Visual Trigger

Spark:

Last Chinese New Year, I was ready. I had practiced four words of Chinese. I had purchased my little oranges to give as a thank you present. I was ready to go house visiting, an ordinary annual occurrence for most of you but a wacky Singaporean novelty for me. I thought I could handle anything: nosy questions about why I wasn’t married yet; awkward discussions of religion; anything and everything to do with George Bush. But something caught me off-guard. The proliferation of photo albums, the way everyone would want to explain to me who everyone was, where everyone had ever been, and how children grow up so fast.The power of a picture is incomparable, isn’t it? I want you to find one that tells you something, and then share it. 

Assignment:

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find an image, and tell the story that comes to your mind as you see it. You can locate this image anywhere: in a magazine, on the internet, in a shoebox in the closet. You can even have taken the photograph yourself, but you cannot photograph something in order to complete this assignment. You must imagine a story simply because the image inspires you to do so. 

Does this sound easy? Perhaps, but there’s a part of this assignment still missing. You must incorporate the principles of tragedy into your writing. That doesn’t mean that something bad happens and the story ends. It means something bad happens as a result of a flaw in your character, and you show how this tragic fall forces your character to learn something about herself (or himself, depending on whether you think men or women are more tragic.)  Do this while remembering our rules about third person, present tense, and visual voice.

Add this to the blog as a page, NOT a post, and make sure it is titled “visual trigger.”

Questions: irs2@np.edu.sg