Science Fiction & Fantasy author
Regional stories are wrapped around the cultural, traditional, and environmental qualities of the area. Often dialect is a feature, but not a requirement. So work on a few paragraphs of a story that can only happen where you are. Make it utterly dependent on the locale, can’t happen anywhere else but there.
Read Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” or Wolfe’s “Only the Dead Know Brooklyn” for example.
Pick out a room in your house or apartment that you would love to remodel. Imagine the changes you would make. What different furniture would you prefer, paint scheme, layout, window type? Think about every detail: baseboard, electrical switches, trim around the doors, what is in the vase of flowers, scent.
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| capture the details |
When you have the vision clear in your mind, start writing it down. Be as clear as you can with what the room looks like now and then blast away at it, always maintaining a steady sense of the place. If necessary, keep your vantage point from one place in the room, i.e., the entrance from the front hall or a corner where most of the room is viewable, even a glimpse of other rooms to add contrast. Most importantly, don’t let your reader get lost in the room.
This could take a bit of time and writing. When you have it all, go back through and remove everything that is unnecessary to maintaining the overall look. Keep trimming until you have it down to a page of overall change, with enough close detail to set the effect of the room as down to the tiniest point, and enough general description that the room is not centered on details. Sort of like matching your earrings or cufflinks to the dress or suit you are wearing. No piece sets the tone alone, it all works together.
Probably everybody has the sleeping dream of flying, usually without wings, airplane or other standard materials. I know I once flew in a chair. If I raised my legs straight out in front of me I went up, bending down them sent me to the ground. I have flown in a car up and down incredible vertical runs.
Your prompt, if you choose to accept it, is write your character into a flying experience. Don’t worry about using conventional means to enable flight, just get them into the air somehow with at least some means of control, however rocky it might be.
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| banana peals – sweet, heavy vapor with bitter undertones. |
Work on sensory details by focusing on the sense of smell.
Write about something that smells really bad, corrupt, nauseating even.
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| line in the road of my personal space |
I posted this prompt at least a year ago on Twitter as I was posting writing prompts there. But I decided that there were plenty of other groups and individuals doing the same so I quit. However, I really liked this prompt, so I am posting it here.
He leaned in to me, past the line I draw that says, “You’re too close.”
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| MASK, mask |
Often people have a persona that covers their true self. Take that idea of a mask and apply it to a character. Design them with a strong personality, but beneath it have a second sense of self that is kept hidden. As you design these two sides (interior true self and exterior mask), try to have a few aspects cross between the two. Both prefer to listen rather than speak first or both like the color blue. The interior escapes from inside when it fits the exterior persona.
So the tough guy that throws knives so well is crazy about practicing darts before bed.