One Image, Two Story Ideas: Misty Trees
Jen and Tina love writing prompts. Sometimes they turn into stories, sometimes they just get our creative juices flowing. Either way, they’re a lot of fun.
Jen’s Idea
This image immediately transported me to a lonely English country house. It’s the perfect setting for some kind of Daphne du Maurier romantic intrigue, but that’s not the type of story I am in the mood for today. Instead, I have a hankering to write a Middle Grade mystery, so that’s where I took the story.
Tina’s Idea
This image is so lovely but also eerie. It depends on what you see or what you focus on. Of late, I have been tinkering with some dystopian story ideas, and when I saw this prompt I immediately saw eerie.
Jen’s Back Cover
Twelve-year-old Albert Adams is less than thrilled when his parents ship him halfway around the world to spend the summer with a great uncle he’s never met. Albert’s family had been on the verge of inheriting the old man’s fortune when he was lost in the Amazon and presumed dead.
The elderly relative ruined their plans by suddenly turned up very much alive. Now Albert’s job is to get into the old man’s graces and make sure he doesn’t change his will. After all, just because he hasn’t actually been eaten by piranhas didn’t mean the great uncle will live forever.
If only Albert were charming like his mother, handsome like his father or entertaining like his sister. Instead he’s bookish and clumsy, and the family would never have sent him if they hadn’t been up to their ears trying to make things right with a gangster they had double crossed.
So when the great uncle’s safe is cracked and a valuable diamond is stolen, Albert thinks his best hope is to find the jewel and win over his uncle’s affections. But as Albert investigates, he can’t help wondering why his relative doesn’t seem to want the diamond found.
Tina’s Back Cover
Alex Zander is a one-hit wunderkind. His first published novel was effortless and became a breakout success, shattering all sales records. He toured the world, and everywhere he went the young man was lauded.
Five years have passed and now the world waits breathlessly for book number two to relive the extraordinary experience of Zander’s unconventional prose and storytelling.
But Alex can’t write a second book and, as a result, his entire identity is in question. He is paralyzed by the blank page. To make matters worse, he has an enormous advance that he will need to return if he can’t produce this book. And he can’t - he can’t write the book and he can’t return the advance: it was spent years ago. Broke and desperate to recreate his earlier success, Alex falls into despair.
When he wanders down a lonely lane one afternoon looking for inspiration or a cliff to jump from, he happens upon an abandoned house shrouded in mist. He wanders in and settles down in the empty library. He finds paper and begins to write. Words flow as they did years earlier, but at what cost? Just as he couldn’t write before, now he cannot stop. Day after day he remains longer and longer until he can no longer leave. He doesn’t eat and he won’t see anyone. He is determined to write until the mist lifts, but it never does.
Tina’s Response
I am hooked on Jen’s story here and I hope she continues to develop it. I love to read about clever kids, and Albert seems like the type of sleuth Jen could build a series around. Jen and I love writing prompts and it’s always so interesting to see how differently these prompts develop at the hands of various writers. And yet, like Jen said, the misty picture conjured up an old manor house for both of us…
Jen’s Response
I love this story of the tortured author! I feel Alex’s pain (well, minus the big advance and record sales), and I think that feeling of pressure to perform is a perfect representation of the suffocating blindness that a heavy mist can bring. It’s also interesting that we both took this nature photography and inserted a grand (if dilapidated) manor house into it. Wish fulfillment to be wandering those grounds ourselves?
Photo by Tina DeBellegarde