What do we do with the picture?

[Jo Zebedee]

I've been wanting to ask this all month but thought I'd wait until voting closed. It always amazes me all the different takes from the root cause, and I wondered how we got from the picture to the finished article.

For this one, I thought the totem pole looked like it was very deliberate and organised, almost ritualistic, and it made me think of the idea that serial killers apparently often keep trophies of their kills. And then I was dropping off to sleep and heard, in a sort of Aussie-US mix, a voice saying the Shrinkies had frizzled his brains.

We had one with a boat on a lonely beach once, and that one made me wonder if the boat was real, or a ghost. And the one with the Ent/tree - it just looked like a world I'd want to walk into and I wondered what character would like to do that.

What about others? How do you get from picture to story? What connections do you make?

 

[Mouse]

I like pictures with atmosphere. I did not like the totem pole picture as thought it had no atmosphere whatsoever. The boat pic has been my fave, I think. I work off feelings, so if a picture doesn't make me feel anything, I can't write anything.

 

[Bowler1]

For this one, I thought the totem pole looked like it was very deliberate and organised, almost ritualistic,

So similar, yet different. Well done by the way Springs, a good story. I also thought a ritual was called for, and I knew mine was a risk, as it was a little bloody. I think I may have been too literal and more flare was needed, which loads of others had. I'm always left surprised by all the different ideas from the same visual input. I think the pictures should be demanding, which they are, and vague to allow different ideas to grow and flourish. Beyond that, it's creative juices flowing and this site has lots of creative juice already.

 

[Juliana]

The totem pole, oddly enough, reminded me of all the wind catcher sculptures at the aunt's house in the movie 'Twister'. So I had this image of metal sculptures and prairies in my mind, and it sort of took off from there.

The boat pic had such a haunting dream-like quality to it that I just had to write about a dream. As for the tree, it went from imagining myself perched up there, watching the world, to my little warrior maiden.

 

[ratsy]

Since we are supposed to use it as 'inspiration' I pictured it as a rusty version and thought it would be cool if some fishermen pulled it out...then what would happen..maybe they think it junk and leave it on the beach for some kids to play with...then what would happen...and my story kind of grew from there. I had an idea that each of the objects on it had a story, and this particular 300 word got the story of the chain. It came from the anchor of a ship and that is where Termik was transported.

Who knows where the other objects would take a person? maybe I should expand it and find out?

 

[Juliana]

Who knows where the other objects would take a person? maybe I should expand it and find out?

It was a great idea, and I can just imagine it as a longer work. Maybe each chapter would be a different journey. Or each person who touched it would find themselves somewhere different, someplace they needed to be for some reason. Me like. Let us know if you do anything with it someday!

 

[ratsy]

Thanks Juliana. I think that would be really cool. Too bad I'm knee deep in two other projects right now! I will mark it down on my Desk Chalk board for the future

 

[TheDustyZebra]

I used to put the picture up as my desktop background and stare at it all month, but since I put David Tennant there, I haven't removed him.

Ratsy, that's a brilliant idea and you should definitely write that book!

 

[Ursa major]

I used to put the picture up as my desktop background and stare at it all month, but since I put David Tennant there, I haven't removed him.

You obviously find Mr Tennant's image to be totemic.


I thought that the whole thing -- the column and its "contents" -- represented something from the past, perhaps mythic. And then I thought that perhaps it could be both, and that the myth associated with the artefact could be planted. That led to a need for the myth to exist, and a backstory emerged, of people escaping a world continually engulfed in a war. It's difficult to escape one's own nature, however far one travels. The image came into play again: it didn't suggest interplanetary capabilities, and so the setting arrived: an apparently primitive world set up to be, and stay, that way.

The staying part needed a mechanism and that provided a use for the "contents": highly advanced technology hiding in plain sight (in case someone discovered it innocently). However, innocence had nothing to do with the discovery: the metalwork was seen to be too advanced, so a rumour about great riches (the mine) was released into the world and the metalworking civilisation came calling. The rest appears in the second part of the story. Note that there is only one suit and its powers are limited to its immediate location: it doesn't facilitate travel and one cannot (easily) rule a world with it.

 

[TheDustyZebra]

You obviously find Mr Tennant's image to be totemic.

I probably shouldn't touch that with a ten-foot pole.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Well, I didn't write a story last month so obviously I did nothing with the picture of the totem pole, but I did write a story the month we had the ship on the sands, and many other months as well.

And what almost invariably happens is that I will fasten my attention on some element in the picture that appeals to me somehow, and spend a few days thinking, "Nope, nope, haven't a glimmer of an idea." Then out of nowhere a story inspired by that element of the picture will materialize. Seemingly, my subconscious mind was at work on it all along, but I have no way of describing the process, which is utterly mysterious to me.

It is usually the same when I write a story for the 75 worder. A few days (or several days) of, "I've got nothing." Then a story appears as if by magic.

After that I do edit and revise (mostly fussing over word choices, and trying to get the word count down), but with very few exceptions I don't change the story very much.

One time that was different, was the time when we had the space ship, and I kept visualizing a Christmas tree instead. It had something to do with the pinkish lights. The idea obsessed me and I knew I was going to have to use it, but I did have to consciously work at coming up with a story based on that image.

 

[stormcrow]

Good question Springs. It's really interesting to read how others approach these challenges.

I tend to mull over a few ideas that the image gives rise to until something takes hold!

I've usually latched-onto one idea quite quickly and then let the details 'fill-in' around that (not last 300 challenge though - which was a killer as the image was really interesting; everything I had felt very similar to other entries i've made in the 75's & 300's - nothing worse than just trotting out 'another take on own idea "x"...').

I've found it works better for me to let the ideas come 'regulated chain-of....' and build-towards the word target, then stop short. Then, a bit of editing; some word substitution, validation of 'facts presented' by research - when needed; then, looking at punctuation and thinking "Something like that...dunno really...hope so....(edit/cancel, etc)" and a quick final word-count.

All done with a chunk of passion for what I've written about, 'cause otherwise there's no point, right?

 

[Rafellin]

The picture comes and I take whatever rises: those obscure connections in the back of the mind. Sometimes they are obvious; sometimes, they surprise me.

As for the last challenge, as per my comments just after it was posted, it immediately spoke to my 'tradition'. I'm a pagan, so I see certain things very differently from most people.

From the picture and what I got from it, I took it as a ritual marker. Which meant the surroundings were sacred ground. I wanted to do something special for it, as, for me, it demanded something further than my usual.

The piece came along surprisingly easily after the concept of someone heading to that place arose. Writing took about fifteen minutes, then I spent about an hour - across two days - adapting a Goddess chant to provide the endpiece.

 

[hopewrites]

It's apparently been ages since I submitted a 300 *shameface* I do like looking at the pictures and finding inspiration. I think that every mode of art is based in trying to communicate something to those outside the artist's self, and love that we are expanding that possibility by putting words to what we see.
The first time I entered I was amazed at the variety of views expressed from the same photo, and often found myself flipping back and forth from my saved copy of it to what had been written. So I'm very glad that there is now a thread for people to volunteer what brought them to the stories they have written.

I think the one that I wrote that was the biggest stretch was the month we had the rocket taking off out of the snow and I wrote about a battle of Fey creatures, for me the tie in was the burning tower of the Fairy Queen and the billowing smoke obscuring the pinkish lights of the craft. There were elements of that photo I had to ignore (something I'm never happy to do and often thought of revising my whole idea and coming up with something else to rectify) such as the people walking around in the bottom left corner.

In the last one that I wrote (I could have sworn I wrote something since then but if I did, I never managed to post it) was for the statue standing in the arched hallway. My original story for that (rewritten several times on public transport if I remember correctly) was of a two people who fell in love inside a book, in a world where reading transported you out of your body in a more literal sense, but it always came out too long with too much going unexplained. I think in the end that turned into a bedtime story where the grandfather was secretly the prince from the abandoned previous attempts and he was trying to ease the loss of his wife. Which again morphed into a sort of a post modern thing where tech has been lost and pixels became pixies to explain the inexplicable idea of communicating with people worlds away from you.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

I actually seem to wind up making either very obscure references, or the picture only hints at suggesting an idea to me. I don't really know. I don't ever actually go with the picture full force, otherwise, I would never get a challenge done.

 

[Starbeast]

It always amazes me all the different takes from the root cause, and I wondered how we got from the picture to the finished article.

How do you get from picture to story? What connections do you make?

Good question Springs. I sometimes wonder myself about how the others form ideas from the 300 photo.

As for myself, first I stare at it. It may take minutes, or hours, or even days. But when I'm looking at the picture, I try to look for something familiar about it, or I'll place myself in it and imagine what I'd be doing in it, or I'd imagine a fictional character instead in the photo.

The rest follows quickly, the place, the time, the situation.



For April. Heh heh. I imagined a trip to a Vape Shop (a smoking alternative), which I do have to drive to in reality. The wooded area made me think of the LORD of the RINGS (coincidently, LOTR was in a few stories for April's 75). I thought, what if Gandalf, and a few Hobbits went there.

It was a tame idea that seemed bland, then, I remembered Hobbits and Gandalf like wild weed. It was at that point, I came up with all sorts of humorous ideas, the first was the group going on a visit to a weed shop, the rest was easy.