Today, I’m going to share with you a prompt from the wonderful weekly site Booking Through Thursday, which they call simply ‘writing challenge’ and I’ll call connecting the dots. Here’s what they have to say:
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).
Writers of all people tend to be familiar with the power of ritual in one’s life. After all—that’s one of the reasons behind engaging in writer’s prompts. The familiarity of ritual can help to put one in a particular mindset, go after a certain goal, work on a difficult project or personality trait, etc.
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.
Write a brief scene in which both snow and sand make an appearance.
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!
Imagine that one of your fictional characters has pulled an old family photo album from a shelf. He retires to a couch to look through it. What does he find? Describe at least one of the photographs—something that surprises him or catches his attention—in detail.
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.
Today’s prompt is called ‘childhood memories’ and it’s from another Heather over at A Creative Journal:
[S]pend some time writing about a safe place you remember from your childhood. This could be someone’s house or at the top of a tree in your backyard. Once you’ve written that one up, also spend time writing about a scary place you recall from your childhood. This could be a particular house you didn’t like to pass on your way to school or a room in your own house.
I particularly appreciate Other Heather’s reminder to only tackle the scary place if you’re ready for it—smart words! You’ll find quite a few interesting prompts and links at her place, so go visit while you’re at it.
Today, go find a prompt from one of these wonderful sites and enjoy! I particularly like the wackiness of the logline generator for silly fun, and the pym prompts for neat photos.
Write nothing but headlines. Sometimes the thought of writing an in-depth article is too much for your brain to deal with after a long day (or at the start of one). Spend 15 or 30 minutes just churning out headlines without worrying about how catchy they sound.
So today, write headlines. You might choose an area to write headlines in beforehand (sports, local news, fashion, parenting, pets, farming, health, science) or just go crazy. Check out the above link for more ideas! Or go on and read more of Freelance Folder for plenty of ideas that span the wider world of freelancing.
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. Albert Einstein
Today, pick something you consider yourself an expert at and choose one small sub-topic or item that you want to explain (make sure it’s something your grandmother isn’t already familiar with, or you’ll defeat the purpose!). Using no more than one side of a sheet of paper, write an explanation you think your grandmother would understand. If you really want to test yourself, show it to her afterward!
[T]he scene starts in a suburban living room containing a man in an iron lung and ends with Walter destroying a sports car with a golf club while screaming, “This is what happens when you f* a stranger in the a*!!!!” (Or as the censored version on Comedy Central would have it, “This is what happens when you meet a stranger in the Alps!!!”)
Normally the nonsequitors used in place of profanities when the censors get hold of a movie just make me roll my eyes, but this one is hilarious in its own right, just because it’s so silly. So today, pick a book or movie that has some profanities in it (if you try to avoid particularly profane reading material, you can always pick one whose profanities are very mild) and find creative and entertaining ways to ‘censor’ them. Do this to at least three separate profanities (if you can’t find a page with multiple profanities on it, pick non-contiguous paragraphs). Try to free-write possible replacements in list form, then go back afterward and pick the most interesting or entertaining results.
Next time you find yourself having trouble solving a literary problem in your writing, use colors to help you brainstorm an answer.
Say you find yourself uncertain how your main character will get out of a seemingly hopeless situation. What would a purple solution to the problem be? Purple might lead you to think of royalty, twilight, grandmothers, or magic, any of which could suggest a solution. If that color doesn’t work, move on to the next. You can go through the colors in order, or pick one at random.
