The Beginning
I still have a couple of my Power of the Pen stories lying around.
(Power of the Pen is a writing competition for school age children. It involves writing to a prompt within a set time frame, and the writing is judged, and you are cut or you move on. Sound like LJ Idol except the time frameis about twenty minutes. I shudder at trying to write some of Gary's prompts in twenty minutes and doing well.)
One of the stories I kept was practically a rejected X-Files script,vampires who walked in day light and whowere repulsed by the moon.
The other was a short descriptive piece based on two words: 'The Void.'
I don't have it near me now, but I wrote about six or seven descriptive pararaphs about a painting that pulled you in and reminded you of the Void in your soul or some other melodrmatic eighth grade thing. What is important is I remembered the painting during my first short stoy writing class.
I had no idea what I was going to write. So I started digging through my old stories and found one about a terrible detective, so I pulled that character apart, made him better, but I didn't have anything for him to investigate.
Then I found 'The Void.' I laughed at myterrible descriptions and awful use of second person POV, but what if my detective needed tofind the painting? From there it became a series of what ifs, and one of my favorite characters to write about was born. (The painting wasn't stolen, but the artist was.)
I suppose that means one day I should revisit my day walking vampires. I mean, no one has done it yet right?