Welcome! This thread is the brain child of a discussion that began in the Open Discussions section of this forum. There Kolona began a discussion concerning how essentially the same tale can be told in so many different ways.

And the Re-Write challenge was born.

Here is the challenge:

1. Re-Write the story, Three Billy Goats Gruff, http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html (mikemunsil suggests the first of the three available versions)
in one of three ways:
*Twist the story to suit your own creative bent. And, as Kathleen suggested, don't restrict yourselves to goats and ogres.
*Write the story in the style of another well-known author.
*Combine the tale with another tale of your choosing.

2. Submit the first 13 lines to this thread.

3. Anyone wanting to read a submitted story in its entirety may contact the writer by email.
Do NOT post the request to read on this thread.
Do NOT post comments of any kind on this thread.
A separate thread will be opened in Open Discussions after the deadline for discussing the submitted stories.

4. 3000 word limit.

5. August 31, 2004 deadline.

6. It is suggested that anyone participating read the original thread in Open Discussions titled Same Old Same New, by Kolona.

7. Please, for SPAM's sake , include the word "Hatrack" in the subject line of all correspondences.

[I will be editing or replying to this post a few times over the next week or so to make sure everyone gets a chance to see it]

[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited August 05, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited August 06, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited August 06, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited August 06, 2004).]

I did this for fun only -- I've not really proofed it -- I'm not looking for all-out critiques or anything (if that's all right), but readers are certainly welcomed. It's supposed to be funny... I hope it is. I used different characters AND wrote in a similar style to Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's books -- kind of.

***

Contrary to popular scientific belief, spiders are not solitary creatures. In fact, they are quite social creatures: usually gathering at a predetermined meeting spot once per day during the wee hours just before dawn--when most insects and animals are fast asleep--to discuss the latest breakthroughs in web-making techniques and to brag about who caught what on their silken threads that day. Mostly it’s just bragging, since a good many spiders tend to send off their state-of-the-art web designs for patent protection and the like.

This is the story of one proud garden spider: a braggart who lived on an old Victorian-era rosebush in a fairly well-kept back garden in southeast London, England, not terribly far away from the traffic-heavy Old Kent Road. His name was Arakna Spinner, and he was the most successful garden spider to ever inhabit that particular rosebush.

******
edited to add word count: approx 1750.
******
". . . Or My Name's Not Big Bob!"

“. . . so come on down to Big Bob's Auto Alley for some super savings, where you'll find a steal of a deal or my name's not Big Bob!”
I stop shaving to listen to that beautiful ad. I always stop whatever I’m doing to enjoy the sound of my voice coming from the radio. Broadcast three times in a half hour on all the local stations. Ya gotta spend money to make money, or my name’s not Big Bob.

Oops, missed a hair there. Got it.

Ah, what a life. Being the owner of a big-time money-making used car lot is not all Skittles and beer, but somebody’s gotta do it. Let’s face it. People want someone to show them the way the real world works. All I do is open their eyes, teach them to take everything with a grain of salt. How do you think people get street smarts anyhow, except by getting burned a couple times? Worked for me.

Well, enough chitchat. Gotta get to work, another glorious day out in the sun, selling those cars.

A lotta bosses just sit around in fancy offices and leave the legwork to the grunts, but not me. I love riding around in those little golf carts, coming face to face with the common man. Gives people a thrill to know they’re in the presence of the honest-to-gosh for-real Big Bob.

[This message has been edited by autumnmuse (edited August 08, 2004).]

quote:

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Come, sit down my friends and for a few pieces of copper laid upon my palm, I will tell you a tale– and if it is exceptionally good, you will give me silver perhaps, no?

This story is true and happened not long ago, in a pasture just a little way down the valley. Yes, this same valley where we now sit. There, three billy goats met for the very first time, and though from different herds and pastures, they came to the exact same spot for the exact same reason. For, at the edge of that pasture, a river runs through a deep ravine; and the only passage across the river and up to the better pastures higher on the mountain, is a single, large fallen tree that spans the ravine bank to bank– and crossing that tree was the very problem that the goats came to solve.

Now, it might seem like a simple thing, for a goat to cross atop something quite as easy as the single, large fallen tree; but my friends, beneath that tree, the real problem lay. For beneath that single, large fallen tree, a great beastly troll chose to make his rotten home, and therein lies my tale; and a good tale it is, easily worth silver and maybe even gold. No?

---

***

“Thor, you stupid ox!” Loki’s lightning reflexes dropped his body to the ground. He felt Mjollnir, Thor’s war hammer, brush past his ear, barely missing his head. Thor was playing a game where he’d throw the hammer as hard as he could just to see how long it took to get back to his hand. Loki, for some reason, always found himself in Mjollnir’s path.

"Sorry, Loki – I mean, Uncle Loki. Or is it-"

"Just call me Loki," he grumbled, and went back to walking. Avoiding Mjollnir should have been in Odin’s description when he’d been convincing Loki to join the gods. But no. Odin had to stress the perks. Like your choice of any woman in the nine worlds, or as much food as you could stand every night. And since Loki had neither at the time, he allowed his respect of Odin to get the better of him and swore the oath of blood brotherhood.

***

----

The heat rose off the sidewalks and crept down the walls; it wound through the apartment building and clung with sticky fingers to Clef Trollinger's skin. He grimaced as he tried to tighten a pipe on his sink.

Through the pipe he could hear a constant syncopated rhythm, the same rat-ta-tat-tat repeated with slight variations. Occasionally it would pause long enough for him to think it was over and then the tapping began again. He crawled out from under the sink and turned the tap on, letting the water flow down the drain. No leak. Satisfied he turned it off and poked his head in to the front room. The tapping was louder here.

He glared at the ceiling. He'd moved in a week ago, and the freakin' idiots upstairs kept pounding on the floor. Enough, was enough.

Phew! Time for a cold one.

quote:

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Three for the Road

It was Billie who started it all; she just can’t pass up a challenge. You’d think that digging up corpses would be enough, but noooo! She had to go try out journalism. What a jerk! Doesn’t care what she gets the rest of us into, as long as she gets a head rush. Anyway, Billie gets it into her head to get a day job; so she stays up past dawn and looks up ‘want ads’ and finds a job doing interviews! Thing is, she only gets paid if she gets a interview, and how much depends on who she talks to. Ok, OK, I know! Where is this going?! Yeah, hang on, gimme a minute to squaff a brew. Mmmm.

OK, now ya gotta understand that they don’t do interviews the way we do. No one to clear the way, no dues, no betting, you just go up to someone and ask questions!

Yeah, well, me too. How rude.

---

Title: Trip Trap
Size: 1500 words, or theresabout.
Reward: Now I can, without guilt, request everyone else's.

***
Trolls? Sure I hunted trolls. Lots of ‘em. Hundreds of ‘em. Hairy beasts always lurking under bridges and scaring folks.

But that was a long time ago. No more tripping and trapping over rivers in fear of having your brains sucked out by one of them smelly buggers. Nope. Not no more. Extinct, they are. EX-STINKED!

And I was there when they drug the last one out of the water and beat him to death, right there in the mud of the riverbank. He put up an awful fight, screaming and hollering and trying to take one of us with him. That’s how I got this here scar. Ugly, eh?

Title: Gruff Bluff
Length: 2600 words

------------------------------

“Well we can’t turn back now. The Kid is short on fuel and supplies are short all around; we wouldn’t make it through a spacefold. I don’t think we have any choice, we have to make the run for Calton station. You know what they say the shortest path between two points is a straight line,” said Captain Sheila Michaels of the cruiser Billy the Kid.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Commander Jewelie Hunter, first officer on the Wild Bill. “Calton has sent us reports of a pirate ship on the other side of the binarys. The Boötis stars move pretty fast and eclipse each other every three hours; we can only get one ship at a time over the gravitational bridge and through to the other side. Alone, none of our ships are equipped to defend against one of those tricky Troll ships. Even the Buffalo Bill can’t match the maneuverability and fire power of a Troll, and it’s a premier class starship!”

Someone else started talking but Admiral Devon Anderson wasn’t really listening anymore, tired of all the banter. The same arguments kept flying back and forth and it wasn’t getting them any closer to their destination. “Enough of this,” he said, cutting off one of his Captains in mid-sentence.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Title: Thrice is the Charm
Length: approx 1000 words

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The wizard Malix strode towards the doors, his red velvet robes flowing behind him. his anger was palpable to the guards who retreated.

“Stand aside,” the wizard commanded, the air around him crackling with power.

The guards looked at each other fearfully before moving away from the doors. Malix raised his staff and smote the doors with it three times. With a crack the heavy timber fractured into pieces, leaving a gap just wide enough for the wizard to walk through.

Malix ignored the shocked courtiers as he walked towards the king, who sat alone on his throne, a withered shell of a man.

******************

Title: The Shadowed Path
Length: 1300

******************

The samurai strode along the footpath, stopping behind a small crowd of people at the bottom step of the temple. The priests were giving an impromptu lesson, accompanied by puppeteers. The warrior stood, watching a fox-faced female puppet extolling the virtues of honouring one’s ancestors.

Aneikaze stood, watching the samurai.

The ninja had been following him for over a week now, sometimes in the guise of a beggar, sometimes a holy man, and now, a traveling merchant of some prosperity. He had a job to do, but only at the right time, the right place. That place was here, the time, now. It would send a message to the Daimyo to have his samurai slain at the very foot of his castle, the same samurai that had murdered three members of Aneikaze’s Igan village.

Aneikaze had been following the samurai for over a week now, sometimes in the guise of a beggar, sometimes a holy man, and now as a traveling merchant of some prosperity. Only this morning they had arrived in the Daimyo’s village.

It was late afternoon of the same day, and the samurai strode along the footpath, stopping behind a small crowd of people at the bottom step of the temple. The priests were giving an impromptu lesson, accompanied by puppeteers. The warrior stood, watching a fox-faced female puppet extol the virtues of honouring one’s ancestors.

Aneikaze stood, watching the samurai.

The ninja had a job to do, but only at the right time, the right place. That place was here, the time, now. It would send a message to the Daimyo to have his samurai slain at the very foot of his castle, the same samurai that had murdered three members of Aneikaze’s Igan village.

A Seer came to Jack River, not a bush-prophet with burs in his hair, but a Seer from the city and that meant disaster.

The old women saw him first, stalking through the high-grass toward the village. 'Go! Tell your parents.' they hissed and black-haired grandchildren scattered to obey.

Soon families were sneaking home, mothers mustering their broods as they went, grim-faced fathers hushing them in.

The Seer passed dusty fields, empty but for dropped tools, then prowled between the huts, finding no-one. 'They will come out.' he thought, leaning against a post and spitting absently at a hole in the toe of his boot. He hated the wait.

They watched him from their darkened doorways.

A yellow dog sniffed the edge of his shadow; her tail made a single, perfect loop. She was wary of him, seeing that he was old and slow but sensing that the people feared him. She knew she should go now.

Loping through the village she turned toward the brown, shallow river, trotted along a foot-smooth track then crept into the rustling, bladey grass, so close to the sacrifice tree she could smell it.

Altheri’s Desire Words: 2506

The universe would end, and Altheri was going to be its only witness.

“I wish to live forever, to exist and observe the end,” she had spoken during her reign. The resources of hundreds of planets, material and technological, were poured into her project.

She commanded hordes of scientists and engineers to design a ship. They promised it would absorb energy from the cosmos, constantly renewing itself so it would not decay over time, a ship that could avoid catastrophes from supernovae to dust, and collect data about changes in the universe over billions of years. Altheri required a computer intelligence, a CI, that would link her to her ship, analyze data, and revive her at significant points in time to observe astronomical wonders. Finally, they must preserve Altheri herself.

Altheri was not a professional scientist. She wouldn’t understand how her project was completed. But she demanded perfection in every requirement, or those responsible were replaced, with lengthy, legal explanations sent to their families, and flowers to their funerals.

Sorry - I forgot the "84" in my post - I've fixed it. Thanks for letting me know!

I wasn't sure if we were supposed to offer critiques, or are just supposed to read and enjoy each other's stories. I've thus read and enjoyed a couple of stories, and did not send critiques. On another, comments and feedback were "appreciated" so I did a full critique on it, and received a critique in return.

I didn't ask for any, not knowing what we should do... any suggestions? I don't want to shortchange people, and I have more to read.