*puts on writer hat* *puts out an APB for Muse*

[icepixie]

Unlike many writers--if the massive amount of story prompt (often with an opening sentence) books/websites/what-have-yous out there are to be believed--I have no trouble getting a piece started. I have approximately eight billion files with just a few opening sentences in them. My problem is going somewhere with that opening bit. (This actually ties into a post/poll I plan to make soon, covering some, but not all, of the same ground as this poll and discussion from last summer.)

So for this one, I turn to you, gentle flist. I have the following passage. Tell me what to do with it.


The bit of snow that fell last night dusted the surface of the world: dark-shingled roofs, the tips of still-green blades of grass, the jagged remnants of cornstalks which had been threshed three weeks ago. The cold hit us with the bitterness that only the first snow of winter can have; the cruel unexpectedness of it after eight months without burned in our lungs. Even the sun seemed frozen in the sky that afternoon, none of the heat that had been so oppressive in the summer reaching us now.

Jim and I sat on the old trestle bridge, our legs hanging off the edge, watching the sluggish progress of the Bird River twenty feet below. In another month, there would be days and weeks where it would freeze solid.


Who are these people? Why are they sitting on a bridge (one very familiar to certain people, I'm sure ;)) in November, freezing their butts off? I honestly have no idea, and I have no clue where to go with it. I think this is why I usually stick to writing poetry.

(Incidentally, this is an excellent example of what I'm talking about in the post linked above, about how setting usually shows up first in the writing process for me.)

Comments

[elflore.livejournal.com]

I definitely have the same thing often...I have tons of story ideas and starters and snatches of dialogue written down, but hammering those out into a full plot can be tricky.

As for this scene...it feels like a great opening for a novel to me, about the winter. The line about the river, 'days and weeks to come where it would freeze solid' is gorgeously atmospheric and provocative, and suggests to me that their lives are heading into an angsty place, a place where things they wanted, dreams they were trying to make happen, will have the breaks put on big time. Maybe these are two kids that had been planning on getting out of their small town and going to college, only for finances or family obligations to conspire to keep them at home, so they're left with a winter or a year figuring out who they're going to be now...

That's where my brain started walking when you set down this map. *g*

[icepixie]

Down with plot! Silly plot. *g*

dreams they were trying to make happen, will have the breaks put on big time. Maybe these are two kids that had been planning on getting out of their small town and going to college, only for finances or family obligations to conspire to keep them at home, so they're left with a winter or a year figuring out who they're going to be now...

Ooooh, interesting. That's something I don't think I would ever have thought of (possibly because this bridge and river are drawn from the ones at Kenyon). I was going down the personal-relationship-troubles road, which feels so tired and overused to me.

Thanks!

[elflore.livejournal.com]

Let's not go to WriteAPlot, 'tis a silly place...

But you're welcome. *g*