 For Authors: May 21, 2025 Issue [#13143] |
This week: Word Play Edited by: Fyn  
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Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society. ~~Mark Twain
I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious. ~~Michael Scott (Steve Carrell), The Office
Does it disturb anyone else that 'The Los Angeles Angels' baseball team translates directly to 'The The Angels Angels'? ~~Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves? ~~Robin Williams
I always find beauty in things that are odd and imperfect - they are much more interesting. ~~Marc Jacobs
The unreliable narrator is an odd concept. The way I see it, we're all unreliable narrators of our lives who usually have absolute trust in our self-told stories. Any truth is, after all, just a matter of perspective. ~~Sarah Pinborough
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For the last two days I've been thinking about prompts. For poems, specifically, but for any sort of writing, this would apply. Many writers I know go with their first thought and sail off to pen their piece of writing. While this often works quite well, I, on the other hand, (I am left-handed after all) wait for the third or fifteenth idea to hit.
The way I look at it is that my first thought will be similar to the majority. I want to be the odd ball one! For example, I recently had to write a poem using 'silence' as the prompt. I thought of a variety of things...a beautiful (and quiet!) sunset, an early morning meadow, a cemetery or the middle of the night cozied down in bed. Then I thought some more. Sitting in my 'quiet' office, I listened. I could 'hear' the windchimes outside, the ticking of my backwards clock on the wall, the puppy snuffling under my desk and, and, and! Truth be told, it was not 'quiet' at all. It was not silent. I tried listening between the sounds. That didn't work either. I'd need to freeze time in between the sounds.
Instead of silence, I ended up writing about the noise between the noises. Because, in truth, even should there be a lack of sound, our brains will add sounds - we still 'hear' things.
I remember one prompt a long time ago. The prompt had to do with contronyms (variously called antagonyms or Janus words), although the prompt never actually 'said' that! We had to use the words cleave, clip, fast, left and dust. I was pondering on cleave (which can mean cut apart or stick together.) when I realized the other words were all the same concept. Think about them! *grin* I managed to use them with both meanings adding in a few others just because I'm difficult.
Back in my teaching days I once assigned descriptive essay on 'what water tastes like.' City water tastes much different from spring water. What comes out of the hose doesn't taste like what comes out of a bottle of water bought at the corner store. Worse, what can one compare it to? I've got to give my students credit, though. Reading those essays was fun!
That particular class happened to be completely made up of pharmaceutical majors. Who all hated writing. Imanaged to convince them that the poor grad student who had to read three hundred papers on various drug interactions would find the task far less tedious if they used wording less cut and dry while still staying within the constraints of a college scientific paper would wake up that grad student who was on his 147th paper on the same subject at 3 AM!
In other words, try to think outside of that writing box. There's a whole huge world out there!
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Damon Nomad  says: I don’t struggle with killing off characters, but when I started writing I did. Recently I had a story accepted for an anthology and they wanted me to give a little stronger ending scene. I realized killing off my main character was just the ticket, so a hatchet to the head.
Mara ♣ McBain  writes: No truer words, but damn does that hurt! I sobbed and ugly cried reading Fourth Wing when a gorgeous dragon and his rider perish and YES I was screaming nooooo whyyyyyy LOL Because sometimes you've just got to shoot the bear. (Or gut the dragon  ) Great topic!
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