WIM Week 0
This is my first time participating in Writers-In-Motion! I was initially very hesitant about exposing my process of drafting/redrafting/rewriting/revising/ burn-it-and-start-over, mostly because...
I'm a pantser. With sequins.
Believe me, I tried to change my pantsing ways. For years, I tried. I read the books. I tried beat sheets. I tried the outline. I tried the reverse outline. (FYI: That?s the least onerous kind of outline if any pantser wants to try it. It's still an outline. You will cry. Just not as much.) I spent a lot of years trying to change who I was.
I'd been told that I was wrong. That I couldn't write the way I did and it be right. That what I did in my head couldn't work. I was embarrassed to call myself a real writer. You see, I'm a messy writer. My desk is messy. My mind is messy. My stories are messy.
But it's a beautiful mess. I'm slowly beginning to embrace me and the way my process works. There actually is some process to it.
If you pants, then pants boldly. If you plot, hey, you plot away and sing it out fearlessly. The universal truth of writing is there is no one way to write.
On to the prompt:
The first thing I thought when I saw the prompt was that it was sterile, frightening, and staged. The colors were stark and uninspiring. The lady holds the flare with the look of a person who has no choice in the matter. Her face is frozen, emotionless.
The more I looked at it, the more my brain churned. This seemed like a picture intended to be inspiring, but instead of being inspiring, it seemed to belong to the world of motivational posters where the caption would probably say something like "Reach for the Sky" and the person looking at it would be thinking, "At gunpoint?"
What can I say? My mind is a weird place.
I didn't want to go dark on this prompt. Having triggered the feelings of despair, sadness, and trapped lives, I wanted to do something about it. Something fantastic, off-the-wall, and happy for all involved. I wanted to save that woman and help her find both a life and a smile. So, I did.
My process:
I wrote my story stream-of-consciousness in right at ten minutes. I didn't plan it. I didn't think about it. I didn't even look at the picture while I wrote it.
The name Kenny came out of nowhere. I went with it. The only character thing I was conscious of as I wrote was a need to capture the hatred Kenny feels for his dead-end job and how he feels trapped in a situation he's desperate to escape. I wrote out the images purely as his emotional reaction to them.
The only plot thing I kept in mind was my personal goal to tell this as a full story?a protagonist, a goal, a problem, his solution, and the resolution. I also wanted to do it in 500 words or less. Why 500? Because I wanted room to add in the next draft. Also, being a pantser, most of my first drafts serve as the bones for rewrites rather than revision. I wanted a whole, told story there on day one. No showing. Only telling.
I wanted to get an idea of what would be happening in the scenes, around the scenes, and behind the scenes of this story, and the only way I could do that was to tell it to myself first.
Like I said. Beautiful mess.
Topic: Prompt Reaction and Process for Waiting To Jump (Read 1986 times)