If you’re a fiction writer, pick a character and: What’s the biggest disappointment he or she has ever faced? Free-write for 10 minutes, or write the scene itself.

If you can’t think of specific lines, try to remember a scene from a book or movie and read or watch that scene before doing the latter half of this exercise.

This exercise inspired by The Secret Scroll.

Write the scene in which you or your character returns home.

Let this take you wherever it happens to go. You might start out writing about a recent story you penned, and end up describing an unusual character you want to create for your next book. You might start out describing a character you aren’t sure how to write, and end up ranting about someone else’s depiction of gender roles. Go wherever it leads.

got loot?

• Pick up the nearest book. (I’m sure you must have one nearby.)
• Turn to page 123.
• What is the first sentence on the page?
• The last sentence on the page?
• Now . . . connect them together….

(And no, you may not transcribe the entire page of the book–that’s cheating!)

Since there seems to be some confusion among participants, here’s a little clarification for my version of this. You can connect the two sentences directly if they seem to go together, or you can invent something to go between them as a connector. If you connect them directly, free-write for a little while speculating as to what tale they might be part of or hint at, or turn them into part of a larger tale. If you invent a connector, try to end up with a full page of writing by the time you’re done (the phrases you borrowed can fall anywhere within that page).

Today, write about a lifelong (or career-long, or the equivalent) ritual that a person uses and how that affects his or her life. If you prefer to write non-fiction, journal about the place of a ritual in your own or a relative or friend’s life. If you prefer to write fiction, create, examine, or explore the place of a ritual in the life of one of your characters.

For a beautiful example, read Jervis’s blog entry The Next Rank, about a ritual that saw him through his years in the military.

Yes, this prompt really is just that simple. There are dozens of ways to spice it up or restrict it further, however, if that isn’t enough for you. Place limits based on writing time or space. Specify a genre. Specify that both the snow and the sand have to be real parts of an outdoor scene, actual conditions, not represented in some other way. Do whatever you want with it!

Any of these are perfectly legitimate ways to approach your world’s ills, but you should know which you’re using and be consistent about it. Today, free-write for a page about the state of your world’s medical system, and the impact of this on your visible characters.

This could be a photo album that belonged to a previous generation, or one from his own childhood. If you don’t tend to write about modern or futuristic worlds, you can substitute some sort of sketch book for a photo album (perhaps a family member possessed some artistic talent and liked to draw other family members or unusual occasions).

As an alternative exercise, look through photo sites on the internet and pick a photograph to represent the one he finds; write about it and how it fits into his life and family.

wanna be my muse?

• Debonair: Where does your character fit on the suave-to-bumbling scale?
• Deadly: How deadly is your character? What could make her kill someone, and how would it happen?
• Daffodil: What does your character think of bright, sunny, happy flowers?
• Drawing: Does your character have any artistic skills to speak of? If so, what are they and how good is he at them?

Sometimes the most unlikely or seemingly meaningless question can yield unexpectedly interesting results. You never know which characters are hiding odd habits, abilities, or events from you. Any strong word—particularly a verb or noun—can be used as the basis for a question, so if these options don’t do it for you, look for more options elsewhere.

If you prefer to write non-fiction rather than fiction, ask character-building questions of yourself and journal about the answers.