Knowing how really excellent I am at leaving things until the last minute, and then not having time to properly do whatever it is, I really must start thinking now about the next writing group challenge. I know I wrote pretty much the same thing last time a get-together was planned – that was writing a monologue and I managed that by the skin of my teeth. I wrote about a situation where someone is trapped by a talkative stranger on the train, who witters on non-stop, not the slightest interest in anything but their own story. Next month’s writing group is the 22nd July so that is plenty of time to think of something and then to write it. As a famous meerkat says, “simples!“
The stimulus for me to write about is ‘atmosphere’ – and I don’t think it means it in a literal sense – or maybe it does? Could there be something written about a space craft where the cabin atmosphere is compromised in some way? Or maybe the action takes place down an abandoned coal mine where toxic fumes threaten the lives of ignorant explorers? Or is there a factory producing some illegal substance and poisoning its own workers by the lack of correct ventilation systems, or maybe the action takes place in a 70’s discotheque with too many people are drawn to the dance floor by uptempo rhythms… I’ve not been in a space craft or down a mine but I’ve certainly been on plenty of crowded dance floors! The atmosphere in a disco would not just be literal but actual!
Or… atmosphere could it be the “aura of mood that surrounds the story”, as Wikipedia suggests? I think that’s likely to be where my imagination takes me. My difficulty is, that writing for the group means I really will have to think of an original way of doing that. The first thought is using the senses, and doing so in an original and yet natural way. Seeking advice on-line I find all sorts of helpful hints which I already knew – but are useful to revisit. It’s not just the language I choose to use, it’s the structure of the story too, it’s the observations made by the characters as well as what I as the narrator describe, it’s what I choose to reveal and what I hold back.
I must admit, I’m quite intrigued at the prospect of what I will come up with, and in fact it may be a little side-project of my own to write different stories, or the same story with different atmospheres.
Which reminds me that I haven’t completed my other challenge of writing stories from a randomly generated list. I have two left, “absurd” and “one“; “absurd” will be quite straight-forward, but “one“? Very tricky to write a story about “one“!
Lois Elsden 