Navigating Prompts: Landscapes and Landmarks

A picture is worth a thousand words

It’s a nice aphorism, isn’t it? But in the case of a photo prompt, this could be a completely literal statement. A single photo—with or without people—can contain a multitude of stories both inside and outside the frame.

So how does a writer turn a picture into a thousand (or more, or fewer) words? What are the editors looking for when they choose a photo? And what makes one story among all the others stand out enough to be chosen for that anthology or win that prize?

Ready, set, go

We’re going to look at photo prompts twice over the course of this workshop. This month, we’ll be pulling out the old slide projector and looking at photo prompts that imply a setting or mood. Later this year, we’ll look at images of people, so never fear—if that’s your favorite prompt, we’ll get to it. But right now we’re looking at settings: rooms, building, and landscapes.

Why is it here?

Photo prompts are broad and specific at the same time. Editors use them to tease out stories that can incorporate not only the specific details included in a photo, but also a mood.

When you’ve got a photo without people in it, the editors are often trying not to constrain your character or plot choices, while encouraging you to work in a similar setting, season, or timeframe as everyone else responding to the prompt.

How do you use it?

First, and I can’t believe we’re saying this again, look at the instructions that come with the prompt. They may offer you additional information, such as “this is the only setting you can use in your story” or “use five objects from this photo in your story.” They may say that you cannot change ANYTHING in the photo, or that you may add whatever you like so long as it’s rationally related to what’s already there. Or you may only know that you need to write a story based on or inspired by the picture. Regardless, it will help to extrapolate as much information as you can from the photo and then build your story.

In general:

Take a good look at the photo. What exactly does it include, and what is implied? What does it tell you about the time period, the location, and what may be happening outside the frame?

Let’s be specific:

Let’s use the header photo for this post as our example. And as another example, we’re going to write this section in call-and-response fashion to show you how two people might disagree on what they see. I (Christine) am going to start, and then Rowan will insert comments in [brackets and italics] like that.

• What are the important elements of the photo?
  • The major elements that stand out are the winding road, the weathered barn, the building (house?) [They’re both technically barns, just one’s modern. If I were captioning this I might just say two outbuildings, one old and one new. That new building, especially where it’s situated, could contain fire equipment, gritting gear, etc. “Barn” implies things about the building’s use, and I might want to change it for the story.], the green hills, and the conifer-laden mountain [That’s possibly just a hill, too. And this is how people from the East and West coasts of the USA differ on landscape interpretations.]. Other elements include the footpath beside the road, the electrical wires, and the bridge over what appears to be a culvert or stream. [I would have included the fencing, the roadsign, and the retaining wall.]
• What does the photo tell you about the location?
  • Geographically, the location seems to be in the foothills of a mountain or possibly a mountain pass. [I wouldn’t go that far, but I’d definitely call this a rural setting. I think you’re cheating because you picked the photo.]  Both the barn and the building in the background seem to be a fairly Western/European style, though where exactly is unclear. With a little research, it might be possible to pinpoint it more precisely. [Or if you know much about street signs. That one’s distinctive. On the other hand, it’s really unlikely that a prompt designer wants you to know “oh this story has to be set on the Autobahn.”]
• What does the photo tell you about the time period?
  • It’s a fairly modern two-lane road. [What does that even mean? It’s asphalt, which places it anytime in the last century and possibly into the next.] There are electrical wires in the background. [This is a much stronger indication of time period—above-ground electric transmission hasn’t always been and won’t always be in favor.] The architecture of both the barn and the brown building imply late 20th century or later. [Ok now we’re going to fight; the weathered building could easily be from the 1920’s. But the new building you’re right is unlikely to have been built before the mid-90’s.]
• What does the photo tell you about the action (or lack thereof)? Alternatively: what’s happening outside the frame?
  • The angle of the shot implies that the viewer is on [near] the road, moving [looking] toward the buildings and deeper into the mountains. The barn looks abandoned, but the other building looks like relatively new construction. [That sentence is already making assumptions. I don’t think I’d do that at this point, because I might want to make them both abandoned. There’s a lot implied about the upkeep of the buildings, but also look: they’re on different plots of land. The weathered building is within the fence, whereas the new building is not, it sits on a leveled plot that’s possibly even part of the road. That opens up some questions about ownership—are these neighbors? Are the buildings commonly-owned? Where does the road go, since it’s not visible uphill? Where is it coming from? Are we looking forward or back?]
• What’s the mood of the photo?
  • The answer to this question will usually be fairly subjective. The angle of the sunlight, the gentle green hills, the dilapidated barn, the slope of the mountain—to me, this all conveys a sense of peace. I could imagine the quiet joy of somebody coming home or the wistfulness of somebody looking over their shoulder as they leave. [And I read this as a much more ominous rural gothic setting. There’s nothing to see here, nothing to do. So why is the road here? There are no animals grazing all that grass. No human habitation. Does this look warm to you? It looks cold to me.]

What’s in a picture?

We just taught you how to answer that question the long way. But if that seems like A Lot (in these uncertain times, so much does, doesn’t it?) then you can also use a quick, modified form of the old “five W’s” question style to not only analyze the photo prompt but start brainstorming story ideas:

• WHAT is in the image? (Just soak it up. What do you see, without making any assumptions about it?)
• WHERE is the image? (Notice what makes you think that—street signs? language on book spines? a recognizable landmark like Angkor Wat or the Eiffel Tower?)
• WHEN is the setting? (Maybe list the things that make you think that, or things that disagree with your preferred setting that you’d need to explain.)
• WHO belongs here? (Does the image show signs of occupancy? What does it tell you about those people?)
• WHY does the image look like it does? (If a book is left out, think about reasons. If there’s a fence, think about what it’s keeping in or out.)
• HOW did it get that way? (Settings, like characters, have backstories. Think about yours. Did people live there and are gone? Are they coming to it? Is it abandoned, or just built? What effects have time and occupancy by humans or animals had on this setting?)

Try it out

Check out this photo gallery. Some of these have even been used as prompts for our writing competitions in the past. Using either technique above, analyze a photo that appeals to you.

How do you move from “scenery” to “story”?

• In order to have a story, you need to put something into this setting. Whether that’s characters now, or a history remembered, you’ll need to do more than just describe the photo.
• Stories imply change. Your characters, or your readers, should learn and grow over the course of the story. Let’s look at two ways to do that.
  • Emotional change. First of all, please promise me you’re not going to ever make me read a whole story with a character having the exact same feeling the entire time. You can make even a happy character seem dreary that way. Emotional change and growth is as valid as physical (that is, trying to process grief is as real a quest as trying to put a magic ring in a volcano). To ensure your story has some emotional breadth, you can focus on the mood of the photo, especially if there isn’t anything to imply action. Decide if that will be your starting emotion or your ending emotion, and write your story toward or away from the mood. Or you can write a story with that as the primary emotion, making sure to the character feel something else over the course of the plot even if you begin and end with the photo’s “mood.”
  • Physical change. You can (if the rules allow) take an element found in the photo and change it. Burn that barn to the ground either as the plot or before the story begins, so long as the character remembers it whole at some point. Flood the culvert. Put a hitchhiker on the road or a dragon in amongst the trees. (Note that we don’t mean “change the barn into a spaceship” or “change the mountains to rolling hills,” but rather: “act upon the elements that are present.” So “exit, pursued by a bear” is fair game, but the road is still a road.)

Save yourself some trouble: don’t make these common mistakes

• Here’s another one I can’t believe we’re saying: Don’t forget to describe the setting. You don’t have to put every element in (and in fact you shouldn’t) but editors and judges will need to be able to recognize not just that your story takes place in a room or on a road, but in the room or on the road in the picture!
• Don’t treat the prompt as superficial—it’s not just background. Okay, technically it is, but it should still be important to your story. If you show the photo to a friend, they should immediately be able to identify it from your story. We’ve even heard about competitions where the judges didn’t see the photo until after they’d read the story, and then they were given three similar pictures and told to ID which one was the prompt, just from the story. (Don’t worry, we don’t do that. But you should be aware that’s out there, and is it really the worst idea in the world to use it as a standard for whether you’ve adequately included the prompt?)
• Don’t try to include all the elements of a photograph in your story, especially if you are constrained by word count. Yes, this sounds like the exact opposite of the advice we just gave you, but it’s not. Focus on the critical points like weather, objects or scenery you need to advance your plot, time period, etc. If your photo isn’t recognizable from those distilled points, you may not have done a great job using the setting and might need to add some detail to your story—not to the descriptions in it—to correct the error.
• You can show-don’t-tell with photo prompts, too! Instead of saying “there was a tree” consider having your character climb it. Instead of exhaustively listing the items on a cluttered desk, have your character fidget with each one during the course of a conversation.
• Remember that a story is more than a static description.
• Make sure any details you include in your story are supported by the photo. For example, [INSERT THE FOOTHILLS OF THE IDAHO PANHANDLE INCIDENT HERE] [I’m leaving this drafting note from Christine in because honestly, this thing was so egregious that it has its own name and it’s hilarious to me that it’s the first thing that any of the editors think of when we talk about setting prompts. This was the moment I snapped, years ago, and wrote an editor asking “how much constructive criticism are folks ready to receive, here?” The next thing I knew I was on staff. /rbg]
  • Once upon a time there was a story submitted to the weekly grids. There were things wrong with it. That’s totally fine; stories have things wrong with them, especially when they haven’t been through a formal editorial process. But the thing that was really, truly, deeply wrong with the story was a phrase that went something like “the rolling grassy hills of the Idaho panhandle.” (It was a Western, sort of.) Now, you may never have been to the Idaho panhandle, the thin bit of Idaho that pokes up toward Canada like it’s trying to get away from the ACTUAL incredibly boring and desolate rolling hills in the south of Idaho (ok there are exceptions but honestly, “no services” is the most common freeway exit sign). But if you look it up on a map, or better yet just Google it and look at the satellite view, you can see that it is completely covered in forbidding mountains and ancient trees. There’s a ski resort. Fur trapper country. It completely broke the story for me; I couldn’t trust anything else the writer said. (There were, as I’ve said, other errors. They might have gotten a pass if this one thing hadn’t been so terribly, obviously wrong, and so easily prevented from being wrong.)
  • The usual moral of this story is for heck’s sake look your setting up. If you’re setting your story in the now and describing the location as aggressively rural, hit Street View first to make sure downtown isn’t anchored by a modern superstore. If you’re writing Twilight maybe use a map to tell you how long it takes to get from one real town in Washington to another. (Seriously, come on.)
  • This month’s moral is if you want to say your picture was taken in the Idaho panhandle, it better be just the background and not the foreground of this post’s header image. Look your setting up and see if the image looks at least mostly like others taken in your chosen location. You don’t have to get all stressed out and reverse image search every photo prompt you see, but that header image can’t be used to set your story on the Great Plains or in the Sahara either. It just can’t. Those places don’t look like that.
  • If you, like me, hate doing that and think it sounds like a lot of work, make up a location. Just say “the mountain” or give the mountain a made-up name and never mention where in the world it is. Heck, don’t even put it on Earth if you don’t want to (unless the rules say you have to). You’ll have to do a little more worldbuilding but you’ll never run afoul of a judge or editor who grew up in the tiny town you coincidentally picked to set your murder mystery that depends on stoplight timing in, and who knows there’s no stoplight in the town.

Let’s close with one of the most lovely and haunting descriptions of a setting from Western literature, shall we?

Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Your turn!

Check out our weekly prompt posts and try to tell a story using the image prompts given. Don’t forget to ask for help in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord if you’ve got questions – you can post a link to your draft or even a snippet of your story or essay (up to 250 words) for immediate feedback. Don’t forget to use content warnings where they’re merited, so that you can get the best and most engaged readers for the words you like to write.

What’s next?

Wondering what the year has in store? Here’s a handy roadmap!

Get out your map

Here's the general flow of this year's workshop series. You don't have to follow them in order, but you may find that one builds on the next.

September: Retellings

October: Style over Substance

November: Combination Prompts

December: Roundup

About the author:

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me