Game of Thrones Workbook

Writing Challenge #2: Movie scene with an inanimate object

PROMPT: Pick a movie. Replace one of the main characters with an inanimate object. Write a scene that includes this character.


The luxury sedan pulled up near the small plane on the tarmac. Renault and Laszlo climb out of the car, followed by the handsome, debonaire Rick Blaine. An airport porter meets them at the car.

“Help Mr. Laszlo to the plane,” Renault tells the porter.

“Yes, sir,” the porter replies, turning to Laszlo. “This way please.”

The porter leads Laszlo to the plane while Rick withdraws the Letters of Transit from his pocket and hands them to Renault.

“Better if you fill them in,” Rick said. “That will make them even more official.”

He reaches into the car and takes out a small, red, furry object. Moving over to Renault, he sets it on the hood of the car where the German is filling out the Letters of Transit.

“The names are Mr. Victor Laszlo and Elmo.”

Both Renault and the Tickle Me Elmo doll look up at Rick with astonishment.



Rick turns to Elmo.

“You’re getting on that plane.”

Elmo looks back at him with yearning eyes, as if to say, No, Richard, no! What happened to you? Last night we said...

“Last night we said a good many things,” Rick said, cutting off Elmo’s imagined response. “You said I was to do the thinking for the both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then and it all adds up to one thing. You’re getting on that plane with Victor where you belong.”



“Now, you’ve got to listen to me. Do you have any idea what you’d have to look forward to if you stay here? Nine chances out of ten we’d both land in a concentration camp. Is that true, Renault?”

Renault shrugs. “I’m afraid that Major Strasser would insist...”

Elmo says nothing, because he’s a doll. But if he could speak, he would say, You’re saying this only to make me go.

“I’m saying it because it’s true,” Rick snaps. “Inside of us we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work. The thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.”



Rick cups Elmo’s chin in his hand. “We’ll always have Paris. We didn’t have it - we’d lost it - until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.”

Elmo’s vacant stare practically screams with anguish, And I said that I would never leave you!

“And you never will,” Rick says firmly, grabbing Elmo’s furry red shoulders. “But I’ve got a job to do too. Where I’m going you can’t follow - what I’ve got to do - you can be no part of. I’m not good at being noble, Elmo, but it doesn’t take much to see that that problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you’ll understand that. Not now. Here’s looking at you kid.”

It’s time to say their goodbyes. Elmo and Rick look at one another, longingly, for the last time.

Goodbye, Rick. God bless you, Elmo’s cold, inanimate eyes seem to say.

“You’d better hurry, or you’ll miss that plane.”



Victor and Elmo head for the plane. Rick starts after them, but stops himself. Every fiber of his being wants to run to Elmo and hold him just one more time. To leave Victor behind so he can be the one to fly off with Elmo and live their happily ever after. But alas, it was not to be, for theirs isn’t a story with a happy ending.

Once Victor and Elmo are aboard, the plane’s propellers start up, catching just as the sounds of sirens in the distance announced the impending arrival of the Nazi officers that had been hot on their trail ever since they arrived in Morocco.

As the plane taxied down the runway, Rick took one final glance at the plane and could just barely make out Elmo’s farewell wave:



Renault claps Rick on the shoulder. “Well, I was right. You are a sentimentalist!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rick replies. “But you know, what? I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”


(731 words)