Do you take notice of signs, particularly the warning kind?

You could get into a spot of bother by ignoring some signs. I can’t recall if I was aware of a bull close by when I took the picture (probably not, I’m not that brave and/or foolish) but it’s the kind of warning best taken note of.

This week, our creative writing prompt is to make a story out of a missed warning. Take a scene from your childhood where you ignored warnings and went ahead and did your thing anyway. Turn this into a piece of memoir, writing in the first person (me, I, us, we) in the past tense to explore the topic.

Perhaps you paid no heed to the warning, or maybe you wanted to ignore it, but were somehow forced to carry on anyway. Were other family members involved? Think about your siblings, parents, cousins, aunties and uncles, grandparents – were they there? What about neighbours? Schoolfriends and enemies? Teachers?

What happened? What could have happened? Try to recall the details, because in memoir, it is often the every day  minutiae your readers will be interested in. If you are writing fiction, I wouldn’t usually recommend including descriptions of the weather, the outfits, the food on the table, the modes of transport, but these can be relevant when you are writing about your life. Just be aware you need some action and colourful characters, too.

Short pieces of memoir can be stitched together at a later date to make a complete autobiography, so be sure to keep your work safe!

Call back next week for another creative writing prompt/exercise to challenge you to write some more new material. Posts go live here every Wednesday at 5pm (Dublin time).

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