Writing Prompt #9

 

After years mostly dormant, I am attempting to work myself into being a writer again. To that end, I did a simple Google search for "writing prompts" and chose the first link listed, which included a total of 20 prompts. My goal is to write from a new prompt each day, giving myself 10 minutes before calling "hands up, utensils down" (so to speak), and then posting the unedited result in this blog. The post below is today's entry.

 

"If you could live inside one of your favorite stories, what would you change about it?"

 

Before I can answer this question, I have to struggle with one of my greatest weaknesses: I love to work within constraints, to think inside the box, to stay within the guidelines. But I hate having to stop what I’m doing and set the constraints, build the box, or draw the guidelines.

 

I want to know my boundaries. For me, creative expression is finding new and interesting ways to express myself within limits. I have fun coming up with fun drum fills while playing in straight 4/4 time, making subtle changes to the hop profile of a German-style helles lager, or seeing if I can run a set distance a little faster. Playing a song with constantly changing time signatures, developing a beer recipe with no reference to defined styles, running with no plan for time or route, though—I feel stress just thinking about doing those things. In jobs, I’ve been very good at working at a particular type of task—say, copy editing—over and over, learning a little bit each time, getting a little better incrementally, but I’ve balked when asked to rethink a process or (worse) “carve out your own niche here!” Slowly working and thinking through existing processes, instead of simply following them, disorients me. The effect is almost the same as that of trying to concentrate in a room with too many competing background noises, or organizing a junk drawer.

 

As for changing stories, I just don’t approach them that way. When, for example, much of the Star Wars fandom voiced their disappointment at narrative choices made in the most recent movies, I didn’t get worked up about them. I want to hear (or see, or read) the story and react to it as a solid thing that exists; it’s all wrapped up in my suspending disbelief, in letting the story work whatever magic it has on me. Approaching a story with what-ifs makes it less real, and less enjoyable.

 

But for the sake of this exercise? I read that George Lucas once considered a much darker ending for Return of the Jedi: after Luke’s father dies on the (second) Death Star, Luke picks up the Vader mask and helmet, looks at them for several seconds, and puts them on his own head. If I were Luke in that moment, I might do that. 

 

Cut to black, cue the Imperial March, and roll the end credits. 

 

Dude.