The Big Idea: Sharon Shinn

Bursts of inspiration are all a writer can ever hope for, but how do you flesh that inspiration out into a coherent story? Not just coherent, but a good story. Author Sharon Shinn shares some of her personal experience with this topic in the Big Idea for her newest collections of short stories and poems, Tropes: Stories and Poems of the Fantastical. SHARON SHINN: In my 9th-grade creative writing class, my teacher walked in one day holding a small potted plant. “I want you to write a story about this,” she said—and then deliberately dropped it to the floor. Dirt and terra cotta shards went everywhere. My fellow students and I stared for a few moments, and then grabbed our pens and paper. Sadly, I can’t remember what story I turned in, but I do remember that it was rather more lurid than my classmates’ tales of cats pushing pots off of windowsills. Since I’ve became a published author, dramatic writing prompts have seldom come my way. But they’ve been replaced, at least now and then, by…