Our current writing assignment is: THAT SEEMS SIGNIFICANT. So, what are we to do with it it?
We have a tendency to look for significance in everyday things found in nature. The shape of a leaf, an unusual-coloured pebble, or a well-timed crash of thunder, could be taken as a good or bad sign, giving an answer to a problem for your story character. Or if you’d rather write a memoir, perhaps you have a memory of finding something significant which helped you to make a decision?
We see ‘faces’ in random objects, from potatoes to buildings – a phenomenon called pareidolia – and many people give them such significance that they choose to buy things or reject them depending on whether they are friendly-looking or scary. This attitude could create a good opportunity for conflict between two story characters – but is it foolish superstition, or are they right to trust their gut instincts?
We assign the quality of being ‘lucky’ to the socks we were wearing when we scored that winning goal, or the bracelet we chose when we got that brilliant job offer. A character having to manage without the confidence of these items can be believed to prove or disprove whether they’re really significant. Then we have lucky or unlucky numbers, lucky colours… the Daily Telegraph’s spoof horoscope column even had such things as “lucky biscuit: custard cream.” A decision based on a horoscope column’s ‘lucky colour’ or the decision to buy the house at No. 13 could be the inciting incident to start your story, or an idea for a poem.
For many people, the search for significance is what life’s all about. But we may be deluding ourselves. Perhaps life is, as Macbeth described it, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” And maybe the significance in your writing is that nothing is actually significant.
If you have nothing to say on the subject of significance, feel free to take it as a sign that you should pick another subject and write about that instead!
Our next Zoom meeting will be Tuesday 2nd June, 7pm. Watch your inbox for the link!