Challenge #2

Last week I made October challenge month—that means this month will be a series of 5 challenges to give yourself as a writer. In the first challenge, I asked you to come up with a film set in the fall season that had the word ‘fall’ in the title. How’d it go? Did it get your creative juices flowing?

This week let’s make it all about setting, about place. How can a place inspire you as a storyteller? When I was writing a script about Edna St. Vincent Millay, I read that she got a scholarship to college when she recited a poem she’d written to the guests at a hotel in Camden, Maine—part of a Sunday afternoon’s entertainment routinely put on by the hotel. She stood on a porch and recited her poem and so impressed one of the guests—a woman who happened to be on the Board of Vassar College—that the woman offered Millay a scholarship.

Think about that—her life changed because she recited a poem on that particular afternoon in that particular place and was heard by that particular woman. As a writer planning to capture that moment in my script, I wanted to see the porch where it happened—and it’s still there! The small inn is still doing a brisk business. And I could imagine the scene.

When you go to a place that you want to write about, your writing goes to another level. You can, of course, sit in your office and imagine a place—you can pull up pics on the internet of the place, close your eyes, and imagine you’re there. But being there is better—things will come to you as you look at the place, at what surrounds it, at the people you see there—and I promise you, you’ll think of things that would NEVER have come to you if you had stayed in your office.

That porch is still with me—and it was so vivid to me that day because of what had happened there. Otherwise, it was just a porch. But here’s the thing—you can take a location and make it come alive because of what YOU make happen there in your story! A location can be the impetus to a great moment in your writing.

And a location can go even further—it can be the basis for your entire story. Think of the number of films that evoke their location. There are many that are so vivid that the location becomes a virtual character in the story. Casablanca, River of No Return, A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Trip to Bountiful, Sands of Iwo Jima, Chinatown, etc., etc.

So go somewhere. Let a location inspire you to create a story. Maybe it’s your local park, maybe it’s a different city a short drive from where you live, or maybe it’s a city in Europe that you’ve always been intrigued by—just go. Think about where you want to go, that’s your challenge this week, and when you get there… well, that’s the next challenge, and I’ll talk about that next week!

Copyright © Diane Lake

08Oct17

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com