Thursday 6 August 2015

Another daft kids' story in (bad) verse - reading the instructions properly on writing comps.

Well, this time I did write down the correct location of a writing comp, but I thought, when it said Children's Competition, it meant to write a story for children, not for children themselves to write it. But I found my story would qualify for their 500 word flash fiction section, but somehow I don't think it'll get anywhere, as it is definitely a children s story. There is a skill in reading the details of these writing comps, and I've never been one to take in details like that - one of the problems with being too much of a right-brain thinker. But at least, at this rate, I will have enough material to produce a whole collection of bad-poetry stories for kids. All I need now is an illustrator.

The set title of the story was A Skinny Dragon:

THE SKINNY DRAGON

There was a skinny little dragon
With knobbly knees
Who loved to go and
Climb in trees.
She had lovely pink scales,
So her Mum called her Rosie,
And every day she ate
A bowl of ambrosia,
Because she was magical and that’s what you eat if you’re magical.

Her best mate was Vera,
She was purple and green,
Dragons are all different,
None are the same.
She had funny toes
And a scrinched-up nose,
She liked to play games
And was a terrible tease,
But not nearly as good as Rosie at climbing trees.

So- there was skinny Rosie up in a tree,
And Vera down below dancing with glee.
They’d just reached the age when they’d started to fly,
And off Rosie went into the sky,
Flapping her wings as hard as she could,
Gliding along into the woods.
But that wasn’t such a great idea, 
Because she was getting far from home.
Then a great gust of wind came 
and blew her along.
Out of sight.
But she landed alright.

Then she saw, something standing nearby,
Staring at her with wide-open eyes,
With only two legs and no tail,
And skin without a single scale.
The thing suddenly shouted really loud 
“Have at you, fiend!”
It was really scary 
and made Rosie scream.
She grabbed the …. thing ..  and looked around,
“Wh- where?” she stuttered, What’s a fiend? What’s that pointy thing in your hand? Why are you looking at me like that?”

And the boy – coz that’s what he was – said
“Why, you’re just skinny and pink, with knobbly knees,
You’re almost small enough for me to squeeze!”
Then Vera came crashing down through the trees,
And landed with a loud, purple thump
And, rubbing her bum, coz she’d got quite a bump,
Stared at the boy, who stared back at her.

And Rosie yelled “There’s a monster here!
He said it’s called a fiend!”
And the boy stamped his foot and screamed 
“No! YOU’RE the monsters, 
Though you’re pink and skinny and purple and green,
“I’ve come to rescue a princess, and it’s all gone wrong,
“I’ll never be a hero, I may as well go home.”
“A PRINCESS?!” the dragons yelled, with great big grins,
BUT
“You don’t look like a princess’s pal, 
You’re brown with no scales 
and you’ve got no tail 
and WE’VE been flying for almost a week
and YOU haven’t even got wings.”

“Well, I thought dragons ate princesses for tea,
“And if I rescued one, then a hero I’d be,
“I got a sword and went to explore,
“But I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“But, if we met a princess we’d be ever so polite,
And we’d never, ever eat one, we’d be nice.”

So, they took the boy home and gave him some ambrosia till he’d cheered up, then they sent him home and went to look for a princess instead.  But ever after that the boy was always a little bit magical, because the dragons didn’t know you shouldn’t give ambrosia to humans.


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