Use any of the following snippets of dialogue as an “overheard conversation” story starter. In other words, start off a short story or scene by imagining that your main character has just overheard the following brief snapshot out of someone else’s conversation:

• “That’s when I realized that if I didn’t kill her, someone else would. And I couldn’t let that happen.”

• “She was the most beautiful little girl I’d ever seen. It was a pity, really.”
• “I’m telling you, he was there. I know he was dead, but he was standing right at the foot of my bed, clear as day.”
• “Go ahead. Open it. You don’t have to be afraid.”

Technorati Tags: free-writing, journaling, prompts, story starters, write, writers, writing

A gray-haired man sits before you at a table. On that table he has arranged four small wooden boxes, each one clearly made by an artisan of great skill. The first bears an angular geometric pattern of light and dark woods. The second has been stained a deep cobalt blue. The third seems to be made of rosewood; the pattern of the wood grain has been carefully preserved. The lid of the fourth has been inlaid with mother-of-pearl and various colors of woods, forming a lifelike barn owl with a moon above it. The man gestures at the boxes and says simply, “choose.” He smiles.

Which box do you open, and why? What do you find within? What happens next?

This writers’ exercise was inspired by the beautiful work of Patrick Parker of Arcane Art, who produces the most lovely wooden artwork and sells it at the Maryland Renaissance Festival.

Technorati Tags: journaling, Maryland, medieval, prompts, Renaissance Festival, write, writers, writing

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According to Wikipedia, a mondegreen “is the mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase in such a way that it acquires a new meaning.” This is so common in the case of songs that there are entire books of mondegreens available. You can also find out about some common mondegreens at the following pages:

• Mondegreens Ripped My Flesh

• mondegreen central
• The Misheard Lyrics Hall of Fame
• Brain Candy mondegreens
• A Collection of Humorous Mondegreens

Using a mondegreen of your own, or one from a page linked to above, do one of the following:

• Write the rest of the song that would go around this misheard lyric, or turn it into a poem.

• Use it as a free-association jumping off point and just start writing to see what odd and unusual ideas you come up with.
• Use it as a story-starter.

Technorati Tags: journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing

I’m continually amazed by the contents of FARK photoshop threads (those things where someone presents an original image and challenges folks to come up with amazing, clever, or funny photoshopped adaptations of it). The better ones provide a world of material for writers’ exercises. In particular, the images generated using this pointy structure made my jaw drop. Each of these images, with a few exceptions, could act as inspiration for an entire fictional world, or could act as a unique story starter.

Today, check out the photos in that thread. Try to look through the entire thread before settling on an image if you can–it’s tough because there are some amazing early entries, but you don’t want to miss out on the later ones. Pick one image and do one of two things with it:

• Use it as a story starter.

• Set a timer for 30 minutes and free-write about a fictional world inspired by that image.

Myself, I may use some of them as inspiration for a Rifts campaign I’m thinking of starting. Feel free to go back later and do the same thing all over again with other images; I can’t imagine wasting such beautiful inspirational material!

Technorati Tags: fark, graphics, journaling, photographs, photoshop, prompts, story starters, world building, write, writers, writing

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Song lyrics can be an incredible source of inspiration. Because they’re so compressed, and (the good ones, at least) designed to create or accompany intense emotion, they often hint at much greater things. A single phrase from a song can spark an entire story or world. Today, use the following as a story starter:

“In the garden I committed no crime.”

This particular line is from Tori Amos’ song “Raspberry Swirl,” from her album “from the choirgirl hotel”. As soon as I heard/read it, it made me shiver with the possibilities inherent in those seven words.

Technorati Tags: journaling, prompts, Tori Amos, write, writers, writing

Today’s bizarre spam subject header (brought to you by the wonders of randomized word-pickers) is “lovingly satanic”. Yes, I really did get an email with this as the subject line last night; naturally(?!) it was a stock pick advertisement. For today’s exercise, do one of the following:

• Use the phrase as the title for a poem, short story, or essay.

• Imagine that rather than being randomly generated, this was actually meant to be representative of the product being sold within the spam. Free-write about the product this might represent, write a sales pitch for this product, or write a short story in which this product appears.
• Free-write from the phrase, using random association to see where it takes you.

Technorati Tags: journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing

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Story Starters can be a fun sort of exercise to play with. The idea is this: someone gives you a phrase or sentence, and you start a story (or other piece of writing) with it, free-writing and free-associating to go to your own unique place from there. Although one term for this is “story starter”, you don’t have to necessarily use the phrase or sentence verbatim, nor do you have to use it as a literal start to your piece of writing. You could introduce it part-way through. The story starter also might be an object, a piece of description, a bit of scenery or dialogue, or some other random fraction of prompt that you build a story around.

Think of it like having a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. It might indeed be an edge or corner piece, or it might turn out to be a random piece from the middle of the puzzle, and you build the puzzle out around it.

Today, here are three random starters to choose from:

• “Please, close the door. I don’t want to let them out.”

• “That book, over there. That’s the dangerous one.”
• “She sat down on the couch carefully, as though trying not to disturb anything.”

Technorati Tags: journaling, prompts, write, writers, writing

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