Knockout Idea: Photo captions

          Here’s a knockout idea I got while reading Ariel Levy’s story, “Living Room Leopards.” At the very beginning of the story, there was a photo of a cross-bred cat: a mix between a wildcat and a domestic cat. The caption read:

Half-bred crossbreeds are in vogue but controversial, and illegal in some states.

          It got me thinking, What if the caption was the ONLY part readers got? What if a writer of fiction thought SCI-FI or FANTASY? What kind of a world would we be talking about? It could be MUCH more controversial than just an article about crossbreeding wildcats.

Try this:

          Jump into the future a few hundred years and make that caption about HUMANS. Then, go looking for other captions that might take on added meaning if you chop off the photo, and collect them as future writing prompts. Read that newspaper or magazine with a pair of scissors!

Coming tomorrow: We will spend a week learning from Sara Dailey, and her nonfiction article, “The Memory Train.” We’ll learn techniques we can apply to our fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, just as we did with T. C. Boyle’s work a week ago. Watch for it…