#Writober Day 12: Shadows

The colors this morning took my breath away. My world was, for a fleeting moment, this beautiful. The image above has not been altered in any way other than cropping.

#OctPoWriMo

Today’s OctPoWriMo theme is Black.

Absorbed

Shocking color around the mountain
I jump to action
must capture the moment
the first time I think of
the mountain on the lake
not as reflection,
but as shadow

absence of light, shadow
black hole → being pulled in
all light absorbed into nothing

black bird gobbles like a turkey
upon a garbage can at the park
an unforgettable sound
wings talons strewn
among fir needles by my door
an unforgettable sight
a murder of crow

 

#Writober4

The image for Day 12 on the Pinterest board shows a happy conductor of bells tied to legs hanging around his head.

My take: Maybe our conductor is a murderous warlock who has finally achieved his dream of the perfect bell choir.

Micro-fiction: Gila Dummitt had finally reanimated his perfect bell choir. The severed legs, the perfectly tuned, hand-crafted bells tied to their toes, floated around him awaiting his command. He became increasingly annoyed as certain specimens proved to have two left feet.

Writing Process and Tools

Focus on one emotion: Yesterday, while reading about how to write great flash fiction, I came across a helpful tip- Focus on one emotion. This gave me an idea of how to use a tool in my tool box. I have found The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi in my efforts to show and not tell my character’s emotions. I like the idea of having a pre-chosen or randomly chosen emotion as a prompt to go with the image prompt. Then I can look the emotion up in the emotion thesaurus to find physical signals, internal sensations and mental responses to include in the story.

To execute this idea, I put the list of emotions from The Emotion Thesaurus into my character creation spreadsheat and selected an emotion using the official random number generator from Math Goodies.

Today’s story emotion is Annoyance.  If we apply that to our image, is that smile on our conductor’s face a false front, or does he start our ecstatically happy and become annoyed by the events of the story? As he becomes annoyed he may speak in short phrases in a sharp tone. He may get a headache and become increasingly sensitive to noise. That could create conflict for our conductor. He may start thinking of excuses to leave, or avoid the object annoying him.

Creepy verbs: disgorge, spew, erupt, invert, explode

Story Cubes Symbols: smiling with worried eyes, bridge, eye, frowny face, arrow down-left, house ,monster shadow, arrows all directions, padlock

Woodland creature: blue jay

Horror trope: haunted house

Oblique Strategies: Look at the order in which you do things

 

 

Happy Reading and Writing!