Each month, publisher Shana Thornton gives you a new free writing prompt here on our home page.
Nudge #20
MAY 2024: A Place Transformed
Focus on showing the difference in a place's purpose and/or usage over time. This prompt might require some research, but it could also be purely imaginative as well. You might write about how a place is off limits or gated, barred, and otherwise restricted, and then later available to the public, or vice versa. Perhaps the purpose changes from a site of religious ceremony or spiritual value, and a place no longer holds that sentiment for people. You might reflect on the economics of a place and how they change over time. Images of old crumbling swimming pools or forts turned into parks come to mind. You could look at towns in which the prominent homes once lined a riverside, and those neighborhoods are replaced in value by new ones closer to the interstate system.
For inspiration, consider E.B. White's "Once More to the Lake" (nonfiction). White shows not only the shifting changes in the resort family vacations within American history, but also what families valued during those times and how some of those outings and items retain only sentimental value.
The mansion in the It's a Wonderful Life movie is an example from film, and it shows how two characters view a place differently and yet it is symbolic of the story of home ownership and historic preservation in the film.
From fiction, children's lit, Katherine Applegate's book Wishtree is an excellent example of how a place reflects shifting attitudes of people and how the natural elements of that place resonate deeply within our communities.
The One and Only Ivan, also by Applegate, is another excellent book that causes a reflection on how nature does and/or does not fit into our manmade landscapes and those changes in the attitudes of people over time about how they regard place and the effects of humans.
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