Mar 20 2009
A Picture Paints a Thousand Words
The title is true. One picture can evoke countless feelings, can shatter assumptions, or can create for us a reality we cannot create through our own imaginations. But can we put that picture into words? Can one feeling be passed from genre to genre?
Of course it can!
Just this morning, I heard a musical composition taken from a poem–and the poet, commenting on the musical version of his work, found it lengthened the pathos of it movingly. We see books turned into musicals, ballets turned into children’s books, art turned into opera, and the list goes on.
So, as practice, here’s a picture:
Your task is to take the picture and make it into something written… evoking a feeling, creating a situation from it, etc.
Now, before all of you people with hours of free time on your hands plan on writing a thousand words from this picture, I’m not giving you that much. Instead, using 100 words or less, create a background, a set of events, a poem, or a very short story from this picture. Think outside what seems immediately apparent. And write something in. Even if you only have time for a haiku, do that. Anything will add to our view of the photograph.
So, what are you waiting for? Show me what you got! I’ll throw in one of my own once I’ve seen what you can do.
Unfortunately, I am an artist of paint, pens, pencils. Though I write an article a day on art, and thing artsy, poetry, though I read and often memorized for school, Longfellow, Dante, etc. My words do come as easy as my paints.
In looking at the photo, I see a painting of a contrast of the darkness of the environment, yet I also see the light and joy of the child - who apparently sees his environment as one of joy.
Hurry, I gotta find Mammy. Why’d he do it? Mistuh is goin’ kill Brother fo’ sho. When I seen him grab that piece of chicken from Missus’ plate, I knew it. I knew she’d come back for that scrawny, greasy leg. That woman don’t leave nuthin’ on her plate; the big cow wipes it clean with a piece of bread after she’s scraped it down with her fork. A cat couldn’t lick a plate cleaner. Brother’s hungry just the same as me, but that don’t give him no call to take from the Missus’ plate. Now Mistuh’s whippin’ him, and I can’t find Mammy.
Joe, are you saying your “words do NOT come as easy”? I like that you have found the “light and joy” in the photograph… I feel as you do, in the opposite way… for art comes with less facility than writing, although I believe that is mainly because I work much harder at writing, and go months, sometimes years, between art projects.
And Stephanie, good use of the background. And I love how you contrast the “dirt road that led to nowhere” with his “wonderland of castles and magic.” Evocative.
Neenee, thanks for visiting! You should link up to Stephanie’s site, for she has a recent posting on dialogue. You certainly set up the character clearly, as well as the urgency of the action… though he may remind readers of the stereotypical Black Sambo character in old melodramatic plays and films. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but very vivid.
Okay, so it’s my turn now, and feel free to pick, since I have taken the same freedom with your work:
Sophie was going to be mad. Why had he fallen asleep? All six sheep gone without a trace. Sophie would smack him, or worse. She might tell father.
Ben kept running. When he passed Miss Angel’s hut, expecting to see her crippled form outside the door, glaring at him, only then did he realize she wasn’t there. Her door was dark.
He stopped, his blood racing from the run, or something else only now occurring to him. The sheep–how could they be gone so fast, without a noise? He slept light, and the sun had barely moved in the sky. It couldn’t be past noon, but the sheep were gone. Gone for miles. Sheep couldn’t walk that fast.
Could people?
Ben picked his pace up, panic driving him. No baby crying from the tenth house, where eleven people lived. No Grandma Lai. He ran and ran to the end of the street, around the corner, to his father’s house.
Even at only five years old, he knew what he would find–what he would NOT find.
I see the light
towards the end
of the path
It calls to me
among desolate
earth, void of life
I will reach that
end only to begin
creating my own path
making my dreams
come true
among desolate earth.