Posts Tagged ‘prompts’

Writing Prompt: 100 Writing Prompts!

WHEN I STUMBLED UPON WRITER/HEALER/READER KELLY-ANN MADDOX, blogger2I was mesmerized! astonished! inspired! by the power! energy! brilliance! of her The Four Queens YouTube channel and The Four Queens blog. A qualified spiritual counselor (she’s studied! has a certificate! is not fooling around!), award-winning tarot reader, and self-love advocate, Kelly-Ann’s Etsy tag-line is, In service, with love.

Writing Prompt

In a recent blog post—so generous! so potentially life-changing!—Kelly-Ann presents: 100 Illuminating Journal Prompts: Heal, Reveal, and Get Real. Here’s #66: If you had to dedicate the next six months to only one project or goal, where would you choose to place your focus and why?

Go ahead, dig deep. Use these prompts to dive beneath the surface. Retrieve artifacts from your spirit. Dust them off. Examine them in the clear light of your own brilliant mind.

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Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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Writing Prompt: 99 Bottles of Beer?

IN NO PLACE LIKE HOME: A Memoir in 39 Apartments, author Brooke Berman41aX81j9a5L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_—who struggled both as a playwright and as a room-renter, sub-letter, and couch-surfer—shapes her story around the 39 spaces in which she lived during her early New-York-City years. Brilliant!

But if we haven’t occupied 39 places? What imaginative boxes could we use to divvy up and examine our lives? How about 39 cats? 12 breakups? 7 toaster ovens? 100 trips to IKEA? 17 head shots? 10,000 journal entries? 99 bottles of beer on the wall?

Writing Prompt

Make your own list! What organizing principle would best serve your memoir?

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Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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Writing Prompt: Word’s Worth

ONCE UPON A TIME, JOHN LENNON walked into avant-art gallery Indica, yoko-ono_ceiling_painting_1966_indica-gallery_yeswhere Yoko Ono had a show. There, he climbed a ladder, found a magnifying glass, and peered through it at the single, tiny word Ono had inscribed on the ceiling: “Yes”

If the word Ono had written had been, “No,” so the story goes, Lennon would have left the gallery without ever meeting Yoko. But it wasn’t. And that single word changed the course of rock-n-roll history.

Writing Prompt

From Yoko Ono to you: List words that could (or did) alter a situation. (Yes? No? Evidence? Surprise!? Listen? Run!?) Now pick one and write the story of how that single word changes everything.

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Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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Writing Prompt: Those Darned Greek Gods

THOSE POOR GREEK GODS. IT’S BEEN EONS SINCE ANYONE’S SO MUCH AS LIT A sacrificial fire in one of their names! Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena—they’ve got nothing to do now but loll around on pillow-y clouds watching AMERICAN GLADIATORS.

But what if one of the bored pantheon peered down, spotted a mere mortal struggling to accomplish a mundane task—breaking up with a boyfriend? paper-training a puppy?—and decided to offer an (immortal) hand?gods-war

Writing Prompt

Write about it in two scenes: Scene A details the entrance of the hoping-to-be-helpful god or goddess interrupting the mortal while she attempts to accomplish her task. Scene B reveals the (predictably terrible) outcome of the god(ess)’s “assistance.”

Extra credit? Write what happens between A and B!

Rick Riordan, author of the PERCY JACKSON AND THE OLYMPIANS series, created Meet the Greek Gods, where you’ll find plenty of juicy pantheon gossip to light your fire.

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Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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Writing Prompt: Color My World

PICASSO HAD HIS BLUE PERIOD AND HIS ROSE PERIOD. YOU CAN, TOO!

Writing Prompt

First, write a quick scene, making sure to include plenty of (visual) details of the setting. Now, rewrite the scene, describing objects in the environment using only color words in shades of BLUE: azure, cobalt, sky, robin’s egg, midnight, navy . . .

Pablo_Picasso,_1901-02,_Femme_aux_Bras_Croisés,_Woman_with_Folded_Arms_(Madchenbildnis),_oil_on_canvas,_81_×_58_cm_(32_×_23_in)index

Finally, rewrite the same scene, again, this time, using only shades of ROSE: fuchsia, pink, ballet slipper, coral, salmon, clay . . .

Does changing your “palette” affect the emotional tone? Which scene conveys your intention best? What other hues could you try? Make like Picasso! Pick the atmosphere you want to create and use color to evoke it!

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Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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Writing Prompt: Create Quirky Sentences

Writing Prompt

HERE’S A SYNTAX STRETCHER of a writing prompt! Jot down ten random letters of the alphabet, without repeating any of them. Now, write a dozen sentences built of words beginning with those letters, in the order you chose them.

full-alphabet-for-style-sheet1So, A X G K P S N J W D. (Really? I gave myself “X”?)

Alligators x-ray geese, killing patient-seeming noggins just when done. (Hmm. Not as awesome as I’d hoped.)

Average x-ray-ers (Hey! Have you got a better “X” word?) go kaput periodically, so, now, just walk delicately.

Ancestors’ xaphoons (Look it up!) give keening, piping sounds, not jiggly, weird droning.

Antiquated, xenaphobic guys (Sorry!) keep persisting in silly, nonsensical, juvenile woman-demeaning.

Averting xanthophobia, Gary’s kangaroo played solemnly ‘neath (???) jangly windchimes, dreaming. (Someone may be hallucinating. Gary? His kangaroo? We’ll never know.)

Why do this? Why not? Writing is supposed to be fun. Isn’t it?

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Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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A Writing Coach’s Favorite Writing Prompt: 10-Minute Sentence

Writing Prompt

THIS IS ONE OF MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE WRITING PROMPTS. Jot down a time of day, a color, an object, and a season. Set your timer for ten minutes and write one, fast, unbroken sentence. (Hello, FANBOYS!) Let your pen (or keyboard) become a runaway pony. Hang on and enjoy the ride!

So, how about MIDNIGHT, BLUE, COMPUTER, WINTER?

I’m sitting at my desk, at 12:29, and didn’t even notice midnight tick by, but it did, and 1 a.m. will probably do the same, as I love the quiet in the middle of the night, and, to tell the truth, I’m feeling a little blue, so the clickety-clack of my keyboard, which makes me feel productive, also insulates me from my own morbidity, as if, when I’m typing, there’s less f30a5d15bf30e977cb92e1d1b4aa68b7chance for the sadness that leaks in under the baseboards to crawl up my legs, scramble into my lap, and warm itself against the winter chill, which, as this is Florida, is nowise comparable to those winters in Massachusetts, blue twilight at 4 p.m., me treading the icy sidewalk up and over the Mass. Turnpike and onto wide, residential Washington Street, its houses lit warm and yellow and suggestive of hot dinners and families gathered, watching the evening news, while I trudge past, as if I were The Little Match Girl.

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Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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Writing Prompt: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

WAS IT A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT? OR WAS IT A CRISP, CLEAR WINTER’S DAY? Does the weather in your story suggest an atmosphere of hope? Or one of dread? Here’s your writing prompt: Experiment! Set a scene in broad, benevolent sunlight. Thindexen let clouds gather overhead. Or make a list of weather conditions that could influence a story: Impenetrable snow storm. Black ice. Gale-force winds. Downpour.

For example, once, obsessed by a boy a full foot-and-a-half taller than me, I called a Yellow Cab at the height of, yup, a swirling, impenetrable, eastern Massachusetts snow storm to carry me from Newton to Cambridge where he lived—as if in a fairy tale—with three disapproving roommates.

Then . . . the halting drive through sulfur-lamp pink-lit streets; the hushed breath as the cab starts its spin; the silence, snow still tumbling, after the crash.

Weather is a gift to a writer. How can you use it?

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A writing coach can help you with your writing prompts and more

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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Writing Prompts: Responding to Abstract Art!

AUTHOR KRIS WALDHERR POSTED A LINK to a wonderfully fresh Ploughshares article titled “Writing with Abstract Art.”  In the article, writer Anca Szilagyi discusses approachesindex to ekphrastic writing, or, writing about art, emphasizing writing to evidently non-narrative abstract art and offering four get-your-motor-running writing prompts that are a sure bet to spark some surprising work!

EKPHRASIS: a Poetry Journal, is “looking for well-crafted poems, the main content of which addresses individual works from any artistic genre.” Further, they explain, “Ekphrastic verse transcends mere description: it stands as a transformative critical statement, an original gloss on the individual art piece it addresses.”

Check it out! Give it a go! Might be a market for your mini-masterpiece!

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Writing coach

Need help with your book? I’m available for book coaching and manuscript review!
Click to read Should I Hire a Writing Coach in THE WRITER magazine.

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