The ocean tide pushes a wave toward the shoreline, crashing onto the rocks and bowing a hasty retreat. Another wave follows, drenching the wet sand, obliterating all but the memory of the previous wave. A photographer captures the scene and enhances it through digital format. A painter dabs at canvas with brushes and watercolors. A writer, a word artist, portrays the moment with words. A trio of writers visualize three different scenes.
A romance writer pictures a Polynesian native, her long dark hair billowing in the moonlight as she dances in wet sand, waiting for her lover. A mystery writer hears the roar of a crashing wave on a crowded beach as it deposits a surfer’s body at the bare feet of an unsuspecting tourist. A children’s writer depicts an industrious preschooler digging in the wet sand, searching for treasures. Three writers. Three plots. Each author surrounds the wave with characters, conflict, emotion, and purpose. The wave arcs and dissipates, leaving love, chaos or anticipation.
Capture the moment your way. Set the scene with water, beach and sky. Add a protagonist with a purpose. Let your imagination soar. A novel is on the way.
A frustrated writer, maybe I could put a thumb drive of my novel into a bottle and toss it into a wave where it floats to the feet of the Polynesian dancer who thinking it’s a message of love picks it up intending to take it home to unlock its secret. Before she can leave the beach she stumbles over the corpse smashed against the shore by the waves. She shrieks and sends the bottle sailing. It crashes on a rock and the thumb drive is freed and washes into the moat of a young child’s sand castle. The toddler grabs the thumb drive and finds it an adequate tool for trenching a ditch around his castle. And the novel finds its true value. The end.