Friday, July 12th, 2013  I’m getting ready for vacation.
Besides my computer, the one thing I always take with me is my camera. So, I’m charging batteries, cleaning accessories, and cleaning off data cards (Hello, Christmas photos! That’s where you are!)
I take a lot of snapshots no matter where I go.
And I’m terrible about cleaning off the data cards…which is why I have so many of them. I tend to keep taking pictures until they’re full, and then rush in a mad scramble to get them cleaned off before the next event. So, I buy extras. And now they’re all full, too.
I know some people who clean them off right away, tossing the blurries and labeling the people. I’m rarely that organized. (I’ve got better things to do! Don’t you?)
By the time I get to the photos, I’m often surprised by what I see on the camera. Not just the event, but the expressions, the feelings, the emotion.
Some good story stuff there.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Open a photo album to a random snapshot. Write the story of what’s happening. If you journal, perfect. Write this moment. If you write fiction, make up a story about what you see. Bonus points if you use someone else’s photo album. (If you don’t have a photo album, use Google Images and search for “people.” Use the first photo you see.)
- Write about an autographed photo.
- Write about someone — or something –missing from a snapshot.
- Here are some story starters or journal ideas:
- In this snapshot, I am…
- It was picture perfect.
- He refused to hold still.
- “We agreed, no photos.”
- Capture this image.
- It shook the camera, and this is what we got.
- Write about light and dark, shadow and substance, frame and focus.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best part of the statue, builds the best part of the house…” Do you agree or disagree? Why or why not?
- Write about something written on the back of a photo.
Good luck!
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Photo of Liberty Cap Bell Yellowstone National Park © Raymond Kasprzak | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Friday, February 15th, 2013  Question: Where do ideas come from?
Answer: They’re all around us.
But sometimes, they’re difficult to “see.” There’s a lot of visual stimulation around us, whether we’re visiting someplace new or sitting in our own writing spaces surrounded by the familiar.
Today’s writing prompt is a challenge. I want you to spend some time focusing on the objects around you and come up with a story (or a poem, or a memoir/journal entry, etc.) about one of the objects you see. Don’t let your eyes flick past the things you’ve viewed a million times a day. Instead, choose one to focus on, and think about some possibilities:
- How did you acquire it? Was it given to you by a friend? What if someone else had given it? (An enemy? A teacher? An alien? What kind of story would that make?
- How was it manufactured? What if it were made of something else? What if it had additional properties such as motion, magnetism, solubility, invisibility?
- Who owned it before you did? Your brother? Your cousin? Henry the VIII?
- Imagine this item in another location. What significance does the new location bring to the object? (Does it give you an idea for a story?)
Now…kick it up a notch by letting your imagination run wild. Start with the focus object, and continue to ask questions of it until the object of your study is no longer what you focused on. Instead of asking the “usual” questions, take a tangent… What does the color of it remind you of? How about the shape, or the texture? Maybe the gold-rimmed dinner plate which used to belong to your grandmother makes you think of the moon. Write a poem about the moon, or a story about a colony on the moon, or a fantasy about the moon’s pull on a witch’s spells.
Maybe the blue lamp is the same color of the ocean on a rainy morning. It makes you think of a secret at a beach house, a romance on an island, or a pirate shipwreck in Boston Harbor.
You get the idea.
Write that story (poem, vignette, journal entry, etc.) without the focus piece ever being mentioned in it.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Easy: Write something (a poem, a short story, a scene, etc.) using your object of choice, coupled with some of the questions outlined above (or more of your own!) Make certain that item is the focus of the piece.
- Challenging: Start with a focus object, but transform it into a solid idea. Write something which was inspired by your focus piece.
Good luck!
Friday, December 7th, 2012  The setting in a story is the place and time the story occurs. Every story has one. It lends context to the tale.
The settings for different types of stories will be different, as will the approach to creating them. One thing to consider is the audience reading the book.
For instance, the setting for a story taking place in modern Washington, DC might include a description of the Lincoln Memorial, the terrible traffic, diesel fumes from buses, protesters on the corner, etc. It might include some details on the weather: the oppressive heat of a July sun baking all that marble or the sleet of a November rain. And that’s it: just enough detail to ground the reader to location and atmosphere. He’ll fill in the rest with his own imagination.
A period romance might include the description of a brownstone townhouse in England, gas lamps on the sidewalk (if you’re in the rich part of town) or ragamuffin children (on the poor side of town). It will usually infer the economic status of the heroine, and some background, so we know how she got to this place and time. And, it might include a description of the historical events taking place, so that the reader gets an idea of the main character’s thoughts and motives. This description might go on for several paragraphs, because this audience enjoys rich detail.
Science Fiction readers will want explicit details on science, mechanics, atmosphere, politics, etc. But you don’t want to include detail, for detail’s sake. For instance, while you’re setting the scene, if you have machine that creates breathable atmosphere on a planet formerly known for its deadly gases, you don’t need to explain how that works…unless one of your characters is knowledgeable about it, or questions how it works, AND that information is crucial to the story.
If specific details aren’t important, but you point them out, you’ll either a) bore the reader, or b) leave him wondering why you included the detail. You don’t want that bouncing around in the reader’s head when she should be enjoying the story.
Also, a good rule of thumb when setting the scene is to include details related to the five senses. So, describe:
- what is seen
- what is heard
- what is felt (or touched)
- what is smelled, and,
- what is tasted
The hard part is writing the scene without making it sound like a checklist, like this:
The chaotic barnyard was filled it with animals. I could hear the cows mooing, the chickens squawking, and in the background somewhere, an old hound dog. The dirt was hard-packed beneath my feet, and I could feel every pebble through my shoe. Someone hadn’t mucked out the barn in ages. I could smell the dung all the way across the pasture. The wind kicked up, blowing dust in my face. I could taste the corn feed Farmer Brown just strew for the hens.
Terrible!
Here’s Your Prompt:
Here are a few suggested locations and time periods, choose one and write the scene.
- A junior high school in the US, mid-1970s.
- Modern day in a Scottish castle.
- A 1950s traveling carnival.
- A rock ‘n’ roll concert during the holidays, and the singer is late.
- Thanksgiving Dinner – the week before Thanksgiving.
- A fictional planet, during a civil war.
- The coast of any continent, 1800s, during a powerful storm.
- Today, in your home town.
- England, during the middle ages, in a small cottage
- Santa’s workshop, in July.
- Alice’s Wonderland – only set the scene of somewhere Alice didn’t go.
If none of these strike your fancy, choose your own time and place.
Good luck!
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Writers - Maryland Writer's Assn.
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