Prompt 1: Practice setting the scene…Describe in detail your favorite room in your home or apartment. What pieces of it are special? Which pieces in the space could involve action? If you were to set a scene here in a play, movie, or novel…What might happen based on the room’s exciting features? What might be an expected choice of scene or unexpected?
Our sunroom on Eastlake Terrace was all windows – two each facing north and south and three facing the lake to the east, just beyond a small park with a couple tennis courts and a tiny beach below grade and hidden from the street. The openness and view and, above all, the light are what sold us on the apartment. It was a joy to walk in the front door on a bright, sunshiney day.
The lake was never the same from one day to the next, dark and gloomy then bright and shimmering in a matter of hours. Nighttime was the best, especially when there was a gigantic moon over a sparkling silver pathway to the horizon. The sunroom could have been the jumping-off point for countless movies. Kids playing on the beach, a narrow stretch of sand with water ahead and boulders behind. A sailboat drifting listlessly on a calm day or fighting through choppy waves to reach shore before a rainstorm, chased by a black wall of clouds. A giant freighter moving over the horizon on its way to Gary’s steel mills. A bright red Coast Guard helicopter racing ten feet above the water along the shoreline looking for a missing swimmer.
Because my wife and I both worked from home, we set a table and four chairs in the center of the sunroom and used it for client conferences. We stood back and allowed clients to choose where they would sit; there was no head-of-the-table seat of power. Those who sat facing the lake generally were more relaxed and open to conversation; if they chose to turn their backs to the lake, it often meant they had a firm agenda and wanted to control the meeting – no nonsense, no wasting time with the pettiness of watching boats.
We watched the people in the park across the street. Who were they, and what were their stories? Lovers meeting clandestinely while their spouses thought they were working? A junkie making a connection? Other work-at-home professionals grabbing a few minutes of sunshine? Maybe an informant making a drop for his or her controller or an assassin gearing up for his hit?
There were lots of dogs in the park. If no one was playing tennis, the fenced courts were a popular spot to let pets run free after being cooped up in an apartment for hours. Interestingly, the dogs were remarkably well behaved; anyone with an ill-mannered pooch was informed they and their pet were no longer welcome visitors.
Eastlake Terrace is a three-block-long hidden world in the very farthest northeast corner of Chicago’s Rogers Park. It’s a quiet stretch insulated from the noise of the city by a buffer of apartment buildings. There are no single houses on the street. It’s likely the best spot in the city for stories of intrigue, passion, and secret desires.
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