photo stories - places as storytelling heavyweights

The sense of place is as essential to good and honest writing as a logical mind;
surely they are somewhere related.  It is by knowing where you stand that you
grow able to judge where you are.  Place absorbs our earliest notice and
attention, it bestows on us our original awareness; and our critical powers
spring up from the study of it and the growth of experience inside it.  It
perseveres in bringing us back to earth when we fly too high. It never really
stops informing us, for it is forever astir, alive, changing, reflecting, like the
mind of man itself.  One place comprehended can make us understand other 
places better.  Sense of place gives equilibrium; extended, it is sense of direction
too.  Carried off we might be in spirit, and should be, when we are reading or
writing something good.

- Eudora Welty

I like this idea that a full comprehension of one place - say, the place in which we
grew up - can help us to understand other places better.  If a writer has let one
place into herself, future places - real or imagined - states, towns, buildings, even
fascinating rooms - might better get in too.  All the better for conveying these
places to others.

By Vanessa Morrow

By Jake Messenger

By Rachel Chew

photo stories and a note on writing intimacy

In a written story, intimacy can be communicated through a variety of things, in a variety
of places, via a variety of senses, but in utilizing these, it's most important for the sake of
the reader for something unique to be communicated, something past cliche, something
impossible to grasp if the scene were portrayed on film.  This is the power of words, after
all, to tell a story - a truth - better than most other mediums can.

See these examples:

He moved his fingers down her whole spine, one by one by one, and during the time it took
to do that, his brain remained absolutely quiet.  It is these empty spaces you have to watch
out for, as they flood up with feeling before you even realize what's happened; before you
find yourself, at the base of her spine, different.
- The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Aimee Bender

Unthinkingly I straightened, so that she would think better of me.  Such was her presence.
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin

The skin of her hand looked transparent in the light, on the edge of his desk, a young girl's
hand with long, thin fingers, relaxed for a moment, defenseless.
- Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

He wants only her stalking beauty, her theater of expressions.  He wants the minute and
secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, then foreignness intimate like
two pages of a closed book.  He has been disassembled by her.  And if she has brought
him to this, what has he brought her to?
- The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje

So, these photos.  What could words add to the storytelling present in these photos?  How
could words take these images of intimacy from slightly distant to up-close, vivid,
unforgettable?  What might be said beyond describing the light, the assumed sensations
of touch?  What details might be added to take a scene from typical to truly intimate,
almost disarmingly so for the reader?

By Hana Haley

on writing - wisdom on style

Style means the right word. The rest matters little.   - Jules Renard

A good style must, first of all, be clear. It must not be mean or above the dignity
of the subject. It must be appropriate.   - Aristotle 

If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts;
and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
- Goethe 

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear
into the thought.   - Nathaniel Hawthorne

by Olivia Jeffries

on writing - james richardson

Writing is like washing windows in the sun. With every attempt to
perfect clarity you make a new smear.   - James Richardson

By Liis Klammer

photo stories - anchors

I love those moments of exposition in books or short stories where the
perfect words, the perfect rhythms are accomplished and the reader is
transported, bewitched.  The moment, the sight, becomes their own,
years later something they look back on as if it had been real.  In these
scenes or paragraphs, certain sights or sounds often become anchors,
be it the way the girl's scarf flapped in the wind, or the way the moss
grew on the rooftop, or how that the toy in the window banged its little
cymbals.  The scene is lodged into the reader's mind, becoming a spark
of life that propels them through the pages.

These photos feel like that - living anchors.
May we write our anchors well.

By Molly Yun He

By Yung Sad

photo stories - write me

I always love looking at photos on Flickr to be inspired.  Here are
three I found recently that are certainly deserving of stories.
Have a go at one or all if in need of a writing prompt...

By Greer Versteeg

By Brad Wise

By swimminginmilk

photo stories - thomas krauss

Halloween's-a-coming.  Perfect time to post these polaroids by
Thomas Krauss featuring potentially creepy children, and a man
kissing a nun to boot.  Love the delicate strangeness in these.

on books and stories - italo calvino

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

- Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

By Stefany Alves

the well written - catherynne m. valente

And so he made his way home, discovering the second truth of
Quests, which is that, mysteriously enough, the path homeward is a
great deal shorter than the path deedward.  The sun slips easily
through the sky, as if on a golden rail, and earth seems to positively
skip by under one's feet.

- Catherynne M. Valente, In the Night Garden

By LaLaMiMiSaSa

photo stories - isabel o'toole

Isabel is skilled at capturing her subjects in a moment that perfectly
expresses something deeply true about them - the perfect candid
portrait.  And a portrait is a great way to start a story...

Do any of these characters belong to you?

on reading - on writing - cassandra clare

We live and breathe words.

- Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

By Nidia

photo stories - randy p. martin

What wheres have we wanderers won?

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost,
to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer
experience.  - Eleanor Roosevelt

photo stories - news - four leaf clovers

My short story "Four Leaf Clovers" is now up on The Colored Lens
to read for free.  Head on over for a spot of entertainment..

By aco

And below the fold...  some black and white photos I stumbled
across on Flickr today that seemed to me to beg for stories.
What is going on?  What will happen next?  Any ideas?

on writing - a.s. byatt

All old stories, my cousin, will bear telling and telling again in
different ways. What is required is to keep alive, to polish, the
simple clean forms of the tale which must be there - in this case the
angry Ocean, the terrible leap of the horse, the fall of Dahud from
the crupper, the engulfment etc etc. And yet to add something of
yours, of the writer, which makes all these things seem new and
first seen, without having been appropriated for private or personal
ends.   - A.S. Byatt, Possession

By Ailera Stone

photo stories - nastya kaletkina

When I see these from Nastya, I am prompted to think she found
a mental institution for fairies deep in the woods and they let her
take photos for a day.  Though I doubt this is true, her pictures are
wonderful...

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.
- W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems

the well written - e.m. forster

She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the
purple of the surrounding sky.  In England the moon had seemed
dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together
with earth and all the other stars.  A sudden sense of unity, of
kinship with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman and
out, like water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind.

- E.M. Forster, A Passage to India

By Riccardo Testolin

on writing - io9's short story writing tips

io9's Secrets to being a Super-Prolific Short-Story Writer.
Personally, I like #5 and #12 best.

1) Know how your story ends before you begin it. This
doesn't always work, but it often does — my biggest problem
with short stories is that I get halfway through and then have no
idea what happens next. Maybe I have a really cool setup or a
really interesting dilemma for my characters to face, but I don't
have an ending in mind. And this can derail a story for weeks,
or permanently.

During that first flush of invention, when you're creating the
story's premise, is the perfect time to try and imagine the ending
as well. Once you get stuck in to writing the thing, you'll be more
absorbed in specifics about the characters and situation, plus the
beautiful images you'll no doubt be crafting.

By Shiho

 

photo stories - shiho

These are snapshot-fairy-tales, aren't they?  I can't help but
think that next Snow White will bite the apple, some man will
fly through the air, a mermaid float on by, a fairy will kiss the
leaves brown, and (in the last) the camera will pan to chase
a boy in his descent down a snow-framed hole.

Be inspired.  Happy Weekend!

the well written - william faulkner

It is just dawn, daylight: that gray and lonely suspension filled with
the peaceful and tentative waking of birds. The air, inbreathed, is like
spring water. He breathes deep and slow, feeling with each breath
himself diffuse in the natural grayness, becoming one with loneliness
and quiet that has never known fury or despair. "That was all I wanted,"
he thinks, in a quiet and slow amazement. "That was all, for thirty
years. That didn't seem to be a whole lot to ask in thirty years.

- William Faulkner, Light in August

By Me

from unexpected places - pretend vintage magic

These photos - whether real, photoshopped, or manipulated in
some way - are stunning, capturing a vague and compelling
feeling of magic.  Rapunzel, the borrowers, tinker bell, wizards
and witches.  It's interesting to see magical images caught in
photographs instead of illustrations for a change, photos
treated to feign being fished out of your grandmother's attic.
Maybe one of these could inspire a story - what magic and
whimsy is being glimpsed here?

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother
to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

By Charles B. Carma

By Joanna Pallaris