This morning I reviewed Sarah Strohmeyer’s wonderful book The Sleeping Beauty Proposal. One of the nifty things about that book is the way in which Strohmeyer takes the concept of the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ tale and applies it to modern-day life:

“For the last four years,” she explained, “your life has been on hold. You haven’t grown or changed or anything. You’ve just been washing Hugh’s socks and doing his bidding, waiting for him to ask you to be his wife so you can start your life. …

“You remind me of that idiot Sleeping Beauty, lying around like a zoned-out zombie waiting for your prince. Well, guess what, he rode right past your castle tonight and now you have a choice—you can either go back to bed or you can wake up.”

Take another fairy tale and apply its basic concept to a modern-day relationship (romantic or otherwise). Take any approach you like, from literal to figurative, from physical to psychological. Try to do at least something interesting and ‘different’ with it. You can free-write your ideas on one side of a sheet of paper, brainstorm a story, start free-writing a piece of fiction, free-write an essay on the relationship between your chosen fairy tale and modern-day relationships, or anything else that occurs to you.

Mystery Addict

Imagine that one of your fictional characters is getting married. How would it happen? Write the scene.

Alternative #1: Imagine that someone close to one of your fictional characters is getting married.

Alternative #2: Imagine that you are getting married!

Weddings can bring out the best and worst in people. They’re watershed moments that tend to be remembered for decades. They can be small or large, happy or bittersweet, tragic or uplifting. And like many other such moments, they can tell you so much about all involved.

As an illegitimate daughter, Cea had only been allowed to attend her father’s wedding as any other unrelated member of the house might: standing anonymously amongst the other unmarried, low-ranking sons and daughters of the house. At the reception she hung back, away from the wedding party, sipping her drink to cover the disconnected feeling that haunted her.

Her father’s new wife was barely two years her senior.

This shouldn’t have surprised her—didn’t—but it certainly felt awkward. She hadn’t even met the young woman, and had no idea what to call her.

It was late when Cea’s father steered his new wife toward Cea. His handsome face was impassive; she knew the wedding hadn’t been his idea, and he likely hadn’t met his new wife before the wedding was arranged several weeks earlier. He obviously wasn’t pleased with the turn of events, but she knew he’d do what the family required of him. The young woman at his side had long brown hair tied back in a thick braid that hung below her waist; she was a vision in silks and velvets. Her face was flushed; some observers might mistake her high color for excitement, but Cea saw the flustered look on her face as she glanced at her new husband. And who could blame her? Dern was a handsome, highly sought-after match; she’d probably hoped to be swept off her feet, not to find that her spouse could hardly even look at her.

Dern lowered his hand to Cea’s shoulder and gifted her with one of his small smiles. “This is my daughter, Cea.”

Cea watched the young woman’s eyes widen. She would have been told of Dern’s daughter, of course, but she’d probably imagined someone rather younger than Cea’s sixteen years.

“Cea, this is Selena.”

Cea curtsied to her father’s wife, lowering her eyes. “Lady, welcome to our home,” she said softly, an almost-undetectable note of sympathy in her voice.

“I see someone I should speak with; why don’t you two get acquainted?” And just like that, he was gone, abandoning his new wife to his daughter.

Cea suppressed a sigh. “Most of the guests you should meet have gone; if you’d like, I could give you a tour of the house.”

Selena pulled herself up as tall as she could, which was several inches short of Cea’s height. “I don’t need the charity of an illegitimate daughter.”

Cea saw one or two heads turn, and again suppressed a sigh. “Of course, Lady. If you change your mind, any servant can tell you where to find me.” She turned and walked away, placing her empty glass on a table and fisting her hands to drive down the frustration that built inside of her. As she left the room she felt a cold chill pass through her hands. She rubbed them together to warm them, stretched her fingers out as she uttered a frustrated oath, and caught her breath as a small, glowing bolt of cold flicked out from her fingers to leave a pock mark in the wall. She stared in shock for a moment, then glanced around quickly to make sure no one had noticed. Seeing no one, she ran all the way to her room, closing and locking the door behind her.

Visit this page and, for the moment, simply look at the photograph without reading the text. (Just in case you read this entry sometime months from now and the picture is gone, it’s an old black-and-white photo of young men in suits marching down a road carrying signs that read ‘WE WANT BEER’.)

Now, you have two options.

1. Read the hysterically funny ‘explanation’ stumbleupon user kish-me concocted for the photo. Then go out and find your own photo of who-knows-what and write your own creative tale to go with it. You don’t have to emulate kish’s style; do anything you want!

2. Before reading the explanation for the photo, write your own. When you’re done you can read kish-me’s hilarious creation.

The stories we can come up with when inspired by an innocuous image can be touching, hilarious, moving… anything at all. Let your imagination run wild.

One thing that fascinates me is discovering that what seems like a simple plot idea has been turned into an entire mini-genre of its own. I’m still agog at the wealth of Scottish Highlands time travel romances out there—who knew authors could come up with book after book from the idea?

Today, create or choose what seems to you like a basic plot idea, seemingly too narrow to be a genre or sub-genre. Then spent 20 minutes brainstorming different ways to approach that idea, such that by the time you’re done you hopefully have a whole list of book ideas, as though the plot had become a genre.

This kind of flexibility and expansion exercise can be very helpful when you’re looking at commercial outlets for your work.