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Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Tuesday prompts

Tuesday prompt: #14 2013

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Have you ever played the game of looking at people you don’t know, and you come up with their back stories?  That is what you are going to do today. 

What’s her back story?

Character’s current situation:  Her name is Ruth, newly divorced raising a seven-year-old son on her own.  Timid, small boned and stoop shouldered, she has finally found a job at a local window and door mill.  Her first experience for the night is to stack blocks of wood being trimmed to a precise length by an experienced chopsaw operator.

How did she get to be here?  What is her story?  What caused the divorce?  What made her once stand proud?  Does she lack education, confidence, family support?  What did she used to want more than anything else in her life?

Tuesday prompt: #13 2013

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What if these jasmine blooms were orange with white tips?

Take an ordinary outdoor scene and start describing it, but add a twist.  Alter shapes, colors and textures to the things you describe.

Rather than a tall oak, give it an awkward crouching trunk with filament-like leaves of puce.  Make the scene both alien and familiar.  Call a tree a tree, but what a tree it is!

Tuesday prompt: #12 2013

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I don’t often give prompts for poetry, but I do write poetry on occasion.  Much of the prompts I have provided are easy to manipulate if one wishes to apply it to lines of verse.  In this prompt, though it will be directed at extending images in poetry, it is reasonable to expect that extending a descriptive image in prose writing is just as important, so feel free to adjust it to fit a story.

Below are three short images.  As a sample, I am extending one of them.  But the other two are for anybody visiting to practice extending the image.

tiny ships in a busy harbor

 a boat moored in a small busy harbor

The skiff tipped a bobbing gait with the wash
of the waves coming in, coming in and going out
in rippled ramps, after being beat into gentleness
by the tight harbor’s cluttered docks.

Now your turn.

  • a barking dog at night
  • dark clouds overhead

Tuesday prompt: #11 2013

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Responding to the call to adventure

Write a few paragraphs using the opening steps of the heroic journey by introducing a character capable of heroic actions, though she or he may not feel capable of such things.  Supply a problem or other motivating situation for the character to accept a call to adventure.  The common enough character feels a need, desire or push to proceed on a journey that under normal circumstance would not be considered the norm among choices of action.  That is it.  If you need more detailed information follow this link to my explanation of the Heroic Journey narrative mode.

Tuesday prompt: #10 2013

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This is an exercise for plotting.  Below is a plot that contains a major flaw: the main character has no challenge to reaching her goal.  Replot the events so that the character still gets to the goal, but she doesn’t have an easy time of it.

  • Susie eats at the same diner each day without fail, ordering eggs, bacon, and hash browns.  Though she does not know the cook’s name, he always nods at her when he sees her head for a her favorite booth in the corner.  A short time later, her breakfast arrives.
  • Sam enters and takes the booth beside her own.  She sits looking in his direction over the two seat backs, he hers.
  • Each time she looks up, she finds herself looking into his eyes.  He smiles every time.
  • She hasn’t any ketchup at her table and asks him if he could pass her his.  He walks it over to her and waits for her to finish before returning to his own seat.
  • She eats every bite, pleased she didn’t have to do so without the ketchup.

(And you thought this was all about Susie and Sam.)

Now the goal is the ketchup.  Time to alter the plot so that she still gets the ketchup but the process is not easy.