“Today,” and she pauses for a second, “we’re going to wrap up your class on flash fiction with an exercise. After all, you’re here for that, aren’t you? Practise!” She says it with a smile, and with a click, the slide changes.
“We will use an image prompt. This image, to be precise. And, in case anyone’s worrying,” she smiles again at the bearded guy in the corner, who promptly blushes,”the image is not mine, but it’s free to use. I’ll give you all the links at the end of the session.”
She expertly hits the image with her laser pointer over her shoulder, then stares at them and asks, “What have we got here?”
“A building,” the really young girl in the first row ventures.
“Anything else?”
“A photograph of a building!” someone in the crowd shouts. There’s laughter.
She laughs, then raises her hand. “That was a joke, I suppose, but… a valid one. Why?”
“It looks like a polaroid,” the girl says again.
“Yes?”
“Polaroids… are not normal photographs. I mean, nowadays everyone carries a smartphone around and can snap a photo, but back then, these were… special. A polaroid, of all photos, said ‘I was here’. Like one graffiti, only in images.”
Silence.
“Very, very good. And so true. I do remember that about polaroids, you know? I do have an age.”
More laughter.
“What else, may I ask? Something like… where is this?”
“New York?” another girl, raising her hand in the middle rows.
“Why New York?”
“It sort of looks like that building there? The Flatiron? Only, this is not so flat. The other buildings surrounding it are also really tall. So, skyscrapers… New York.”
“Could be somewhere else?”
“Vancouver!” says a young man from the back, who apparently has just been named speaker of his group of friends.
“Why Vancouver?”
“Because it is not New York. Everything happens in New York!”
“Interesting. Could it be somewhere else, not in America?”
“Shanghai,” the girl from the first row utters. “During World War II, right before the Japanese invaded. Shanghai looked truly Western. It was a land of opportunities, then the war came. The other buildings are perhaps a bit too tall, but…”
“What made you think of Shanghai?”
“It’s black and white. and the architectural style reminds me of the… thirties perhaps? It made me think of classical movies, the golden age. And I remembered a couple of movies with the action being located there, in that era. It seems more intriguing to me.”
“Hm. What if we try to make it more intriguing?”
There were some murmurs.
“Look at the photograph. Look at it. What do you see? What do you not see?”
“People! There are no people!” says Flatiron Girl.
“Why?”
“The angle, obviously. They’ve left street level out.”
“How can we work that to our advantage?”
“We already have,” Front Row says, “in a sense? We can place it anywhere, because we see no people, no signs. Nothing can point clearly to one place or another. Unless one knows a lot about architecture, I guess.”
“Indeed. Anything else?”
“Is that a flag?” Speaker Guy from the back says. “Down there, close to the building on the right?”
“Could be.”
“We could enhance the image, see what it is. I know a guy who does that kind of thing with old images like this one.”
“Yes you could. But let’s use our eyes, and our imagination. What did you just say?”
“That I know a guy…”
“That it was an old image,” Front Row interrupted. “And yet…”
“Yes?” she smiles, her eyebrow raised.
“Well, I guess this is just manipulated or something, okay, but let’s say for a moment that this… this is really an old image. An old photograph. From the thirties. But it’s a polaroid, which was invented… I don’t know, but I guess later? So, the whole image means…”
“Time travel!” Speaker Guy exclaims.
Front Row looks mortified, but she smiles again and points at her.
“Time travel, indeed, as our friend here would undoubtedly have concluded. From here, you can go anywhere. Where was this photo found? Who found it? A descendant of the time travellers? Or… and ascendant? Time travellers from a different team?”
She paces up and down.
“Obviously, and I hope you’ve noticed, we have just had a brainstorming session. One directed by me, yes, but after all, I only have myself to poke when I sit down to write.”
She stops and stares at her audience.
“I’m going to give you homework. Did you expect otherwise?” Laughter. “You’re going to write a story using this picture as a prompt. Say… about 750 words, and that’s not a hard limit, but don’t go much beyond that. You can use the ideas we just brainstormed, or you can come up with new ones. And remember: have fun!”
****
And that is how you cheat at your self-imposed writing exercises!
Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk. Drink water and remember: practise your writing and have fun!