WRITING PROMPTS: PHOTO OF THE MONTH
The images in this album have been handpicked by our Ship’s Belle. They are more than just photos, they are doorways to the hidden recesses of your mind. We all have countless tales waiting to be spun out – hopefully, these images can guide you to poems, titles, synopses and more. Whatever they inspire you to create, we’d love to see it. Or hear about it.
MAY 2024
I was innocently walking to the shops when I spotted this rather startling beauty trailing out of the undergrowth into my path. Why, I wonder, is just this one crop of leaves blood red? Does it mark the spot of a gruesome murder? Is it a tribute to some lovelorn, tragic romantic’s demise? And what did it want with my ankles?
JUNE 2024
Behold the marvellously imposing facade of Shrewsbury train station! I really don’t know why this isn’t the setting for more grim or gothic tales. Surely the Baudelaire’s ought to have alighted there at least once? But no. It remains shockingly un-storied! What tingles does this pic give you? Who is about to arrive here? And what evil plans do they have in store – or does fate have in store for them?
NOVEMBER 2023
This little beauty was lurking about under a bush on the doggie walk. Like a Rorschach test, your response to this photo probably says a lot about you! Is your first thought to wonder where the little pixie who has obviously only recently been sitting on top of it gone? Or do you imagine an embittered old crone with a crockpot cooking up a toxic revenge on a neighbour?
DECEMBER 2023
Coming soon…
SEPTEMBER 2023
Last of the summer magic! I told you I was changing direction and going off on a new direction soon! Run away with me into a fantasy world through this obvious portal in the woods. What sort of world lies on the other side of the strange sun dapples on this oddly rounded tree root? And who might be waiting for us there?
OCTOBER 2023
This gorgeously apocalyptic sunset looks like flames and smoke but is an entirely innocent shepherd’s delight. That needn’t stop us from imagining though! What do you see? Dragonfire? An angry volcano? Are the flames illuminating an end-of-times disaster? What kind of story does this picture whisper in your ears?
JULY 2023
When I saved this photo I called the jpeg “White Heat.” The mix of softness and saturated sultriness makes me imagine thunder about to break, or secrets about to bubble up to the surface of things. It feels like a held breath a moment before the storm. This is what I love about high summer – the tension in the stillness.
AUGUST 2023
Every now and then nature and the urban landscape create a mood so suggestive it deserves to be written. These power lines make me think all sorts of dark thoughts, from gallows to electrocution, and their juxtaposition with those beautiful but louring evening clouds just makes them all the more insidious. Who’s meeting under them? Why?
MAY 2023
I love how the light in this photo is too much, too intense, the sky too blue (I promise it’s unfiltered, this is just Lady Vancouver doing her thing). The beauty is almost eerie, and this could just as easily be the cover for a murder story as a romance. Or… what? What would you do with it?
JUNE 2023
Is there someone up there, in that crane? Are they the only witness to something nefarious happening in the car park below? Who is lost on the mountain, fixing their eyes in desperate hope on the crane’s orange-lit silhouette? Are those storm clouds gathering, or the first hush of a peaceful night?
Submit your pieces in the comments below or email them to news@aswewrite.com and we’ll add them to the album.
ABOUT F.K. MARLOWE
F.K. Marlowe is a Shropshire lass who lived in London and Beijing before settling down with her husband, three daughters and rescue pup in Vancouver. She writes horror stories with a tendency to the paranormal, and Young Adult fiction with fangs and sass.
Marlowe doesn’t worry overly much about the placement of semi-colons and the like, having spent far too long pootling about in academia to take them seriously. (She has an Oxford first in English Lit, plus a Master’s and PhD from Leeds). She has, however, discovered that life is the best education for a writer, and plans to continue her studies there as long as possible.
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