In a form as short as this exercise, usually around five hundred words, it’s often hard to come up with any drama, and it’s easy to go for a punch line. So you’d think with a prompt like:
- Character: Fisherman
- Object: Scarf
- Genre/Tone: Historical Comedy
it would be easy to find the humor. But both Megan and I took “comedy” in the historical sense of “having a happy ending” but not necessarily having a lot of jokes.
I think both our stories have some potential for further development. But the thing I particularly learned from today’s exercise was that drama really does arise from making a character take action. I was tempted at almost every sentence to make Bakala a passive character, but I’ve been working on making sure my characters are always doing something, and that those actions have consequences – at least, I hope it’s clear that the consequences follow his actions. I realize I didn’t exactly connect all the dots.
Continue reading “Friday Freewriting – August 20, 2021 – Robert”