Every month I think this is the month I’ll come up with my own topic for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group post. And then I look at the optional question, and I really want to answer it! This is the case again this month. So, here’s the posed question:
Has a single photo or work of art ever inspired a story? What was it and did you finish it?

My high school creative writing class has stuck with me for fifteen years. We went through a process of coming up with multiple story seeds, before then choosing the one we wanted to develop into a story. For example, we were instructed to come up with a setting and character that didn’t really go together. I chose a British soldier at a Minnesota lake.

We also each got a random pictures or post card that the teacher had brought in. The picture above is what I ended up with, and from it came the seed that I used to write the short story that I turned in for a grade. It opened with a husband & wife searching through a field of wild flowers for a briefcase as part of a ransom demand. I really enjoyed writing it, and it reminded me of how much I had loved writing fiction when I was younger (by high school, I’d temporarily abandoned fiction to write poetry).

What I find really funny is that in my end-of-class reflection paper, I apparently wrote that I didn’t think I’d have much reason to write fiction again in the future. Fortunately, that wasn’t true, and within 4-5 years, I was writing fanfiction, the gateway to my current writing.

Nowadays, I enjoy and really recommend using pictures as writing prompts for writing practice, and I know it all goes back to that creative writing class.

For my fellow writers, has an image ever inspired you to write?

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