A Book is Born!

At our recent writing event, I had a great time observing our attendees as they plunged right into a writing activity that was presented before them.  Before the event I had gathered miscellaneous items from my home to create various centerpieces for the tables at the event. At our previous writing conference in November, we had learned about story structure and how there has to be characters (protagonist and antagonist) and a setting as well as a goal to be achieved through various pivot points in the story.   So I created scenes that could provide at least one character in the story and a possible setting. Each table then had to work together to come up with a story outline within a half an hour.  

Writers are amazing!  With four or five trinkets and a little bit of time, book ideas were born!  It was so fun for me to wander around the room as they were doing this activity and listen to the brainstorming that was going on. "There are three children in the picture. Who are they? What does this lantern represent?"  Another table wondered, "Whose shoe does this puppy have?" "There is a symbol on the holster that has all the suits from a deck of cards, yet on the cowboy belt, there is a praying cowboy. How are the two related?"

At the end of the half hour, they were asked to share their stories.  Some brought their centerpieces with them and explained how they came up with the story outline. They were energetic as if practicing their elevator speech for their future book! In fact, one woman who had attended our last event actually took the outline her group made that day and is turning it into a work of fiction!

I have just recently started dabbling in fiction. I don't feel very creative when it comes to "What if" scenarios. These writers made it look so easy to come up with an outline!  I wondered why I haven't done this activity for myself at home to get the ideas rolling. You can bet I will be doing it in the future!

Get creative and write on!

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