If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. This week’s Breakthrough tip is not about wanting to be a writer and not writing. Some of the hardest writing to do is getting a character from one place to another. We overwrite, i.e. Rick stood up from the old couch. He walked across the threadbare rug, put his hand on the doorknob, pulled the door open and walked into the reeking kitchen. We underwrite: Rick got off the couch and went to the kitchen sink.
Writing transitions is about giving the reader just enough detail for them to be the person getting up off the couch and walked into the kitchen. You can also write transitions so that the reader has a sense that something is about to happen: Rick stood up from the old couch and walked into the reeking kitchen. As the reader, I immediately wonder what is reeking in the kitchen. Here is another: The cop stood outside the kitchen door and sniffed the air. There was a faint metallic scent. “Ah shit.” She pushed open the door and stopped.
Here are three situations in which someone moves from one place to another. Write them so they come alive and send to me. Let me know if I can put them in next week’s Breakthrough Writing.
1. Your character is on the roof of a three story building. They go to the ground.
2. Your character wakes and finds him/her/yourself in an unknown place.
3. Your character is forced from one location to another.
Remember to show, not tell. Let us become the character who is moving.
A person who has always taken sanctuary in the outdoors suddenly doesn’t want to go outside… Lynette Sheppard’s response to an August bi-weekly prompt. If you want to be on our prompt list – Mondays and Fridays, let me know at bstarr67@gmail.com
She can almost smell the tangy pines, the astringent, clean granite, the freshness of the water in its multiple hues. Scrawking blue jays, chirruping squirrels, the susurrus of aspen leaves in the wind: these have always been the soundtrack for her life. She misses them with an ache that blunts her breath. She grasps the doorknob, preparing to twist it and swing the door wide.
No, no, no. Not today. Not now. Not yet.
She retreats to the couch, looking out her window at the Lake. Desire is more manageable from her bell jar. In the past, she sought safety, joy, and yes, love from the outdoors. Things are different now.
Longing bayonets her and she gasps with pain. The last time she was “out”, she very nearly didn’t come back.
The glass panes keep her from dissolving into the spaces between branches. They keep her from drifting deeper into the blue surrounded by glittering flecks of mica. They keep her from wearing lupine and sage as her only garments.
Inside the jar, she retains a vestige of self. Outside, it may no longer be possible.
‘Might this be as good as it gets, from here on out?’ she wonders.
This single sensory experience contained within the window frame, enhanced by memory, fading a little more each day.
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