A Photography Prompt from Lucy Ferriss
One way that we will celebrate new releases at Real Pants is by asking authors to provide a writing prompt that’s themed to their book. Then, readers are invited to post their responses to the prompt in the comments section of the post. Today, Lucy Ferriss offers a prompt that she used in writing her most recent novel. This book, A SISTER TO HONOR (Berkley/Penguin)—called “vivid and compelling, as ineluctable as a Greek tragedy” by Claire Messud—came out on January 6.
A photograph taken in Pakistan that inspired a scene in A SISTER TO HONOR
Find a photo from a trip you’ve taken recently, preferably a close-up of a building, a street, a person or a small group of people not completely familiar to you. Now adopt the pose, the persona, of a particular individual to whom this scene, or this person, is very familiar, as familiar to him or her as your grandmother or your neighbor’s front yard would be to you. Now describe what you see in the image through this familiar perspective, as if looking closely at it will yield new meaning from what has been taken for granted in the past. As with other prompts of this kind, do not impose your own (or your character’s) opinion or judgment. But do try to find the place where strangeness enters the field, even from the most accustomed point of view. That’s where your character’s disturbance lies; that’s where he or she is about to change.
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