Prompt #36 — Write Like Bryan Owens

Owens’s piece (view here) explores the sublime, considering the emotional relays between beauty and terror and the contrast between an expansive natural world and a constrained personal one. A character’s interaction with the landscape often suggests a reckoning with an internal conflict. Here, Scott’s relationship to the ocean comments on the rite of passage he experiences. This stands in contrast to Denise’s mastery of both the emotional and natural landscapes.

PROMPT

Consider a typical rite of passage or one of the moments insurance companies call “a life event”—marriage, death, childbirth, a change in jobs. Write a piece in which a character grapples with such an event, and use the story’s setting to help comment implicitly on the character’s circumstances. Feel free to use surreal elements as Owens does.