Writing prompt #1: INVITING THE WORLD INTO YOUR WORK

Good morning, everyone! This is our inaugural prompt. You can expect one in your inbox most Thursdays.

Here goes:

Too often our work can be more insular than inclusive. Most of us are good at depicting the inner workings and struggles of our characters, or capturing them convincingly in their own worlds. But what would happen if we were to challenge and derail our characters by bringing the world to them?

For this prompt, I’d like you to imagine someone famous crossing paths, however briefly, with your character(s). This might happen from afar, or be an unexpected close encounter, but allow it to disrupt the moment and give your character(s) a larger context in, and connection to, the world around them. Their reactions may surprise you, perhaps even illuminate something unknown to you about their longings and sense of (un)belonging.

Write this scene.

EXAMPLE: The following is an excerpt from Dreaming in Cuban (thanks for indulging me!), when the right-wing bakery owner Lourdes Puente encounters El Líder at the Peruvian embassy in Havana at the start of what would become the Mariel Exodus in 1980:

“ … The Jeep pulls up to the embassy and a barrel-chested man steps out. He’s wearing an olive cap and army fatigues, and his curly, graying beard floats below his chin, elongating his tired features. He looks much older than her mother’s photograph, the one that replaced her father’s face, the one Lourdes flung into the sea. He looks smaller, too, more vulnerable, a caricature of himself.

Long ago, Lourdes had prepared a curse for him but today her tongue is flat and dry, an acre of desert. She follows El Líder inside the compound. The defectors in the courtyard are nervous in his presence. They run their fingers under their collars and scan the walls for cameras and rifles.

Lourdes realizes she is close enough to kill him. She imagines seizing El Líder’s pistol, pressing it to his temple, squeezing the trigger until he hears the decisive click. She wants him to see her face, to remember her eyes and the hatred in them. Most of all, Lourdes wants him to be afraid …”

(The scene goes on but you get the idea!)

Have fun! And feel free to get outlandish!

Abrazos,

Cristina