By Elenor Shelton
The other day, I wanted to tell my husband something vital. We were running low on eggs or that a new murder series had been added to Brit Box. You know, items that could make or break a relationship. After coming up empty, I found him watching television in our finished basement, some kind of show called ACL.
The only ACL I was familiar with was the ligament in my knee that I busted and had to get replaced a few years ago. I had NO idea that ACL also stood for the American Cornhole League or another competing association called the American Cornhole Organization.
For those of you not in the know, Cornhole (also known as the sack toss or simply Bags) is a game consisting of two sets of bags, filled with the eponymous corn kernels. The basic goal of the game is to toss the bag through the opposite hole earning a point. Players take turns until the a player scores twenty-one for the win.
It has become a staple of backyards and breweries.
The American Cornhole competition is a PRO/AM tournament that pairs professional cornhole champs with up and comers at college. (waiting for the cornhole draft, I guess). The contest was sponsored by Johnsonville Brats. So, images of sweating bratwursts were everywhere. My husband was glued to this championship of bean bags.
I had recently started a short story about a Big Foot. The idea came to me in a dream, but I felt kind of silly when I began to put it on paper. Who would want to read a story about Sasquatch? But then again, I thought, what smart, rational reader would be sucked into a cornhole competition? And more so, who would take a story about a man who wakes up as a bug that talks seriously? How about a woman who wears a green ribbon around her neck to keep her head on her body?
Finding believability in the far-fetched and nonsensical is our job.
The stories we write can be bizarre, even outrageous! It doesn’t matter as long as the writing is strong and compelling. Do the readers care about the characters? Does the story answer some deep desire within us? What would happen if a town instituted a lottery to choose a local to sacrifice each year? Has anyone ever wondered if their family are actually puppets? Made you pause for a moment, didn’t I?
Crazy stuff can be the fodder for memorable stories. It may take some time to develop a world other than the one outside our windows. So, what do you think about a Sasquatch playing cornhole?
What about a character in a novel who discovers they are a character in a novel? Been done. Oh, I know, a plague destroys the world as we know it and the last human goes on a journey to find others? Been done? Or how about a mob storming the Capitol to subvert an election? Too dystopian? Yeah, that’s been done already too.
Hey, if you have something better, let’s hear it.
The Writing Bug 