What We Frame (Holly Schindler)

So it's Halloween, which makes me think of the piles of Halloween pics in the house--the 80s-era Polaroids all the way to the digital social media pics. 

FB tells me this one was posted in 2016...the year I had this whole Cleopatra thing happening (I bet you didn't know Cleo preferred Chuck Taylors!), and my dog at the time (Jake) went as his favorite food: the hot dog.

But it got me thinking about the things we photograph to put in frames vs. the images we would never put in frames. Things we display for the world to see vs. the things we tuck away. 

Where fiction gets interesting is when it exposes those things we keep out of frames. This is why first person POV hits so hard, I think. It lets that reader in to see the tender, the unsure, the ugly. The fears and the faults. It's where the most-human parts of the story reside, it seems: outside the frame.

~

Holly Schindler is the author of the MG The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky