_ For our first Writers in the Attic anthology, we’ve asked you to write about a room. It could be your kitchen, a room you know so well you barely see it anymore; or it could be an imaginary room in an imaginary mansion on an island you've never seen before. The room could even be an eggshell or a computer screen, a drawing, a dance, an emotion. What’s important is that it means something to you, the writer. It’s not just a room to you. Show us why. Let the room help you tell the story.

The following excerpt is from a column on WritersDigest.com, “‘The How of Where’—The Importance of Setting in Your Fiction,” by novelist David Rocklin. The author talks about how to transform a room into a character in your writing, and offers this prompt:

Find a room you’ve never seen. It has no meaning to you and holds nothing of your past life. You don’t know its contours, or how it looks on a cloudy morning. You can literally find one and occupy it, or find a picture and imagine yourself into it. Describe it. Tell the readers what we see. What we could touch, if only we were really there.

Now, describe the same room a second time. This time, give the room a story. This is where someone died. That chair was where a husband sat as his wife told him that she was leaving him. Out that window, a single mother watched a moving van pull up after losing the house to foreclosure.

What just happened? The room’s physical description changed, didn’t it? That’s not merely a bed. That’s not simply a street outside. The walls and their peeled paint have something akin to a voice. This setting isn’t just an edifice or a space anymore. It bears witness.