September 26th : a Thinking Ten Canvas plus a week’s worth of prompts, all of which are to be used for the Capstone.
Prompts always include a location, an opening sentence, three words which must be included, a ‘plot-thickener’ and a Friday ‘Member’s Choice’ which, in this instance, was the instruction to include a newspaper and two characters, named Bud and Rose. A considerable challenge, since the Canvas was a Van Gogh drawing, and the opening sentence ‘He was the most extraordinary man I ever knew.’
I mulled it over - I had already used the canvas to the best of my ability, referred to my ‘extraordinary’ great-grandfather (stretching the ‘I knew’ just a little) and overcome the difficulty that, for a Brit, the name ‘Bud’ is alien.
The initial story does of course have to be written in ten minutes (no limit on editing time) and where possible I also set myself an additional challenge to use all prompts as succinctly as possible. Nevertheless I was surprised that I came up with no fewer than four characters with the potential for future development, and did it in six sentences – a vivid illustration of the benefits of just a month of daily mental exercise.
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