Has anyone here ever done a reversebang (art comes before the story) in any fandom? What makes a good pictorial prompt for you?

Can I answer that, even though my answer is no (in fandom, anyway)?

When we had the picture prompts in GWW, I loved looking for photos that had some kind of conflict in them. The family portrait where the mother was younger than the dad, and sour, and the kid looked confused -- that because a second marriage, etc.

I think static, *happy* pictures are harder, because every story needs conflict. (Although you can do it if you twist it -- this is the moment before it all went wrong, etc. I wrote one about a 60s girl at a bus station, very happy, waving goodbye, but from the POV of a killer who had spotted her, for instance.)

So if you're going to show two people, you want a sense of push-pull there, or you want them in a scene that looks incongruous given who they are. But other things might include someone reading a letter, or digging through a drawer, because then you want to know what the person is looking for.

Fandom has the advantage that you have an element of "why those people in that position?" even as it takes away your ability to decide for yourself who they are. But you can allude to a long history everyone shares with very little space. Symbolism takes on a whole new level.

My Big Bang story = done.

Apocrypha

117,000 words of John-centric gen that draws on stuff we learned all the way through S6. I've posted to AO3 as well as to JL.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have a drink. I need one.

Heavens, Anne, that's a monster of a fic! Bookmarked.

Ooooh, 117K of John Winchester? I am SO all over that.

Bookmarked indeed.

::collapses::

In two days, I wrote 4100 words of a pinch-hit for a fic exchange. Go me.

Man, I hope the recipient doesn't hate it, but seriously I don't much care...

Apocrypha

YAY!!!!!

though now I feel bad I didn't do that last bit of stuff I said I would--I thought I had until Friday for some reason.

Thank you all very much! Now I have time to do things like read other people's stuff that I've been dying to read ::cough::Carpetbaggers::cough.

Perkins, no worries! I probably wasn't as clear as I should have been about my posting date being rescheduled. Your feedback was a HUGE help on this!

ita, I participated in the Star Trek reverse bang this year and last. For me, I didn't really care if there was conflict in the picture, but it had to have the pairing I wanted to write about displayed in it in some way, since anyone in the picture had to be in the story. And while there didn't have to be conflict, there did have to be some kind of clue as to the setting. For example, the artwork I claimed this year had Kirk, McCoy, Spock and Uhura in western style clothes, which suited what I wanted to write hugely, because I was working with a Firefly fusion.

A good friend of mine submitted a picture of Spock and McCoy flying a kite and the story that came out of that was simply amazing. So, conflict is not always necessary. The way the kite flying worked into the story was a splendid way to show how Spock's characterization didn't change across au settings, that he would always be a scientist and that it was a way for the two men to bond.