As a transplant who lives hundreds of miles from my family and some of my best friends, I spend a lot of time on the phone. Both mundane statements and monumental announcements are made in the same manner — via telephone call — because I don’t have many other options.

I suppose I could send an email, but that’s much more impersonal. At least with a phone call the person on the other end of the line can hear my voice, my inflection, my emotion.

If I had the money and the time, a flight and a conversation over a good meal might suit some announcements better. Unfortunately, my budget and my job keep me from hopping on a 747 every time I have news I’d like to share.

So the phone it is. And it works quite well in most cases. In fact, the phone works so well, that I can think of several phone calls that have been pivotal experiences in my life. Which brings me to this week’s {Creativity Corner} prompt:

Write about a phone call that changed your life (or the life of your character) in some small or large way.

Where were you when you made or received the call? What were you wearing? What time of the day was it? What did you surroundings look like?

Who was on the other end of the line? Did you call him/her or did the other person call you? Had you been anticipating the call or was it unexpected or spontaneous?

What was the conversation like? What was said? How did you (or the other person) react? How did the conversation end?

In what ways were things different after you hung up the phone?

Use this prompt to recall memories about a particular phone conversation by free-writing your way through it. If you’re writing from your character’s perspective, don’t think too much about what your character(s) should or shouldn’t be doing or saying. Just consider the situation and then write the scene out quickly.

You can edit or flesh it out later. Right now, you’re experimenting and investigating. There’s no pressure to produce a perfect vignette or scene. Just write.

When you’re finished, please feel free to share a paragraph or two of your writing in the comments or post the exercise on your own blog and leave a comment here with a link to your writing. Remember, these are exercises. The results don’t have to be perfect. But to benefit from them, you actually have to do the work. Now head to your corners and come out writing!

(Image by Esparta)