Category: Writercraft

I don’t know about all of you, but I spent a lot of time in high school and college being exposed to historical documents, both in their original languages and in translation.  One of the documents that I spent a lot of time with during both of those periods of my life is where today’s prompt comes from.

Prompt Type: Craft a scene

Prompt: Recreate the passage below in a new context–or in the same context, with characters imagined into the scene. Feel free to modify any gender, terminology, or name as needed.

The next day, early in the morning, he sent both foot-soldiers and horse in three divisions on an expedition to pursue those who had fled. These having advanced a little way, when already the rear [of the enemy] was in sight, some horse came to Caesar from Quintus Atrius, to report that the preceding night, a very great storm having arisen, almost all the ships were dashed to pieces and cast upon the shore, because neither the anchors and cables could resist, nor could the sailors and pilots sustain the violence of the storm; and thus great damage was received by that collision of the ships.

Text is from Caesar’s Gallic Wars, translation provided by The Internet Classics Archive, http://classics.mit.edu/index.html

Got a suggestion for a prompt? Contact Erin at emklitzke (at) gmail (dot) com.