Seeing and Sensing a Story

E and I ran a writing workshop today for the Leeds Writers Circle. It's an idea we've had for some time, to prompt the writing of a story using a selection of my black and white photographs. We started by inviting the 12 participants to come up to the table and select a character from the photos laid out for them, then write a potted biography of the chosen person's life. They were then invited to pick a scene from another wide selection of quite random photographs (all of which had been blips), put their character in that picture and let events unfold. After the break for lunch we then repeated the exercise with a character chosen from one of my street photographs.

It proved to be very successful. First, E and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and the feedback we received afterwards was enthusiastic. Best of all, everyone had one or two original stories to take away to finish. We heard snippets from a few of them and it was astonishing to find where my photographs had taken people. It was a brilliant experience and exercise for the imagination.