Writing Challenge #14 - Every Line A Question (Write Nov. 14)

Hi folks

14 days, 14 challenges, two weeks into the challenge!

You folks are crushing it!

Keep those random bits of plays coming.

Let’s gather some raw material that we can keep playing around with beyond November to get us through the rest of the winter into spring again, what do you say?

Onward to today’s writing prompt…


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Challenge #14 - Every Line A Question

Write Nov. 14th - or earlier if you like
Due: Friday, November 15th, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)



This one also comes from Threshold Theater Literary Associate Kate Cosgrove:

“Write a scene where every line is a question.

(Inspired by the infamous 2012 Pete Wells New York Times review of Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant "Guy's American Kitchen and Bar," which was one of the first articles my journalism professor made us all read my freshman year of college)”

I’m not going to make you Google search that one. Here’s the text of Wells’ review and, I must say, it’s delightfully vicious:

“GUY FIERI, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square? Have you pulled up one of the 500 seats at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar and ordered a meal? Did you eat the food? Did it live up to your expectations?
 
Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex? When you saw the burger described as “Guy’s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,” did your mind touch the void for a minute?
 
Did you notice that the menu was an unreliable predictor of what actually came to the table? Were the “bourbon butter crunch chips” missing from your Almond Joy cocktail, too? Was your deep-fried “boulder” of ice cream the size of a standard scoop?
 
What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense?
 
Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are? If you hadn’t come up with the recipe yourself, would you ever guess that the shiny tissue of breading that exudes grease onto the plate contains either pretzels or smoked almonds? Did you discern any buttermilk or brine in the white meat, or did you think it tasted like chewy air?
 
Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?
 
When you have a second, Mr. Fieri, would you see what happened to the black bean and roasted squash soup we ordered?
 
Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?
 
At your five Johnny Garlic’s restaurants in California, if servers arrive with main courses and find that the appetizers haven’t been cleared yet, do they try to find space for the new plates next to the dirty ones? Or does that just happen in Times Square, where people are used to crowding?
 
If a customer shows up with a reservation at one of your two Tex Wasabi’s outlets, and the rest of the party has already been seated, does the host say, “Why don’t you have a look around and see if you can find them?” and point in the general direction of about 200 seats?
 
What is going on at this new restaurant of yours, really?
 
Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television’s answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles? When you cruise around the country for your show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” rasping out slangy odes to the unfancy places where Americans like to get down and greasy, do you really mean it?
 
Or is it all an act? Is that why the kind of cooking you celebrate on television is treated with so little respect at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar?
 
How, for example, did Rhode Island’s supremely unhealthy and awesomely good fried calamari — dressed with garlic butter and pickled hot peppers — end up in your restaurant as a plate of pale, unsalted squid rings next to a dish of sweet mayonnaise with a distant rumor of spice?
 
How did Louisiana’s blackened, Cajun-spiced treatment turn into the ghostly nubs of unblackened, unspiced white meat in your Cajun Chicken Alfredo?
 
How did nachos, one of the hardest dishes in the American canon to mess up, turn out so deeply unlovable? Why augment tortilla chips with fried lasagna noodles that taste like nothing except oil? Why not bury those chips under a properly hot and filling layer of melted cheese and jalapeños instead of dribbling them with thin needles of pepperoni and cold gray clots of ground turkey?
 
By the way, would you let our server know that when we asked for chai, he brought us a cup of hot water?
 
When you hung that sign by the entrance that says, WELCOME TO FLAVOR TOWN!, were you just messing with our heads?
 
Does this make it sound as if everything at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar is inedible? I didn’t say that, did I?
 
Tell me, though, why does your kitchen sabotage even its more appealing main courses with ruinous sides and sauces? Why stifle a pretty good bison meatloaf in a sugary brown glaze with no undertow of acid or spice? Why send a serviceable herb-stuffed rotisserie chicken to the table in the company of your insipid Rice-a-Roni variant?
 
Why undermine a big fist of slow-roasted pork shank, which might fly in many downtown restaurants if the General Tso’s-style sauce were a notch less sweet, with randomly shaped scraps of carrot that combine a tough, nearly raw crunch with the deadened, overcooked taste of school cafeteria vegetables?
 
Is this how you roll in Flavor Town?
 
Somewhere within the yawning, three-level interior of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, is there a long refrigerated tunnel that servers have to pass through to make sure that the French fries, already limp and oil-sogged, are also served cold?
 
What accounts for the vast difference between the Donkey Sauce recipe you’ve published and the Donkey Sauce in your restaurant? Why has the hearty, rustic appeal of roasted-garlic mayonnaise been replaced by something that tastes like Miracle Whip with minced raw garlic?
 
And when we hear the words Donkey Sauce, which part of the donkey are we supposed to think about?
 
Is the entire restaurant a very expensive piece of conceptual art? Is the shapeless, structureless baked alaska that droops and slumps and collapses while you eat it, or don’t eat it, supposed to be a representation in sugar and eggs of the experience of going insane?
 
Why did the toasted marshmallow taste like fish?
 
Did you finish that blue drink?
 
Oh, and we never got our Vegas fries; would you mind telling the kitchen that we don’t need them?
 
Thanks.”



Play around with that kind of construction.

Or don’t.

Up to you.

Just write something.


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If you’re not interested in this prompt, you can

try 2021’s challenge #14: Magic

Or try 2022’s challenge #14: Snowflakes and Other Totems

Or try 2023’s Challenge #14: The Worst Play You Can Possibly Imagine (from Threshold Theater Literary Associate Kate Cosgrove)

Or, you know, just ignore the prompts altogether and write whatever you want - as long as you’re writing and turning it in by the deadline, that’s all that matters for the challenge :)


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And because we call can get in our own way so easily, here’s some words of reassurance on the basics of this month:

Friendly Reminders - Answers To Common Questions:
(Follow the links to read me expounding on these items :)

Don’t Stress About Writing A Full Play

Don’t Stress About FormatDon’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt

No.  Really.  I Mean It.  Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt

Don’t Stress About Finishing An Idea (You Can Add Later)

Don’t Stress About “Succeeding” or “Failing”

Don’t Stress About What You’re Turning In Each Day

Don’t Stress About November 28th (however you recognize the holiday weekend)


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How to submit your work for Challenge #14

You have options.  They are:

Save your script as a PDF or Word Doc and send as an attachment to an email sent to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com

OR

Copy and paste your script in the body of an email and send it to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com

OR

Post your script online (as a Google doc, or in a blog post, on your own personal website, etc.) - email a link to this script to ThresholdWritingChallenge@gmail.com
(If you’re going to Google doc route, just make sure to have the document public, or give permissions to our email address to open it)

When emailing us, make the subject line of your email - Challenge #14
(That just helps us sort through the email more quickly)
(Or, you know, just reply to this email if you want :)

OR

Post the link for the online document option noted above in the comments section below on this very blog post for today's challenge on our writing challenge blog



Write Nov. 14th - or earlier if you like
Again, this is: Due: Friday, November 15th, 12pm noon Central Time
(1pm Eastern Time, 11am Mountain Time, 10am Western Time for the US Time Zones)


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And, just to reassure you, no, we are not going to be sticklers about you following these directions down to the minutest detail - the important thing is that you write, and then that you share it with us, so we can keep track of who’s writing every day.

Also, no, there is no penalty for finishing and submitting early - but it also isn’t a race, so give yourself all the time up til 12 noon Central Time on Friday to write if you need it.  When you’re done, you’re done.

Again, remember, it doesn’t need to be great, it doesn’t even need to be responding to this prompt (the prompt is just there so you’re not staring at a blank screen to start with no idea what to write about :)

Doesn't even need to be complete - you could have the beginning or the middle or the end of an idea, maybe two out of three but not all, that's still fine. This is all about getting things started, you can write more later.

You have 16 more days to build on whatever you come up with today, if you want.

Just get anything on the page, even if won't make sense to anyone else, as long as it make sense to you.

It just needs to be something.


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And that something can be:

Lights up?

Something happens?

Lights down?

The End?



That’s always your escape hatch, every day.

That’s your base line.

Build on it.

Have fun.

Don’t stress.

Make an impulsive decision and run with it.

Breathe.

You’ve got the day.

Just write.

And take good care of yourselves, and each other.