Inspired by a suggestion from Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind, I asked my staff from the Centennial College student newspaper, The Courier to look at the above picture and then write five words to the beginning of a story inspired by the photo.
I put each person’s five words into a hat and the staff drew them at random. Their assignment was to write the rest of the story but they were limited to 45 words. They had one week and here are the results:
Getting ready for the harvest, I wake up at four a.m.. I quickly run downstairs for breakfast. I then go out to the shed, the door is locked so I search my pocket for the key. I open the door, and find Dad on the floor, dead.
He thought what he did was right. He thought he was doing what was best for everyone. Everyone loved Mildred, but winter would soon be here and food was already scarce. Julia was heartbroken. Jacob hadn’t spoken since it happened. But their bellies were full and that goat was tasty.
Olga stumbles home rake in hand. Shes spent all day on a farm, hoeing the earth desperately searching for the fabled food. The truffle, a mushroom in France, is a rare ingredient normally found by specially trained pigs. Thanks to a disease the pigs are dead and Olga has a new, but fruitless job.
Sunrise is already midday for the Venezuelan coca farmers working in the still-dark early morning. Instead of open fields, their beans only grow sheltered in the dense thickets of the jungle. Their lush forests may produce the best beans, but for South American’s coca farmers, it’s no sweet life.
It began in a field. The woman trudged pas the towering tree headed for home. The sun peeked from beyond the horizon. Splashes of honeysuckle and golden rod dotted the grassland like an impressionist painting. But, the woman dared not dally. Just thirty minutes remained before the gates to town were barred shut and sundown was fast approaching. Then, The Chupacabras would return for their nightly goat-sucking. She quickened her pace.
A cloudy horizon fills with tempestuous clouds swirlying feverishly. In a barren fiel, gusts of wind begin to ripple through the grass and a low rumbling of thunder echoes in the distance. The field is void of life, as every living creature takes refuge from the incoming storm – except one.
It started in a field, as it did every morning. He was up before the sun, watched it rise over his land. He liked to work alone, there was a peace in the earth, in the sky. For some it would not be enough to have this farm grow things.
The girl set out at dawn inhopes of catching thieves in the act. The drought had ravished the land and the family farm was failing. There’s was no the only one, however, and hungry villagers would head to the fields at night to find what little food they could.
There was once a man with broken hands,
And everything he would touch, he would make broken.
He was content with empty husks,
But they too, broke and crumbled to dust.
And so he searched far and wide but all he could find was his divided mind.
And even that,
He left broken.
