This past year (2020) my wife graduated from an MFA program in Creative Writing. Over the course of her studies I learned that writing a trope’s example, and extending it into a micro-story every day was a sort of writing exercise that could benefit creative writers. For example:
Consonance: The repetition of consonants in words stressed in the same place (but whose vowels differ). Also, a kind of inverted alliteration, in which final consonants, rather than initial or medial ones, repeat in nearby words. Consonance is more properly a term associated with modern poetics than with historical rhetorical terminology.
Australia
I had found out that Descartes was a vet when I read Cosmopolis. I was a vet too. I was attached to CIA in Saigon. I was part of a special Army detachment assembled after a series of intelligence leaks that led to the closing of a clandestine Agency-supported gambling casino—Dough Boy—on Pasteur Street. It was raided by the Vietnamese Army to the great chagrin of American personnel stationed in Saigon who had made the casino into their second home. Their morale plummeted, Things were coming to a head.
It was determined that it was prostitutes who were orchestrating the leaks, prompted by threats from VC operatives who were ubiquitous in the city. I was assigned the task of “meeting” with prostitutes and surreptitiously interrogating them. To maintain my cover, I did this while “getting what I paid for.” My quota was three “interrogations” per day. It was exhausting work, but I was glad to be of service to my country. However, I had miscalculated the danger.
One night I was “interrogating” a prostitute when pistol fire broke out in the hallway. As I was pulling on my jungle fatigues, a bullet came through the door. It whizzed through the room and exited through the window. The prostitute thought the bullet had been destined for her because she refused to collaborate with the VC. I instantly thought: I can pay her to identify VC operatives. I’ll be a hero back at headquarters!
They bought my idea and she became a double agent. Then, I found out I had contracted the clap from her. It wasn’t unusual—what you’d call an occupational hazard, especially if you were stupid enough to forego “protection.” I had been trained to deploy a condom, but I routinely failed to do so. Anyway, I had an R&R coming up and elected to go to Australia to rest, and relax, and recuperate from the clap. While I was in Australia, I got involved with some ant-war activists. When I told them what I was doing in Vietnam, they went crazy. They thought it was morally depraved to assign me, a 19-year old, to “interrogate” prostitutes. They kidnapped me and wouldn’t let me go back to Vietnam. I became an Army deserter, and I liked it. After 6 months they let me go, and I got a job at a kangaroo rehab center, mostly for retired professional boxing kangaroos, but also for injured and unruly kangaroos. I got married to one of my former captors, Matilda. We have five children, and now that the statute of limitations has run out on the desertion charge, I travel freely, and I am the owner of a chain of kangaroo rehab centers called “Marsupial Menders.” I’m still waltzin’ Matilda under the under the stars. The song never gets old, especially after a few Victoria Bitters.
I’m not presenting this as an example of a great piece of writing. Rather, I want to show how tropes can summon lines of thought and, in this case, prompted me to write about one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. However, the writing can be purely fictional as well.
That’s all I can say right now. Use daily trope-example writing as an opening to practice your creative writing.
The Daily Trope 