NOTE FROM FORUM ADMIN - THREAD STICKIED AS LONG AS IT PROVES USEFULL
This isn't actually poetry/prose, so I hope It doesn't get deleted.
Does anyone use Writing Prompts when they have writers block? Or even just to try to get your mind to think a different way? If so, post ones you really felt helped you, because maybe they'll help others as well.
Here are some of my favorites...
It's a Party Scene and everyone is having a good time. When suddenly, someone breaks something in the house. Write the scene that follows. The Host's reaction, who broke the object and what the object is play the biggest roles in this prompt
While out to lunch with coworks, you run into a friend you haven't seen in years. You greet eachother, then as the friend leaves, they call you by an Old Nickname. Your coworkers ask why you have that nickname. Write the scene that follows.
The power goes out at your house. You get a knock on your door. It's a neighbor. She asks you if you'd like to come over and eat the icecream she has in her freezer before it melts due to the lack of power. You agree, and find she has 2 people at her house already who you have never met. Write the scene that follows.
You dial a wrong number by mistake, but the person who answers knows who you are. Using only Dialog, write how you would figure out who the other person is without directly asking them.
Write a car sale negotiation from the perspective of the car
You are at a halloween party, when you notice there is someone dressed in the exact same costume. Strange things begin to happen and you suspect the doppelganger has something to do with it. Write this scene
when i have writters block (like now)i just look away from writting for a while and if that doesnt work i start putting together oopsites. for example the darkness lit the way, my dying heart found its soul again.
I like these. Very creative and helpful to many people I'm sure. Here's a few of mine -
Your out with a new boyfriend/girlfriend and run into your ex. What happens? Is it awkward, or does everyone just go about their buisness? Are you maybe happy to see them because you 2 decided to be friends?
While pet-setting for a friend, something happens to the pet. Write what happens, how it happens, how you react and how you tell the friend. Then write how your friend reacts.
You decide to buy a new house. The one you have in mind is an older, but nice house that only needs a few things fixed/touched up. It hasn't been lived in for awhile. While exploring, what are some things you discover?
Form a band of either real people (using the names of you and some friends for example), or made up people. Write a story about them and their life. What's the bands name? What type of music do they play? Do they ever become successful? What hardships do they face while trying to make it big?
These gave me tons of great ideas and ways to unlock my mind.
But.
Also with school being so crazy, I haven't been able to write much.
SOOO.
Over the holidays, I might get out my creativity on these rather than half my body weight in cookies like everyone else. xD
Thank you
"If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape."
-Ray Bradbury
I have a victorianesque painting in my house. It's of a man and woman in front of a fire place dressed as if they where at a ballroom dance, the man is standing behind the woman with his arms around her. I always wanted to write a story about it but since I haven't yet maybe someone else will. Maybe they just met, maybe they are old lovers, maybe the man is thinking of pushing the woman into the fire, maybe he's the infamous Jack the Ripper, who knows. I always wondered what they where thinking or what the next picture would have been if there was another painting to follow it.
Ron, this is good. I especially liked your closing thought about what the next picture would be. Maybe there'd be a whole series of pictures. Perhaps other, related characters would start to appear.
Slowly the pictures multiply. Then the multiplication process explodes as more and more people from the past get in on the act. The people in the pictures refuse to be trapped inside their photographs. One by one, they emerge. Eventually, they're escaping in vast numbers. The people in the "real world" ultimately come to understand that they're being overrun.
I usually start with a conversation between 2 folk and start them talkin about a dilemma that has to be fixed or serious consequences will upset a good balance and cause chaos.
EZ*
I tend to write my stories from the middle backwards and then out again...I dunno why I always get stuck with this character I've never even contemplated popping up fully formed in a dream or random wandering thought, with a world changing problem or some great things to make others talk about...so yeah my writing method is slightly skewed, like my principals and my wit.
ImmortalJake - excellent post. It's convinced me of what I've always suspected: I'll never write a novel. It sounds far too much like hard work (something I've always worked hard to avoid).
sidsuicide: over to you. Assuming that - unlike some other people - you don't suffer from laborophobia, best of luck with your character!
Edited by: alephghost
at September 10, 2011, 12:47pm
*takes note of EVERYTHING* This is help for the me. I should show my friends this. Can I copy and paste this to other sites to help out my friends that do experience writers block?
------------------------------------------------------------ Mistress Legacy: She's not that kind of mistress
So please no
Honestly, when I have writer's block I just force myself to write. Eventually something clicks and I can work off of it.
It's a painful process but it hasn't failed me yet.
Prompts never helped me much for some reason. I'd always look at a prompt, start something, then immediately trash it because something else begins nagging me or I can tell already that the writing is so uninspired that it's pathetic.
{Free for any to use in their stroies, provided that its still okay that I use it too... XD}
Life is thought to be merely the energy that keeps a being or person alive, the breath we breathe, the heart that beats with in, life is, and will only be as such.
The notion to view it as simple or easy is ridicule, as it can anything but.
Life plays with in the same rhythmic tempo as the time that makes the Earth turn, or the suns cycle through the solar system it supports, or the circulation of our force that keeps us alive.
Time is like a flowing river, and we are riding its thrashing surf, enjoying the journey.
But its deceivingly pleasurable trip can slam into a jarring halt as we reach the rapids, curving unevenly as we go astray from the path that life meant for us to follow.
This bump in the road between lifes choices and the time given to us to choose them is where I stood at this very moment, the temptation to go astray from my path in life, and choose something I was never meant to even consider.
It would be a waste of time, it would alter the path ahead of me, possibly in an irreversible way; I may be faced with regrets, I may one day wish that I could have undone what I shall be doing, in just a few moments.
But when your heart screams in protest against the path that is set for you, and demands the order for you to do something else, something that could rip you apart with out, how can you even think of resisting?
Why should it be impossible to have what you want, and still do what you must?
It seems to be a crime to half to live pinned to a path that may present choices you do not want, or to never have the temptations that you are required to decline.
I never really had asked for what was being present to me now, and the urgent warnings of logic and instinct were begging me to decline now, but my heart...
My heart was louder then logic, and instinct, and it was perfectly acceptive to the offering at hand; it was encouraging me to accept, and when everything was said and done, with both time to choose was running out, and the path already set for me, why not?
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The first half of a story I made for a contest, a few months ago; it did'nt really get noticed though. Xp
Have fun with it! "D
Oh, we're falling so fast, just save me.. 
Mistress Legacy: She's not that kind of mistress 
Silly vagina, useless wings are for penguins.
