Category: Prompts

Today’s writing prompt is inspired by Jumpstart Writing Facilitator Lakin Khan.

From Lakin:

Participants in the Jumpstart Writing Workshops that I facilitate have been doing some ekphrastic writing, which is descriptive writing about or a response to visual art.

We have been having fun looking at paintings and photos, imaging stories and practicing writing visual descriptions.

Lakin’s response to a postcard of Claude Monet’s painting “Wheat Stacks at Dawn.”

“Frost is the frosting on these giant cupcakes of hay waiting in the pale pearly peachlight of dawn for the Giant of Alsace to stomp down the hill for his morning meal. At least so far, he’s been happy with hay. What might happen if he decides to go all keto on us and demand ostrich-eggs over easy and a side of humans to start his day?”   ~ Lakin Khan

Another example is Anne Sexton’s poem “Starry Night” one of many ekphrastic responses to the painting of the same name by Vincent Van Gogh.

Perhaps you remember Don McLean’s song, “Starry Starry Night” — another example of an artist in one medium responding to an artist from another.

I hope you find a chance to write ekphrastically, locating an image that sparks your imagination or elicits a response.

Or take a chance with random postcards or images in a magazine or museum brochure.

Or even better, treat yourself to a trip to an art museum and spend some time writing there.

Originally posted on January 29, 2020 by Lakin Khan on her blog, Rhymes With Bacon.

Lakin Khan facilitates Jumpsart Writing Workshops in Sonoma and Marin Counties.

~ “Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still, real in memory as they were in flesh, loving and beloved forever.” How Green Was My Valley. Write about someone who lives on in you or someone you will never forget.

~ “We’ll always have Paris.” Casablanca. Write about something you will always have or something you no longer have and wish you still had it.

~ “I was to think of these days many times. Of Jem, and Dill . . . and Atticus. He would be in Jem’s room all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning, To Kill A Mockingbird. Write about someone who is always there for you. Or someone who needs you.

~ In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, there’s a scene where Butch and Sundance run up a mountain to avoid the relentless posse, finding themselves at a dead end. Butch says the only way is to jump, a hundred feet or so to the fast-moving stream below. But Sundance won’t hear of it.

Butch: “It’s the only way. Otherwise we’re dead.” They argue about it for a while until Sundance admits the real reason he doesn’t want to jump. “I can’t swim.”

Butch: “You stupid fool, the fall’ll probably kill you.”

Write about a time you had a close call or a chance you took.

~  Gene Wilder agreed to play Willy Wonka under one condition: that his character make a wildly grand entrance:

“When I make my first entrance, I’d like to come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a limp. After the crowd sees Wonka, they whisper and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane sinks into one of the cobblestones I’m walking on and stands straight up, by itself. But I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause.”

His reason for wanting to include the dramatic entrance: “Because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth.”

Write about an agreement you made or a lie you told.