1 April 2015

Wednesday Writing Prompt #16 - Images

Over the past weeks I've emphasised that to convey a story well writers need to focus on how characters tick not on what they look like, if for no better reason than that their deportment, how they dress, how they adorn themselves, comes from how they are at their core, and whether they are trying to project that core, or mask it from the outside world, or even from themselves.

But we live in a visual world, not just a world that we can touch, but a world that is beamed to us via whatever media we choose to use. Even the 140 character limit of Twitter now feeds us as many images as text. 

So for this post I'm concentrating on that old adage A picture paints a thousand words. Here's your picture:


The House by the Railroad Edward Hopper 1925
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The usual questions need asking of it - who, what, where, when, how and why - but these should be applied three-fold: 
  • to the scene
  • to the person/people in the building
  • to the viewpoint person 
Have fun, then try it with another image, from the present, from the far past, from a different culture to your own, from the future.

And may I point out, though you should have noticed, that last phrase is an entire story in itself.

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