My photographer mother, Melabee M. Miller, has always told me to look: Look up. Look behind. Look around. Look outside the frame. She composes photographs with her eye and then frames them with the camera.
Looking is the perfect writing lesson. Start with an image, memory or view and observe it intensely. Then look around it and behind it. Is something hidden by an object or angle? Looking around an object, person or action might entail looking across time. What happened before or after? Cross physical and metaphysical boundaries with your looking and writing.
In the picture above, my mom is shooting in Sala Consilina, Italy. This image partly shows what she was seeing and what was happening around the image she was composing. In your writing, do this: Back up and look around the original image.
You might not include all of these details in your piece, prose or poetry, but you should know the answers. You are, after all, creating a world with your writing and you’re an expert on that world.
Write for 10 to 15 minutes while looking at or remembering an image. Don’t worry about grammar or clarity of ideas; just write. If you can’t think of anything to write, start with the concrete. Write exactly what you see and then move into the “why” of the image. After you’ve finished writing, read what you’ve written and underline the most exciting words or moments. You can use those sections to start a more refined, edited piece.
For more writing prompts, please visit my writing coach page. You’ll find a collection of prompts here.
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Chloe Yelena Miller lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and son. She is the author of Unrest (Finishing Line Press). She blogs about intersecting roles at Woman Mother Writer (http://womanmotherwriter.blogspot.com).
