Writing Prompt-O-Rama

Writing prompts help hone the infinity of story choices out there and help lift the curse of the blank page.

My love of writing prompts was affirmed last May when I participated in the May Story-a-Day challenge over at Forward Motion for Writers.

FM has a huge list of story prompt generators for registered members (it’s free), with pictorial options for those more visually inspired.  I stuck to the written prompts, myself, as I tend to be too literal with pictures.

One of my favorite generator sites is Seventh Sanctum.  Their Writing Challenge Generator (with at least three elements) spawned several stories during that wild month.

Another fun one, geared toward speculative fiction (as I am), can be found at the Speculative Muse.

Also, FM Writers has their Zettercise generator, which can be used for writing prompts or writing fun.

The key for me in working with generators is not to fall into the trap of regenerating prompts when inspiration doesn’t immediately come to me.  That trap will have you back at blank-page-stare state, which is what we’re trying to avoid.  Dedicate yourself to one prompt, free-write on it, then pull up a fresh page and get to work–er, play.

For me, writing-prompt writing is a step away from the wild freedom of free-writing in that I’m looking to create a story with a beginning, middle and end.  I allow a lot of leeway in there, though, because the focus here is creation.   The imagination gets free play, but it’s within certain loose boundaries.  At the same time, the internal critic gets a voice but doesn’t get to dominate.  There is plenty of time for the critic to go to town in a later draft.

Another option is to visit an anthology market site and use one of their calls for submissions to create your own possible submission (and give yourself a real deadline).  I recommend Duotrope and Ralan’s.

At the Duotrope market search page, narrow the focus by choosing a genre, and make sure you click on the “Anthologies only?” button.  Ralan’s is primarily specfic.  At the top of the page click on “Antho” or “Antho–4theLove” to see their list.

Happy Word-Crafting!

 

 

 

 

Free-Writing Wednesday (aka Word-Composting)

Free-writing is wonderful in its simplicity.

I first learned of it in college when my TA turned me on to Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind: Living the Writer’s Life.  The purpose of free-writing is to let loose our limitless creativity, which we keep buried under our routine ways of thinking and which is often at the mercy of our internal critics.  In the book, Goldberg calls this internal critic/editor the “monkey mind” (which doesn’t exactly work for me as a metaphor because monkeys can get pretty wild in their play).

The guidelines go like this (notice that I didn’t say “rules”):

1. Set yourself either a time (five minutes to start) or space limit (half a page to start) and KEEP THE PEN/PENCIL MOVING until you reach it.

2. Yes, really: KEEP THE PEN/PENCIL MOVING.  Write upside-down or in circles if you want, just keep it going.

3. Don’t erase or cross out.

4. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, etc.

5. Be fearless.  Don’t shy away from anything.  Dumb, dangerous, dry, disgusting–it all goes into the compost heap.

That’s right: banish the inner editor completely.  If you get stuck, write the last word that came out again and again until you get back in the flow.

Most orthodox folk (yes, I’m well aware of the irony here), insist on writing utensils and paper, but this also works on a keyboard.  If you want to test it out on your computer, check out Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die site; it has a “Kamikaze Mode” that starts erasing words if you break guideline #1.  If you opt for the download version, there’s a “Disable Backspace” setting that makes sure you follow guideline #3.

Free-writing is fabulous for brainstorming and is a great way to warm up before sitting down to more (ahem) serious writing.  In fact, those of you who have come in contact with The Artist’s Way, might recognize the technique from “morning pages”, which works in a similar way: you write out all the first layer debris that scums up the surface of your mind, so that you can start working deeper into the imagination.

Your non-fiction writing can benefit from this as well.  I’ve used this successfully with essay topics, where it has helped me find a direction for a certain topic as well as flesh out my ideas.  The first five minutes of an essay test has me on a piece of scratch paper, spilling out whatever comes to mind in an effort to get past the obvious.

For fiction writing, the possibilities are endless.  Stuck on a character?  Free-write from his/her POV.  Can’t think of a way to describe a basic setting to make it come alive?  Free-write every last detail of that cafe down to the dead ragged moth coated in window-sill dust.  Having trouble with an action scene?  Free-write every physics-defying possibility.

Okay, try it.  Set a timer for five minutes.  Here’s a prompt to get you started:

“I remember…”

Again, if you get stuck, rewrite the last word you wrote or go back to the prompt:

I remember I remember I remember the ugly brown goat at the petting zoo.  It lunged at my peanut bag, tore it open in one snap.  Peanuts tumbled across the tray of my stroller, but before my hands could catch them, the intruding grey goat snout lipped them all up.  I remember that I screamed, anger, frustration.  I was saving those peanuts for the cute black baby goat over there.  Not this fat farting leviathan of a goat.  My mother hustled me away. I think she interpreted my howling as fear.  Nope.  All year and a half of me wanted to strangle that foul bug-eyed beast.

Time’s up.  Shake out your hand.  Read it over.  Anything interesting or unexpected?  Now, now, stuff that hyper-critic back in the box and nail it shut.  Just notice what you wrote without getting judgmental.

I was struck by how violent my reaction to the goat was.  I remember wanting to really hurt that animal, and that was before I had the language to articulate that kind of violence.

How did it go for you?

Writing Fun 1

Let’s start with the fun stuff.  I was going to call this “writing warm up” or “writing exercise”, but I’ve found there is too much baggage attached to exercise in that most people approach working out as just plain work.  It’s not.  It’s play.

I’ve used this game with myself as well as with some of my students to jump-start the imagination and start working with figurative language.  (And I wish I could remember the website I found it on as I’ve been using it for years.)

It’s a simple exercise.

Step 1: Write a list of eight random concrete nouns.

Step 2: Choose a job.

Step 3: Write a list of eight verbs that relate to that job.

Step 3: Write five sentences, each using one of your nouns and one of your verbs.

Get crazy.  No one else is going to see this.  Part of the play is to let yourself write silly nothings just for the fun of it.  You have permission to write absolute garbage.  (Remember: garbage makes compost from which something marvelous can grow.)

Just to show I give as good as I get, I’ll do it too (using my husband as a word-generator)…

nouns–dog, cat, cheese, mouse, color, hippopotamus, windshield wiper, arrow

job=yoga instructor

verbs–lead, teach, talk, move, demonstrate, educate, encourage, enlighten

Sentence samples (my contribution to the compost heap):

1. The windshield wiper enlightened the glass by sweeping aside the snow of ignorance.
2. The arrow leads the eyes to the bullseye.
3. Demonstrating the difference between mass and density, the hippopotamus floated on the surface of the algae-scummed pool.
4. I dare you to try to educate that cat on the joys of swimming.
5. How could he stay on his low-fat diet with all that melted mozzarella cheese encouraging him to devour the pizza?

If you have a writing partner, have that person write the lists that you draw from and vice versa.  Most of my writing partners will do their utmost to make it challenging.  If you don’t have a writing partner, try to get a friend or family member to offer their ideas.  Someone who doesn’t know the purpose of the elicited words can’t subconsciously help you.

Again, don’t approach this as work.  Have fun.