John Gardner's lesson on subtlety from The Art of Fiction has got to be my least favorite prompt ever, and yet there is a reason it persists. Gardner directs: "Describe a barn as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, or war, or death."

Why do I hate it? It's prescriptive. I could go on and on about death, sure, and I've been know to do so, but I don't have a barn or a son. Do you? Even if you do, is that your material? The single most important thing you can do to make your writing good is to write about what matters deeply to you. On top of which, the prompt is plainly maudlin. You should choose the emotional tenor of what you write, even when it's just an exercise.

PROMPT: Scrap all the specific details from Gardner's exercise and replace them with material that belongs to a story you want to write. In lieu of the man, take a character you want to create or one from a work you have in progress. Change out the tragic soldier-son for any missing person or thing — a lover? a set of keys? a lost cat? someone's virginity or sense of dignity? Instead of the barn, pick an object from your fictional universe — the more improbable, the better — onto which your character can project their grief. Remember, just because it's about loss, it doesn't need to be dripping with nostalgia, regret or any other emotion. Could you make it funny? The key point is to explore loss, bereavement or absence with subtlety, so do stick to Gardner's rule about not directly mentioning the things you're writing about. By being oblique, you force the character to inhabit their world, rather than explaining it.

© Elizabeth Gaffney April 2021