fbpx

Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

description

Tuesday prompt: #40 2012

by

Today you will write about discomfort.  What does it feel like?  Get real descriptive.  Most importantly, get uncomfortable.  Sit on your seat awkwardly, twist your body around and hold it in place until you are uncomfortable.  Don’t eat if your hungry. Hold your arm straight up from your shoulder until it cramps, and then write about how it feels.  Don’t imagine; use your own experience to get into the details.  If you already have a cold, flu, arthritis, backache, then you are ahead of the game (for once it brings you benefits). Go for the sensation, the imagery of pain, stuffy headedness, tight muscles, stiffness, a sinus headache. 

Tuesday prompt: #39 2012

by

Write about a dream, but not just any dream.  Pick one of those that kept sliding into odd, even unrelated scenes that as the dreamer you just accepted.  Explore the strangeness of this dream following all its remembered impressions, actions and reactions. 

Write the twisty dream.

If you don’t recall all the details, let your mind slide around what you do remember and pull at it until you have seized everything you can from the dream. 

If you are one of those who don’t remember your dreams, imagine an image and carry into some foggy focus, let it slip into another image and then another as you track each flight of fancy. 

The one thing I ask that you do different with your dream is create a string of connections that holds each event to the next, smooth out the quirky, extra-stair-steps startle effect of the twisting dream.  Let take on a sort of logic of its own that may not have been there when you actually dreamed it.

Inspiration is all about the lean

by

On Tuesdays I post a writing prompt because I have had students that have trouble coming up with things to write.  They need a direction, an arrow pointing off into the distance, a gentle push into forward motion, a leaning, and they just start walking that way.  They haven’t learned to trust their own inspiration.  “Give me direction!” is their cry. (Though I don’t do this anymore, the prompts still reside on my blog and can be used repeatedly.)

I think inspiration to write is much easier than they realize and is about being willing to lean toward any little thing that sways your attention.

“Tree.”  What does a person see with just this one word?  Something will come to mind even if it is a sapling, twisted and nearly barren of leaves, a Whovian cluster of green hopeful growth at the tippy top of its highest reaching twig; two asymmetrical arm-like branches crook downwards at odds with the upward desire.  Mature oaks garbed in rough bark stand imposingly by, gruff opposers of any young upstarts grasping at the stabbing sunlight, great spears of dancing photosynthesis, splashes on last fall’s dry castaways.  In the breezy rustle that sallies down the stiff elder oaks, there marches the firm argument that supplying a cart load of seed is not a promise to provide a place to root.  The sapling quivers its reply, a sithering shuffle of curled, mint-green locks straining to rub together a complaint for air, water and light.

Just lean, all it takes is a little bit of lean.

Tuesday prompt: #37 2012

by

Today you are going to need a little help with this prompt.

  • Locate a
    bag, one preferably that is not clear, so a paper bag or a solid colored
    plastic shopping bag.  
  • Now locate a person, someone who has a
    mischievous nature or quirky way of looking at things would be helpful.  
  • Hand this person
    the bag and tell them to place something unusual in it.  The item can
    be as simple as a tiny rolled up piece of paper, a screw that fell out
    of something and is laying in the corner, a picture, figurine,
    whatever.  Make it easy on them and leave the room or even the house for
    a bit so they have time to really look around at what is available. 
  • Once the bag has the object in it, get it back from the person and take it to where you write.  
  • Write about it:  describe it and tell the story of its use or how it was created; or make up how a person felt when they first saw it, or bought it, or gave it away to another person. 

That’s your prompt. Get busy.

Tuesday prompt: #36 2012

by

Pick a co-worker you don’t know well but have observed.  (You can exchange co-worker with club member or any large group you are involved with.) Describe that individual.  As you do, you will find the main feature about that person that stands out to you because you will focus in on it without realizing it.  This practice (maybe do two or three) is useful because you will be describing real people who have qualities that you have unconsciously connected with.  Collecting idiosyncrasies from real individuals you know and using them in your writing will add a naturalness to your characters and help your readers to identify them individually, especially when there is a large cast. 

Writers select only a few qualities to attach to a character, main or minor.  Hair and eyes are popular features, but there are so many other qualities that can help define a character as unique and help a reader connect with that individual no matter how short the involvement with the individual is in the reading.

Examples:

  • Glasses that slide down the nose or enlarge the eyes when lenses are looked through directly by other characters.
  • Profuse sweating:  sweaty hands, beading above the lip.
  • Feet that slap the floor with every step.
  • A habit of rubbing an ear or stroking a brow.