This week – the prompt is V is for Volume.
Well, there’s volume as in sound level. What is the sound? Is it loud or soft? What effect does it have? When is it happening? Is it a good sound or a bad sound? It could be the sound of someone breathing, or someone mowing their lawn at three o’clock in the morning.
There’s volume as in a measure of capacity, whether minute or massive. Think of what has volume: a petrol tank or oil tank, a measuring jug, a bottle, a can, a syringe, a bowl, a swimming pool, a tea mug. We have pints, gallons, barrels, cubic centimetres, litres, millitres, tablespoons, teaspoons… and think of the different situations each of those are used for – medical, commercial, domestic, culinary…
There’s volume use as a term for a mass or great quantity of something – as in ‘the delays were caused by the sheer volume of traffic’.
Or, of course, there’s a volume as in a book or a part of a book – I suppose we’re most familiar with it in the sense of an encyclopaedia being in volumes or people bringing out ‘a slim volume of poetry’. So your character could be reading a ‘volume’ when something completely unrelated happens.
Plenty to go at. So, it’s the usual stuff – who, what, where, when, how and why?
Let’s hear your stories, poems, pieces of descriptive writing. Don’t forget it doesn’t have to be the complete story, or contain the word ‘volume’, which is only a prompt. If it doesn’t inspire you, you can have a go at any of the other previous prompts, or if you’ve got something else that you’re burning to write about, then write about that. Or you could send us something else you’ve written, if you’d like.
Send your piece to louise.hulland@bbc.co.uk and we’ll review them when we next meet on the radio.