Who is she? Where is she? What is she thinking? What kind of day is it? Where is she going? What does she have to do? Where has she been? What is her name? How old is she?
All the questions will help you write a story or a few paragraphs about this photo prompt above. When doing this exercise you can/should also use or show the following:
- thoughts of the girl
- emotions
- weather
- sounds she hears
- the temperature and its effect
- smells---is that smoke?
- is there fog?
- why she is sitting
- what about the leaves? color, touch, sound when walked on etc
- contents of her backpack
I've heard writers say that they can never come up with a good story when doing a photo prompt exercise. It might be that they don't ask themselves questions like the above. You cannot merely look at the picture and expect a fantastic story to sail into your mind. You need a little help. Once you begin asking questions and considering place, emotions, and more, it becomes much easier to write.
And why should you bother with writing exercises like this? Why not concentrate on your present writing project instead of practicing writing? My answer is that the more you do these exercises, the easier writing becomes when you work on your present work in progress. The little extras that we learn to do through the exercises become habit when we write.
I have some ideas about that young girl in the woods. Do you?
The girl in the photo was sitting on a lonely trail pondering whether to go on with her struggling life of gathering DNA from leafless trees or struggle to get this stupid backpack off her & toss it into the near by river that insisted on raging on down towards a tumbling water fall which never quit. She decided to go home to her .....\
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a creative offering. Thanks!
DeleteVery pretty and quite young, she was confused. And, agitated. Her brother had been missing for several weeks. This week, someone found a body. Close to her parent's home. Near the creek at the bottom of the hillside. At the edge of their meager city. In the wooded area. It needed to be identified.
ReplyDeleteThe body was decomposed and mutilated. Her brother disappeared in the final weeks of summer. Not long ago. But, they did not even know the sex of the recovered being for some time. There may have been a self-inflicted wound, or injuries from another person. So many questions and possibilities. No one knew what happened when they found the body. It may not be her brother. It might be some unknown stranger with a similar body stature and style. Everything was deteriorated and unrecognizable. The process began.
Today, when the coroner visited their mom and dad, Jill realized her worst fears. The county coroner's report came back that is was her brother. There were drugs involved, maybe a very new and severe drug. Because of the degradation of the body over the time he was missing, away from their mom and dad's home, the body had deteriorated so much that a good, tell-tale reason for death could not be determined. But, there were some drugs in his system. Synthetic opioids, Oxycontin. Vicodin. Caffeine. And, maybe Fentanyl, the advanced cancer patient pain management drug which is said to be 50 to 100 times stronger than morphine. It is a synthetic opioid pain reliever, but is so much more deadly than heroin.
How could this ever happen? Did he take all those chemicals? He may have messed around with other drugs growing up. But nothing so serious.
She was very distraught. Jill had just lost her brother and one of her closest friends, ever. Now, she wanted to recall it all and remember his face and his voice as only a sister could. All she could do was set herself on the cool road, so early with the morning mist, and try to go forward as well as she could.
Look what one small photo brought forth!
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