For the longest time, I’ve wanted to find some way to absorb consciously what captivated me about a particular character and setting in the first half of a book I read years ago. I particularly wished I could explore what unfulfilled promise they represented. Something I was looking for never quite manifested, through the series.
What I came up with is pick lines from the book that include the character and setting I found captivating. I share the lines and some random words from that page as a writing prompt for myself and my writing friend. Several times this has ignited important elements in the book I’m currently writing, Xentu Secret. It’s not that the scene or character get directly carried into my story. Most often, a single word serves as catalyst for a scene in now way similar to the other book. [This image is in the field of ideas produced by the latest prompt.]
I’ve never found it useful to try to directly analyze others’ work. But this process for working with another’s writing seems to subtly shift the inner landscape of my writer self for that moment, the ten-minutes writing to the prompt. This carving out of writing prompts appears to be a way to chew and digest, to integrate material, producing alchemy in the mysterious cauldron of storymaking.
Follow Marie Judson on WordPress.com (function(d){var f = d.getElementsByTagName(‘SCRIPT’)[0], p = d.createElement(‘SCRIPT’);p.type = ‘text/javascript’;p.async = true;p.src = ‘//widgets.wp.com/platform.js’;f.parentNode.insertBefore(p,f);}(document));
Instagram pics:
Marie Judson 