Writing Prompts from Classic Writers - "The Odyssey"

            In The Odyssey, I didn’t find as many stand-out prompts as I did in the Epic of Gilgamesh, but that’s probably because The Odyssey is much better known and has already been highly influential—segments of the story have become part of the Western heritage, like pretending to be “Noman,” avoiding the seductive call of the Sirens, fighting the temptation to become a Lotus-Eater, having to decide between Scylla and Charybdis, and falling for Circe who turns men into swine—all these have been used over and over. But some lines or scenes still stood out that could be used as prompts for situations, like: 

• Devise a story or scenario for: 

                        “she bound on her feet

The beautiful sandals, golden, immortal,

That carry her over landscape and seascape

On a puff of wind.”

• Create a character for the “Daughter of . . . the Old Man of the Sea”

• What situation and person could produce these lines:

                                    “He will try everything,

            And turn into everything that moves on the earth,

            And into water also, and a burning flame.

            Just hang on and grip him all the more tightly.”

• Use the following to produce a story:

            “Shedding salt tears in the halls of Calypso”

• This one is haunting:

            “the phantom slipped through the keyhole and became a sigh in the air.”

• Imagine a background for this:

            “the cry of the spirit women who hold the high peaks”

• An interesting setting:

            “a floating island surrounded by a wall of indestructible bronze set on sheer stone”

• Another setting:

            “For night and day make one twilight there”

• What would lead to this situation:

            “The other ghosts crowded around in sorrow”

• Or this:

            “Most men die only once, but you twice.” 

• And this last one, so simple, is one of my favorites:

            “The night is young—and magical.”

• Finally, just in case you’re thinking of The Odyssey as being much too “classic” for modern tastes, I give you the gory and well-detailed description of puncturing the Cyclops’ single eye, with a stake that’s been heated and sharpened in a fire.  (Horror writers, take note of the great use of detail and simile):

My men lifted up the olivewood stake

And drove the sharp point right into his eye,

While I, putting my weight behind it, spun it around

The way a man bores a ship’s beam with a drill,

Leaning down on it while other men beneath him

Keep it spinning and spinning with a leather strap.

That’s how we twirled the fiery-pointed stake

In the Cyclops’ eye. The blood formed a whirlpool

Around its searing tip. His lids and brow

Were all singed by the heat from the burning eyeball

And its roots crackled in the fire and hissed

Like an axe-head or adze a smith dips into water

When he wants to temper the iron—that’s how his eye

Sizzled and hissed around the olivewood stake. 

He screamed, and the rock walls rang with his voice. 

Ugh! 

All quotes are from the Stanley Lombardo translation, and were taken from: 

The Norton Anthology of  Western Literature, 9^th ed., vol. 1.

Writing Prompts From Classic Writers - "The Epic of Gilgamesh"

            I’ll be teaching classics of European Literature throughout this academic year, and whenever I’ve dealt with such writers before, I’ve always been fascinated by a sudden twist of phrasing or a gem-like statement that makes me think, “Gosh, this would make such a great writing prompt.”  They pop up anywhere in classic texts.  Some meaningful, some obscure, and some so quirky or poetic or blunt that you feel—or hope—it could really stir the creative juices.

            So this is what I hope to do throughout the academic year:  Give brief quotes, on Twitter, label them as “Prompts from the Classics,” and throw them to all you busy, struggling, and devoted writers of fiction out there as possible goads to your inspiration, inventiveness, imagination.  A few helpful words that might lead to an idea, a plot, a character, a theme, a mood. 

            All of these lines I’ve found intriguing, so I just want to share them. 

            And here’s my first batch. I was reading The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the first major works of literature, from Sumeria or Mesopatamia (present-day Iraq).  It tells the story of a half-divine ancient king whose habits are so bad he’s given by the gods a half-animal friend—Enkidu—to keep him occupied. All’s well with them (together they go off to kill monsters) until his friend Enkidu dies.  And then Gilgamesh encounters, for the first time, the fear of death.  He goes on a quest for immortality, and though he learns much during his travels (by following the sun beneath the earth, speaking with a bartender at the end of the world, and begging secrets from a survivor of the Flood), he does not gain immortality.  He returns home, much wiser, but still mortal.

            While reading the epic (in translation, of course, this one by Benjamin R. Foster), a few lines stood out, the shorter of which I’ll send out in Tweets for instant wide-open prompting.  Take from them what you will.  But I hope you get, from these brief but sometimes haunting phrases, a responding idea, a scenario, a character, a scene, a mood, a setting, anything at all. 

            Good luck!  And let me know if it works.          

•        What kind of a person, or what would that person have to do, to see “the       wellspring, the foundations of the land”?
•        Who would have the label, and why, of “The Distant One”?
•        What would cause the following: 

                                   Aghast, struck dumb,

                                   His heart in a turmoil, his face drawn,

                                   With woe in his vitals,

                                   His face like a traveler’s from afar . . .

•        What situation would lead to: “Even the great gods are kept from sleeping at   night!”
•        What kind of creature would this describe: “His maw is fire, his breath is death.” (Don’t make it a dragon.)
•        Imagine a landscape with thirteen winds:

                                  South wind, north wind, east wind, west wind, moaning wind,

                                  Blasting wind, lashing wind, contrary wind, dust storm,

                                  Demon wind, freezing wind, storm wind, whirlwind . . .

•        What would create this scenario:  “Will he not share tiara and scepter with the   moon?”
•        What would be the duties of this job:  “meat carver of the netherworld”
•        And imagine the background for this:  “The scorpion monster called to his wife”

            Hope you get some ideas. All quotes are from The Norton Anthology of Western Literature, 9^th ed., vol. 1. 

            Next, The Odyssey.