Ref: Pages 23 and 24 of the text by Robert Olmstead
- Let a character make a decision at the outset of your story. Examine the passage and find the phrases that describe the process of deciding something. Write a new and different decision of your own character’s making for each phrase you find in the passage.
Then it occurred to him…
This observation could…
He had made a discovery…
He would….
It occurred to Siobhan that the flutter-bys liked to visit specific flowers. This observation allowed her to attract her favorite visitors right to her cottage window. She discovered that if she planted milkweed around her cottage, it would attract the flutter-bys, ladybirds, and bees. She would invite the pleasant visitors to her home, and they would remove the invaders from her garden.
- Place the decision within the character as the passage does in the second paragraph, only depend on a sense other than sight.
She licked her finger and held it to the wind. The breeze from the east would carry the scent of nectar across her garden, which would invite her winged guests. She listened to the buzz of bees and learned they lived in the treeline just west. She felt along the eves of her cottage and greeted the ladybirds clustered there. - Try making an extended metaphor to illustrate the character’s decision. Start by listing a group of associated words. Now write your paragraph, but be careful. These can get silly pretty fast.
Cultivate
Nurture
Sow
Plant
Uproot
Harvest
It occurred to Siobhan that the flutter-bys liked to visit specific flowers. This observation allowed her to attract her favorite visitors right to her cottage window. She discovered that if she planted milkweed around her cottage, it would attract the flutter-bys, ladybirds, and bees. She would invite the pleasant visitors to her home, and they would remove the invaders from her garden.
She licked her finger and held it to the wind. The breeze from the east would carry the scent of nectar across her garden, which would invite her winged guests. She listened to the buzz of bees and learned they lived in the treeline just west. She felt along the eves of her cottage and greeted the ladybirds clustered there. With a druid’s intuition, she cultivated the plan into fruition, uprooted the obstacles, and nurtured the energy necessary to sow the action. This spring, she would plant a new row of milkweed, and by summer, she would taste the harvest of her labor.