Writing Prompt: PEEK
Visual inspiration + mental exercise to start your writing week
What would I learn if I held still, pressed close, tuned my ear, too, to the signals of stories on the far side of that fence?
Metaphortography Prompts are free visual and verbal writing prompts for inspiration and reflection. This is the Monday section of Aimee Liu’s MFA Lore. Our Wednesday section is Writer In The World, a curated collection of essays on the writing life by acclaimed MFA faculty and alumni. Writers in Conversation and other MFA Core essays on the craft and business of creative writing will drop each Saturday. Receive some or all of these newsletters by subscribing now:
Walking past a neighbor’s yard I spied a chink in the fence. Just an inch or two of wood peeled back to let the eye gaze through to another world of color and light, the lives of strangers in media res. What would I learn if I held still, pressed close, tuned my ear, too, to the signals of stories on the far side of that fence? I didn’t linger then. The piercing was enough, the thrill of glimpsing secrets, the hole in the illusion of privacy that pretends we’re all so different, so unreachably far apart. I thought I could come back another day and see what I was missing. Alas, I was wrong. I never could find that opening again. The lives of those strangers remain closed off, a tantalizing mystery.
Peek: From Middle English piken
1 a: to look furtively
b: to peer through a crack or hole or from a place of concealment—often used with in or out
2: to take a brief look : glance
Here is your writing prompt:
After contemplating the image above, look or go outside and find something to peek at or through, such as:
a neighbor seen through your window, rocking on his porch
a couple seen arguing in a cafe
kids seen through a garden gate, throwing a ball
a family seen through their window
a driver stopped at a red light, spied in your rearview mirror
Take a mental picture of your subject, recording their general mood and expression, gender, ethnicity, style of dress, any words you might overhear.
When you’re able to stop and write, sketch the story about your subject(s) and the situation you observed, imagining:
what each person was thinking
how they felt physically
how they felt about each other or the people around them
what was bothering or frustrating them
what they were enjoying in that moment
what each would rather have been doing
what they were going to do next
how this moment might lead to a significant change in their lives, or in their understanding of their lives
what you’ve learned about these characters’ inner lives
Loreates’ Corner
I’m delighted to introduce you to a few of the wonderful stacks by writers in our community. Please read, subscribe, and share! And if you’re an MFA Lore subscriber with a great writing stack that I haven’t mentioned, please drop the link in a comment, so I can add you to our Corner.
Lisa Rogak writes Rooting Around
Laura Davis writes The Writer's Journey with Laura Davis
Nancy Jainchill writes The Armchair Journalist
Great prompt, Aimee.
Writers should always be playing one form of beauty or another: Looking for beauty, looking for meaning, looking for a way to see beyond what you're actually looking at.
That's my take on it, at least.
Such a fun prompt! Look forward to playing peek-a-boo in my neighborhood!