The Equinox

 

A magical time? Are we affected by the way the earth rotates?  Are there customs and rituals associated with this? Could you invent a few? How does the change in light affect you? Is the season changing as well?

Write an article, poem, script or story about this time.

Article ideas

Discuss the pros and cons of changing the clocks.  

Look at people’s need for sunlight.

Research some of the rituals to do with this time of year. What about the autumnal equinox as well? And the longest day and the shortest day?

What else?

Poem ideas

Take a walk and then make notes about what you’ve seen, heard, felt, tasted and smelt.  Build a poem on this.

Can you write an ode to the spring?

What about the sunrise or sunset on this day?

Script ideas

Go back in time and show a story about something changing on the day for an ancient civilisation. .

The garden needs some attention but no one is willing to do it. Write about how one household solves this dilemma.

Set your story at Stonehenge. What causes conflict this time?

Story ideas

How does the equinox bring hope in your story?

Write something from an animal’s point of view.

Create a dramatic monologue form the point of view of an experienced gardener.        

The Strike

 

Write an article, poem, script or story about a strike. You may like to look at an historic one.  Remember the Welsh slate miners or the coal miners. What about the emergency services? Or teachers?  Have you ever been on strike? Or what about a strike in an unusual place? You might even write about being affected by someone else being on strike.

 

Articles

This is plenty of scope for articles here. And within articles plenty of angles. Who is striking, and why.  Is it justified?  What will be the repercussions for the people on strike? How will it affect others?      

 

Poetry

What’s it like being on a picket line?  Is there an opportunity here to write with the senses? What about making up a marching song for the people who are protesting?

 

Script

If you’ve researched some of the historic ones, could you write a screen play or stage play? Remember for scripts you’re not in the head of the characters.  That’s more the job of the actor, novelist or short story writer. Can you bring some comedy into it? Do you remember The Rag Trade? And the cry of “Everybody out”?

 

Ficiton

Could you write the story form an unusual viewpoint.  Maybe that of a child? Or of one of the bosses who is secretly sympathetic? Or the partner of one of the strikers? If there is an unruly situation maybe you could write the story of a police officer involved in sorting out the chaos.    

    

Recording a week

Our lives are incredibly rich even if we think they are boring and even if we feel relatively locked down still. Charles Dickens examined the minutiae of daily life. Vivienne Dockerty mines family history to bring us highly dramatic historical fiction. Soaps like EastEnders, Coronation Street and The Archers delight because they feature the everyday – even though they are enriched with melodrama.     

Look back over the last week and record an incident from each day as an article, poem, story or script. They can be really short. Or you might want to pick just one and work it up into a longer piece.

Here are my examples:

Day 1 – fell asleep after lunch.  Short article about the luxury of a siesta

Day 2 – cleaner talked football with OH. Article about how football rules us.

Day 3 – last of the special gin samples I was given for my birthday. Poem about this one or all of them.

Day 4 – fascinated by a TV programme about family histories. Short story about someone finding their natural parents.

Day 5 – Valentine’s Day. Short story about how a couple break their Valentine’s ritual of some fifty years.

Day 6 – failed Zoom meeting – only two out of five of us showed up. Script about a main character that doesn’t turn up to his own party. Everybody talks about him. He walks in right at the end. A bit like Waiting for Godot only Godot turns up.

Day 7 OH is back from his curry club meeting by 8.30. I hear the front door open and I’m expecting a burglar. There is another explanation. This is already a short story.

How does anyone ever run out of ideas? It’s good to go off at a tangent sometimes as well.   This is one way of doing that.

Have fun.

World Cup Final

 

Or other exciting sporting event.  Describe what happens from the point of view of an avid fan. Does your team win or lose?  How does that make you feel? How do you celebrate or heal your wounds?

Set the scene. Write with your senses. Try to capture the atmosphere:

What does the pitch look like?

Who are the other fans?

Which snippets of conversation do you overhear?

What can you smell? Are there pies or hot dogs cooking?  

Or: are you watching at the pub or at home? Who is with you? What do you talk about?

How does the tension mount as the players come on to the pitch?

Can you describe the paly without getting too technical? Can you describe it for someone  who doesn’t understand football, cricket or tennis? Do you need to check facts? What you remember is fine but guaranteed you won’t remember exactly what happened. You may need to pin names to actions and check timings. Or can you make this completely fictitious?

How does the game end?

Will this be the end of your story?    

A fatal shot

 

Someone has been tampering with the drinks. Just one shot of something you or your character drinks leads to some disastrous events.  Tell the story.

Perhaps the most obvious story here is that of someone’s drink being spiked and the victim is then robbed or raped.

There are, however, several other possibilities:

·         What if the drink acted as a portal to another world for you or your character?

·         What if the drink made the protagonist speak the truth – not just in the sense of not lying but in being outspoken?

·         What if the drink made the protagonist more understanding of the world around them?

Who is your character and why are they in the bar at this particular time? What is the atmosphere like as they arrive? What makes them take the drink?

What happens after they have drunk the shot?

How long does it affect them for?

Which disastrous events follow?

How do they get back to normal? Do they get back to normal?

What do they learn from the experience? How has their life changed?   

Strange flight

 

Write an article, poem, script or story about flying.  Maybe you or your protagonist is flying for the first time.  Or perhaps this is some new sort of flying machine. Perhaps you go somewhere where you’ve never been before.

Article ideas

You could write about:

• The history of flying
• Fear of flying
• The impact of air travel on the environment
• The busyness of the airports
• Tourism
• Careers in the air travel industry

Structure your article

Think of forms you might use:

• An essay
• A newspaper article
• A newspaper feature

Poem ideas

• Imagine what it would be like to fly.
• Write with the senses from a bird’s point of view.
• What about a few haiku?
• Capture the atmosphere of a busy airport.
• What is it like if this is your first flight?
• Can you get the rhythm of the engines into your poem?

Script ideas

• What about a conversation amongst the cabin crew?
• How would your characters deal with an emergency?
• Pure fantasy: where does the magical flight take your characters?
• Is there a tense situation about a failing airline or about one company taking over another?
• Tell the story through dialogue of a nervous traveller.
• Is there tension between the flight crew and the cabin crew?

Story ideas

• Tell the story of the struggling flight engineers.
• What about someone who grew wings and then could suddenly fly?
• Tell the story of an alternative type of flying machine?
• Create a world where humans fly.
• What about a flying machine that can transport people to other worlds?
• What about the metaphor of the fledgling leaving the nest?

Have fun writing about flying. If you can, make your flight strange.