tenets of Catholicism.

His entire world is turned upside-down with the coming of the Apocalypse, as announced to him through a bubbling voice in his toilet bowl. It told of five signs which he would observe in the 24 hours following his defecation. As each of these magical, impossible, miraculous signs are made clear to him, he becomes increasingly excited. The fifth sign, the clouds breaking open to an awesome bright white light, fills him with such ecstatic joy that he dies of a heart attack and misses the whole thing.

― Andrew (enneff), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:56 (twenty-two years ago)

It all sounds very Philip K Dick to me - you could have some post-apolcalypse world where everyone takes a drug called "Ecstatic" to get back to a VR version of "back in the day" before the world went kabloom, the main character is of course Alfred Red, and its set in a Mad Max version of London.

OK that was a bit crap but I tried =) I mean wtf... "ecstatic", "apocalypse"... was the person who wrote that a raving christian loon?

― Trayce (trayce), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 05:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Haha! These are all great. I should just pay all of you to write my story for me.

― kirsten (kirsten), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 06:04 (twenty-two years ago)

a watcher style small revelations piece about a man who's ancestor was the viking alfred the read walking by the thames and looking at ships and thinking about norse mythology.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 06:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe you can call "24 Short Sketches about This Potential Scenario"

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 06:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Mr. Alfred Red, Mr. London, Mr. Ecstatic, and Mr. Apocalypse are all in a boat ...

― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 06:53 (twenty-two years ago)

3 of them a some sort of superhero, and the other is a butler (for some superhero).

― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 06:54 (twenty-two years ago)

In the dining room, with a lead pipe.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 06:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Alfred "Red" McManus, so nomered for his bright red Irish hair, inadvertantly founds the modern Independent Ireland movement when he designs a pair of spring-loaded boots allowing him to jump great distances with apparent ease, and begins terrorizing 19th century London, at first assailing and groping women (from which he receives ecstatic pleasure) before graduating on to slashing at them with a knife and, because of the inhuman amount of alcohol he consumes, begins breathing fire. After every attack, he yells, "Erin go bragh!" which, because of a combination of his Irish brogue and alcoholism, is rendered to the London ear, "Spring Healed Jack!" After his ecstasy subsides, he is convinced that these attacks will open up the Apocalypse, wherein Ireland will be her own free country and the Sons and Daughters of Erin can live hedonistically ever after.

― O.Leee.B. (Leee), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 06:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Christ, that's supposed to be Spring Heeled Jack.

― O.Leee.B. (Leee), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 07:45 (twenty-two years ago)

You could switch the name around, call him Red Alfred, maybe have him be a communist. Red Alfred to me sounds better than Alfred Red. Kind of like how Fat Albert sounds alright but Albert Fat just doesn't so much.

You did get a crappy draw on these. I like the idea of Ecstatic and Apocalypse as band names. Battle of the bands/worlds!

― sgs (sgs), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 09:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Alfred Red is a small, inconsequential character in pre-apocalyptic London. They know that the apocalypse will be coming in 37 days from the start of our story. They've known this for 4 years. People take Xtatic as a way to cope with the end of the world. Xtatic is in short supply and is illegal. The crime rate is high (from the drug trafficking) and the suicide rate is high (not because the world is ending, but because of the depression side effect of Xtatic withdrawal.) Actually, the last thing on anyone's mind is the apocalypse - although it's used as a reason for every action or decision.

.. but it's an absurdist story, not a sci-fi story...

― dave225 (Dave225), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 13:11 (twenty-two years ago)

I like the idea that the story takes place, not in the city of london, but in jack london's head.

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 13:17 (twenty-two years ago)

or bottom.

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 13:18 (twenty-two years ago)

like that ride at EPCOT center

― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 14:14 (twenty-two years ago)

alfred red is an idealistic hippie who travels to london to participate in a protest rally against george w's re-election. upon his arrival, he is subjected to a series of indignities that erode his ideals and cause him to embrace nihilism. this leads to an ecstatic revelation that dubya's second term in office is likely to hasten the apocalypse.

― , Wednesday, 17 March 2004 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I am sorry to say that, if your imagination quails in the face of a few orts of unfamiliarity, then perhaps fiction is not your metier.

First off, I'd transform Alfred into Fred, for short. He has never been to London, but is obsessed by it. His home is filled with London-related bric-a-brac, but he is too timid to attempt to leave his familiar narrow small town go there.

One fateful Sunday he attends his staid church where the usual parson is taken ill and a fire-breathing "guest preacher" predicts the Apocolypse within a couple of months. In a fit of religious conviction, he scrapes together every penny he can raise and goes on an ecstatic pilgrimage to London.

What happens to him there is up to you. My version would vaguely resemble Adventures in the Skin Trade.

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 17:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I like the part about london bric-a-brac.

― Mandee, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 17:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Apocalypse should be a goth club night.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 17:29 (twenty-two years ago)

apocalpyse should be the name of an annoying goth girl who keeps a livejournal.

― mandee, Wednesday, 17 March 2004 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

with DJ Ecstatic upstairs spinning the Cure and postpunk/goth

― A Nairn (moretap), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 17:30 (twenty-two years ago)

UGH, I just arrived home from work and discovered that my roommate has taken notes all over the back of one of my illustrations, and pressed down very hard with the pencil and totally ruined it. It's the Popesicle one.
Anyway, thank you all for your ideas.

― kirsten (kirsten), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 17:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Easy. They're all horses.

― Markelby (Mark C), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 17:44 (twenty-two years ago)

aimless, I think it better to be able to struggle than to be unable to. or to think you're unable to.

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 18:32 (twenty-two years ago)

RJG, I don't think I quite caught your wavelength there.

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 18:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Alfred "Red" should be a stutter who is called that because he always stutters the end of his first name.

― dean! (deangulberry), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 18:42 (twenty-two years ago)

that's okay, aimless.

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 18:43 (twenty-two years ago)

If all else fails, go meta. Write about a guy named Alfred Red trying to write a story incorporating "London," "ecstatic," and "apocalypse." Maybe he saw them in a dream, or they appeared together in magnetic poetry on his fridge, or something.

― Prude (Prude), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 19:58 (twenty-two years ago)

The senses-smashing pomo mutant superhero team/pop culture icons the X-Statix are on a whirlwind international tour and their latest stop is in London. They rent out Harrod's to do their heavy shopping, but unfortunately evil mutant and general harbinger of doom Apocalypse has secretly replaced all the clothes with sweatshop items and catches the X-Statix in a sticky and compromising situation. Only a mysterious mutant (or alien???) Alf the Red can save them!

― O.Leee.B. (Leee), Wednesday, 17 March 2004 21:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm so relieved, RJG.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 18 March 2004 02:20 (twenty-two years ago)

pssht, you guys, Alfred Red is obviously a dog, with little doggie ecstasies and apocalypses, in London. What's an apocalypse for a dog?

― teeny (teeny), Thursday, 18 March 2004 03:03 (twenty-two years ago)

an apocalypse for a human?

― A Nairn (moretap), Thursday, 18 March 2004 03:28 (twenty-two years ago)

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