Unique Writing Prompts

Writers block. What do I write? Where do I get ideas? There are books and websites aplenty that provide writing prompts. These usually consist of a phrase or a situation. Examples of these are, “Finish this sentence, ‘She stood on the edge of a cliff…’” and “Write about a time in your life when you felt betrayed.”

Ideas can also be found all around us from news stories to people sitting near you in a coffee shop. Writers are observant and should pay attention to everything that goes on around them.

In our writing group we have different leaders at each session. The leader provides a selection of prompts and we take 15 minutes to write. Lists of phrases or words to choose from are the most common types of prompts and sometimes they can bring no inspiration whatsoever. If you are looking for something different, try some of the following:

Pictures.Choose a photo from a selection of a variety of pictures. A whole story can be drummed up from a picture of an adult and a child sitting together on a porch step, dock or beach. Beautiful poems can be written from images of nature. These photos can be found in magazines, newspaper articles, the internet, or your own photo albums.

Music.Some writers find background music relaxing enabling their creative muse to emerge, but have you actually listened to the lyrics? Some songs tell stories while others can induce thoughtful insight. See http://musicouch.com/music-making/anthem-by-leonard-cohen/ for this week’s musical prompt and my response.

Objects. If you are in a writing group and leading a session, look around your home for some unusual objects. You can either put them on display for people to choose one to write about, or put them in a bag and have them choose blindly.

Lists A. These can be produced in a variety of ways. One person can provide lists of people, places and events and you pick one from each category and create a story or poem. For example you could choose a teacher, a park, and an accident.

There is a more fun way to create these nouns. Each person receives identical sheets of paper folded 3 times. In the first section of the paper everyone writes a person (or an animal). Fold the paper so what is written cannot be seen and pass the papers to the next person (or more if you wish, i.e. two people to the left). Then without knowing what the character is, the next person writes down a location. Pass the papers again and on the third section each person writes an event, again not knowing what else is written on the page. Finally, pass the papers again and what you receive will be your prompt. Ideally you will receive a page you have not seen before. For this to happen, the number of places the pages are passed is dependent upon the number of participants. This can turn out to be a very fun exercise.

Lists B. Provide a list of random words. Choose one word, several words, or attempt to use all the words in a brief story or poem.

Dictionary Dip. Open the dictionary at a random page, close your eyes and place your finger anywhere on the open pages. Where your finger lands, that is your prompt word. Don’t cheat and change your word; that defeats the purpose. If you don’t know the word the definition is right there in front of you.

Poetry Prompt. Obviously any of the above can be used to create poetry but we have a special method we use for our “poetry workshops”. We have a large envelope packed with tiny slips of paper. Each slip contains one word. We dump the pile of words on the table and each person grabs a handful. Take the words and arrange them in a way that makes sense. You can glue them to a page like a ransom note, or write them down. Insert prepositions in between words where desired. This is my favourite way to create a poem and have created some of my best poems with this method. You need a very large cache of words so start collecting now. Some of the words we use are actually paint chips. Colours have beautiful names.

So whether you are in a writing group or not, these ideas could help boost your imagination and creativity.

You may also be interested in:

http://writinghood.com/writing/the-writers-genre-rut/

http://writinghood.com/writing/where-do-stories-come-from/

http://writinghood.com/writing/how-to-start-and-manage-a-writing-group/

http://writinghood.com/writing/10-benefits-of-joining-a-writing-group/