Although my first entry was not good enough to place me in the top one hundred, I decided before the competition started that I would do the following rounds whether or not I was still in the running. Tonight my resolve was sorely tested, but my head has been in geek-space too much lately, so the chance to do a writing assignment seemed like a good idea.

That’s not to say that I put a whole lot of effort into it, however.

Here’s the new premise:

Your PROTAGONIST’S allies have turned on him (or her.) His reputation is now in tatters, largely due to his own screw-up — which has been magnified and broadcast by the ANTAGONIST. Write the scene in which the protagonist tries to win the allies back. The scene should include a heartfelt mea culpa. You may use any setting, era or characters in addition to the ones indicated, as needed.

Although competitors have all night, I only spent a couple of hours on mine. While pondering what to write, I realized that I already have some stories that I intentionally don’t devote much time to. So here’s a scene from Allison in Anime, way out of sequence, pooped out in screenplay format for the sake of this exercise. (I played a little fast and loose with who the protagonist is, but in a good story everyone thinks they’re the protagonist anyway.)

For those who aren’t familiar with my little exercise in logorrhea, Allison in Animeland is a spoof of Japanese cartoons in which an American girl finds herself in a Japan where all the strange conventions of anime are actually true. In this Japan, transfer students ALWAYS turn out to be more than they seem, and the destruction of entire cities is routine, as are exclamation points. This scene takes place quite a bit in the future from any published episode and uses several characters who haven’t even been named in the main story yet.

Sweet!

Thanks!