I’ve been reading a book of writing exercises called “What If“. Tim asked me to pick a favorite exercise and send it into the list as this month’s writing prompt. Here is the abridged version of my favorite challenge in the book so far.

The Morning After

A man, getting ready to drive to a friend’s house with his baby daughter, puts the car seat with the baby in it on top of the car while he packs some things in the trunk. He gets into the car and drives off, forgetting the baby on top of the car. The car seat flies off the roof, does a somersault, and lands on the street, upside down. The baby is unhurt.

Write the scene that takes place between the man and his wife at breakfast the next morning: how they behave toward each other, what they say to each other. The reason this scene takes place on the morning after is to let the characters “sleep on it,” instead of starting to shout at each other or cry. They will have examined their life together before they start breakfast. The critical decision you’re asked to make is to how their lives together before yesterday’s incident will affect what they are going through now. Remember that what is not said is often more effective than what is said.

Dana set the writing prompt last night as, “Select a tabloid headline and write a piece assuming it’s totally real.”

The tabloids are pretty much all star gossip these days, which is certainly fine to use if you find something inspiring in that. If you prefer though, there are several ways to go back in time to the more bizarre headlines.

First, you can do a Google Images search for “tabloid headlines:”

http://images.google.com/images?q=tabloid%20headlines

There are also some sites out there that collect some of the classic
headlines:

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/anniversary/35th/n_8568/

http://www.rockthelist.com/2008/10/02/the-35-most-bizarre-tabloid-headlines-ever/

http://www.manofest.com/Content/the-40-funniest-tabloid-headlines-of-all-time.html

Finally, there are tabloid headline generators:

http://tabloidheadlinegenerator.com/

http://thesurrealist.co.uk/standard.php

Just thought I would share the gems I found in my search for the
perfect headline.

James Edward Gray II

With NanNoWriMo just wrapping up and Christmas looming, I’m sure we
all want to take things a little easier this month. Given that, and
the next scheduled meeting time, you have 51 days to write another
50,000 words… No, wait Dana, it was just a joke!

This month’s writing prompt is to show some event or tell some story
from more than one point of view. You can accomplish that in any way
that you like from explaining a character’s internal revelation to
literally telling a story more than once with different narrating
voices.

I gave several examples at the meeting. I mentioned Tales From the
Mos Eisley Cantina which is a book about the stories of all the faces
the camera pans across during the famous scene in Star Wars, Rand’s
battle with the Seanchan in book eight of The Wheel of Time in which
both sides decide they lost, and the British TV sitcom Coupling which
uses the shared story telling tactic heavily for hilarious effect
throughout its second and third seasons.

I forgot to mention, and should probably be punished for doing so,
Ender’s Game, which is easily a science fiction masterpiece. If you
haven’t read it, do yourself a favor and pick it up. It’s an easy
read you can knock out in a weekend and you will be deeply rewarded
for doing so. The entire story is about point of view.

That’s the task. The writing from multiple points of view part, not
reading Ender’s Game. Unless you haven’t read Ender’s Game and then
maybe you would be better off to reverse them. OK, we will call
having read Ender’s Game by the next meeting extra credit, but it’s
worth major points.

We decided not to impose any limits on the prompt, so run wild if you
like. We may need two meetings in January though, the normal one and
the other to read Tim’s submission.

“My backlog of motivating photos and other art leans more to fantasy/scifi range than I’d considered before. I’ve picked a set that I hope isn’t too far into the genre than you’d like. Our first prompt encouraged us to show not tell. In addition to that I’ll tack on a sensory element. Use description that highlights a sense other than sight. Here you go:”