A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, even to a writer

Increasing your Writing Skills is about writing, but no one says a picture can't spark that writing. The Old adage that a Picture is Worth A Thousand Words maybe be true even for writers. Give it some thought - can you take a picture and make it live for your readers? Look for a magazine or calendar picture that really grabs your attention. We call this an image driven story prompt.

Now, take that picture focus on it for a minute or longer. What do you see there. What message does it send to you? Write what it draws from you for about ten minutes. I know another ten minute thing, but seriously, it usually takes that long to get to the message - to clear the chaff and get to the wheat so to speak. Give it a shot, you may turn up with a great piece of writing, if not - ask yourself what failed to happen. Were your words too trite, did they fail to evoke the meaning the picture held for you? Why?

Try this; if there are people in the picture, what are they thinking about? What are they talking about? How did they get where they are? Who are they? Why are they there. Go the journalist route who, what, when, where, why, how?

If there are no people in this picture, someone had to take the picture. Who, and why did he/she take this particular picture? You will be surprised how much you can wring out of this picture when you ask deep questions.

Another trick is like the two year old who just found out about questions - keep asking why, until you run out of any possible thread to explore.
Hope you have fun with this exercise to increase your writing skills.
visit me at my website www.billiewilliams.com
or my Word Mage Group at http://yahoogroup/group/word_mage
or the Word Mage website at http://geocities.com/wordcrafter123
Keep an eye out for Joyce Anthony, Author of Storm - guest blogger coming soon.