The setting: The backyard of a small house in the midwest on a dreary day in October, surrounded by a fence, painted brown a few years earlier. The grass hasn't been cut in over two weeks. The yard contains a swing set (metal, rusting at the bolts) with a plastic baby swing, a flat metal swing, and a slightly bent metal slide. Near the house, a picnic table, with a garden shears and a work glove sitting on it. An old crabapple tree grows between the table and the swing set.
The characters: a garden snake, a tree squirrel, a toy robot with its head turned backwards, and a squirt gun.
And now: what sort of story to build? Fable? Children's book? Fantasy? Allegory? Sci-fi? The fable only needs the snake and the squirrel, I think.
Before I mentioned the characters, the story could have been a standard realistic novel. What if, instead of characters, those items were merely present in the setting?
Stretch, mind, stretch.
And then, write.
1 comment:
The squirrel wants to go forage but fears the cats that have gone feral, the pets of all the human beings who have since inexplicably disappeared...
Apparently, the Rapture didn't include squirrels.
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