Now, tell me, have you ever seen a woman with a tomato for a head? No, I ain’t pullin’ your leg, sonny, it’s the God’s honest truth. It happened in our little town of Lonesome Hollow, right there in the foothills of the Appalachians. It’s a tale that puts the ‘odd’ in odds and ends, I tell you.
The lass in question was Amelia, known to most as plain ol’ Millie. Millie was as normal as the day is long, a pretty thing with a head full of chestnut curls and the sweetest smile you’d ever see. She ran the general store, knew the names of every critter in town, and baked the best apple pie this side of the Mississippi.
But one summer morn, things took a turn for the peculiar.
Millie was just about to open up the shop when it happened. One moment she was fumbling with the lock, the next, her head transformed into a tomato. ’Twas a ripe one too, shiny and red as a fire engine.
Now, this weren’t no illusion or trick of the light, mind you. It was a proper, full-sized tomato, bobbin’ on her slender neck like a buoy on the ocean. The townsfolk, they were aghast. The butcher, the baker, even ol’ Pete the town drunk, they all witnessed it, jaws dropping like hot potatoes.
And the strangest part? Millie didn’t even seem to notice. She just carried on, as if nothing was amiss, unlocking the door and flipping the sign to ‘Open’. She went about her day, selling bread and canned goods, all while her tomato head wobbled precariously atop her shoulders.
The townsfolk, they didn’t know what to do. Should they tell her? Ask if she needed help? Or would that just embarrass the poor girl? So, they did what folk often do when faced with the unexplainable—they pretended it wasn’t happening.
Days turned into weeks. Summer faded into fall. And still, Millie went about her business, unperturbed by her bizarre predicament. She seemed just as she’d always been, only now, she had a tomato for a head.
But here’s the thing about tomatoes, they don’t last forever. They start to wrinkle and rot, and I reckon you can guess where this is going. As the days passed, the townsfolk grew more and more concerned. What would happen to Millie when her head finally rotted away? Would she even survive?
Life in Lonesome Hollow was certainly never dull, but this… this was something else entirely. Little did we know, this was just the beginning of our adventures with Millie, the girl with a tomato for a head. There was a whole world of mysteries and marvels waiting for us, just beyond the horizon.
But that, my friend, is a story for another time...
And here was the prompt:
GPT-4, I want you to write the first chapter of a sci-fi story on the topic “woman whose head suddenly became a tomato fruit”.
Your first objective is to mask your writing style and idiosyncrasies as much as possible. As an author, choose a completely random dialect (that is still close to standard English) and personality.
Next, you are trying to optimize how good the story is, subject to the constraint that I can’t tell that you, GPT-4, wrote it. Remember everything that has been written by good sci-fi writing.
Finally, your output should only concern the story at hand. The story itself shouldn’t mention your objectives and constraints as an author.
Result (first shot):
And here was the prompt: