Picture Yourself Writing Fiction: Using Photos to Inspire Writing by Sheila Griffin Llanas

Another title in the Fact Finders: See It, Write It series suggests using photos as writing prompts to write fiction.

The Organization-
Introduction: A Fairy-Tale World
Chapter 1: All About Character
Chapter 2: Setting & Genre
Chapter 3: The Plot Thickens
Chapter 4: Shaping a Story

What I thought: Very interesting approach to creative writing. Like Picture Yourself Writing Poetry, this title offers photo prompts as well as an introduction to writing creative fiction. As you can see from the chapter titles above, the book covers the following topics: characters, setting, genre, plot, and story arc.

There is one statement in the book that I could not agree with: "Scary description work for horror, but not for fairy tales" (16). I couldn't disagree more and cite the original Grimm's Fairy Tales and Adam Gidwitz's A Tale Dark and Grimm and In a Glass Grimmly as evidence to refute the statement.

My favorite photo is of the camels "talking" (11). I could make something of that.

(Capstone, 2012)