Story Starter: Bucket & Spade


Perhaps thios pic prompts a story idea.

A bucket and spade abandoned on the sand, as if the family packed up hastily. Perhaps the child owner got bored. Long shadows show the sun’s quite low – perhaps it was late. Or I could tell you that I took this a few months ago and the sun is low winter sun. Any story prompts there?

It was taken at Broughty Ferry, which I’ve told you about often. It’s where I take my daily lunchtime walk – which of course will change once we complete our Big Move in April. I’ll have a whole new location for new Story Starter images. Stand by for more picture prompts of the river, the bridges, the harbour, the parks, little cobbled streets….

I want to finish this week with some snippety things that I’ve seen or heard this week, which form their own story starter prompts….

From Sarah, our new Illustrations Editor… Sarah and her brother were visiting her gran and chatting between themselves, and looked round to see what Gran was doing – and she was oblivious to them but absorbed in texting on her new iPhone. Lovely role reversal.

A man today near the yacht club, manoeuvring the trailer off of his 4×4, laden with wee dinghy all ready for the summer yachting season.

Yoga class. We all tend to lay our mats down in the same positions each week, front row, back row, whatever – but this week one lady was late and another assumed she wasn’t coming and laid her mat in Lady 1’s usual place. Then Lady 1 turned up. What happened next?

I think that’s it for now. I had more prompts but I’ve committed that fatal error of not writing them down as I saw them. Darn it!

Still 2000 or 3000 words preferred, by the way – I haven’t mentioned that for a while. Any genre, though we’re not seeing much romance come in at the moment. BIG HINT!

 

 

Shirley Blair

Fiction Ed Shirley’s been with the “Friend” since 2007 and calls it her dream job because she gets to read fiction all day every day. Hobbies? Well, that would be reading! She also enjoys writing fiction when she has time, long walks, travel, and watching Scandi thrillers on TV.