Last week we took a look at writing prompts in the form of objects and adjectives.  This week I thought I'd share another piece that came out of Freefall Fridays at the Alexandra Centre.  This one centred around an actual, physical object that was provided:  a small, stuffed, red bird.  Here's the piece I came out with:

"Can we bring it inside?” the son asked.

“Nope,” the dad said briskly, still not accustomed to these quiet moments.  But, he was determined to try harder, so he added “Because it's wildlife, you see?  It's not like your fish, or Trigger.  These kinds of things, you have to let them be.  They have to find their own way.”

“But it's our fault,” the son replied.

The dad's eyebrows twitched up in surprise.  “How's that?”

“If we hadn't built our house here, then it wouldn't have run into it.”

It was a bizarre kind of logic, the kind that the dad expected from kids – just not his own.  He didn't have a good answer for that, so he settled on “Come on inside.”

The son reluctantly tore his puppy dog eyes away from the bright red cardinal hunched down in the snow.  The puffy red bird had its feathers all perked up against the cold, but its eyes were wandering and its head was fixed, likely still dazed from the impact.

As the dad and the son crossed over the patio threshold, the son took one more look back.  “Can we bring it a blanket?”

The dad exhaled through his nose with an irritated whistle.  “I told you-”

“I know, I know, it's wildlife.  But I don't want to keep it dad.”

“You want to save it,” the dad said.

“No,”  the son struggled visibly with his words.  It was the burden of youth to make their elders see the world through fresh eyes.  “I just want to give it a chance.”

The dad stood there half-in, half-out of the house, his breath blowing steam clouds in front of his face like a locomotive idling in a station.  “Ask your mother for some rags,” he said.

end.

Photo Credit: smith_cl9 via Compfight cc

As you can see, I took the bird pretty literally (although I imagined it as alive, and not dead).  But, I'd like to point out that although it is VITAL to the storyline, it isn't in of itself the central theme.

Last week, I mentioned how story prompts can get you, as a writer, thinking about the world in new and creative ways.  Adding on to that, I think it's worthwhile to think about trying to take your prompt in a weird or unusual direction.  For instance, say you were given a clock as your object.  You might talk about the theme of time catching up to all of us, or a person's "biological clock" or even minimize it to a brief appearance in a character's belongings.  The important thing is to not be bound to restrictions of thought.  The whole joy of writing is that it's an individual exercise, so why not showcase what you, as an individual, can bring to a concept?

To that end, here is another story prompter you can try.  What I love about this prompter is that it gives you a huge number of guidelines all at once.  From there, you're free to take-it-or-leave-it as you choose.  For example, I generated "This is a story about the differences between the sexes. The story is about an adventurer, a lazy witch-hunter, and a sloppy beastmaster. It starts in a star-spanning magical empire. A new kind of magic is evolving in the story."  Maybe I would drop the "differences between the sexes," but keep the lazy witch-hunter and the beastmaster.  It also doesn't specify what "new kind of magic" is evolving.  It could be anything.

The important thing about this kind of prompt is not to limit yourself to a single interpretation, be that literal or metaphorical.  Stretch your limits and try to see ordinary objects on several different levels at once.