Let's try a Photo Prompt exercise today. I love this picture with the softened colors, the girl on the horse, and the hazy details in the sky and the background as well as the grass she is riding through.
For the uninitiated, to do this exercise you must first study the picture and then write a paragraph or a story or a poem using what you've seen to inspire you. You can write a paragraph of nothing but a description or make up a full story with a beginning, middle and ending.
You could even create a story or paragraph about the person who painted the picture.
Name the girl. Name the horse. Name the place. What about those birds in the sky? What is that in the far left background?
An exercise like this gives your imagination free rein. It might even remind you of a family story that you've been meaning to write and never have. Use whatever inspiration it gives to do the exercise.
NOTE: There are many who scoff at writing exercises. I don't want to do exercises. I want to write something real, something I can submit to an editor.
First, no writing exercise is worthless. We gain something, big or small, from doing them. We're practicing our craft in bits and pieces with these exercises.
Many finished pieces that are submitted to an editor in hopes of publication started out as a writing exercise.
A PALE HORSE
ReplyDeleteThe winds blew especially fierce this afternoon, flattening the grasses and all the other vegetation displayed on the Great Plains.
Dorothy was still young and very pretty. She enjoyed sitting atop her horse as it trotted parade-like, and it sometimes pranced, across the wide-open Kansas field of prairie grasses with common milkweeds and blowing tumbleweeds. Being elevated on her large mare, Dorothy was amazed at her viewing-level across the flat, treeless field of vegetation.
This is as far away as she would ride her mare from the family farm, and think they might still be safe. Toto is riding snuggled in the saddle-bags positioned behind where Dorothy is guiding the reins. You don't know who you can meet out in the prairie-lands of Kansas. Maybe a scary tin-man. Even a silly scarecrow on a tall, wooden rack. Perhaps a dim-witted lion with no sense of fear. Don't forget the little gnomes that she hears talk about from neighbors. Who knows, after sundown and it is dark, her and her Terrier my run into a Wizard, or even a wicked witch from the western horizon.
Clever. Thanks for posting.
DeleteAunt Carol was a perpetual hoarder. Through the years, we purged a metric ton of garbage from her many homes. As a child I didn't realize the depth of her illness. Today, we found her, beneath her kitchen chatchkis. Porcelain roosters, floral pot holders, splintered shelving, and drywall cascading gracefully across the vastness of her torso. It seems almost absurd, but atop this mound or chaos that claimed poor Aunt carol, was a hauntingly beautiful girl sitting atop a wind swept stead framed by crows. As recognition set in, memorize engulfed me. For as long as I can remember, in every home she occupied, this photo was the one object undamaged by filth. This was the one object that always escaped the landfill. As the paramedics worked with police to hoist my aunt out of the debris I was compelled to snatch the photo. As I held it close... -this us as far as I have time to write this morning. Thank you for the exercise.
ReplyDeleteGood beginning. I hope you'll keep going.
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