10 Ways to Prompt Write

I love prompt writing. Prompts help shovel creative coal from your heart and brain into the electrons on your screen. They force you to look at subjects you would never contemplate otherwise in a writing context. The following are some of my favorite prompt schemes. A top ten list if you will.

• 10) Writing from a series of three words plucked randomly from a dictionary. All that is required here is a dictionary and a finger with which to point. Close your eyes, flip the dictionary to an indiscriminate page and place your finger on a word. Repeat two more times. Then use the three words in a story. The story should be short, around 500 to 1000 words.
• 9) Writing from pictures - setting. Flip through magazines for a setting like a desert or castle or mansion or even a restaurant. Set your story up in the setting presented. Again, make it short, 500-1500 words.
• 8) Writing from pictures - character(s). Flip through magazines for characters. Pick people to use for descriptive purposes and build a story around them. 500-1500 words.
• 7) Writing from open ended phrases like "I remember..." or "I forget". These stories are best suited to short vignettes although they can grow into longer pieces given a little work.
• 6) Writing off newspaper headlines. Picking the more outlandish headlines can reward a writer with some fairly bizarre and interesting plot lines. Nothing like real life to shine the way to good fiction. I've found these stories can go any length you want. The others can as well, but newspapers are great fodder for ideas that go long.
• 5) Write off a particular sense - ie taste. Use taste as a dominant theme throughout the story. The other senses need to be there, but using one sense as an overarching understated theme can be very interesting.
• 4) A time honored favorite - rewrite history. Lincoln or Kennedy don't die. Reagan does. Jonas Salk does not cure polio. The charge of the Light Brigade actually succeeds. Who knows? Whatever piece of history you like, turn it around and play with it. Short or long, the stories can be very entertaining.
• 3) Write off a title. I was driving up A1A on the Florida coast one night around 3:00am. I looked out over the ocean and the moon hung in the sky, a three dimensional orb. Nothing Earth shattering there, right? My entire life to that point, I'd only seen the moon as a two dimensional plate or pancake in the sky. I never visually saw its full three dimensional proportions. The title to a story popped into my head - "The Man Who Could Not See the Moon". I wrote the title down. The next morning I wrote the story in two hours. Writing off a title alone I've discovered is a lot of fun. These stories can easily run any length you like.
• 2) Each day, pick out two words in the English language that strikes a chord in your creative heart. Write them on separate, small pieces of paper and put them in a jar. After a few weeks, pull two words from the jar and use them in your story. Attempt to connect them. I did this with the words 'lavender' and 'hour'. The short story "Lavender Hour" was born. To this day, Lavender Hour is one of my favorite stories. Depending on your words and how you set them up in the story, length could run anywhere you like.
• 1) Write gender opposite. Lavender Hour was written from a first person female perspective. I didn't realize I could do that. When I was done, I was amazed. It'll stretch your appreciation for character to step in the other sexes shoes. Another great way to write a story any length you like. It may press you a little to go long on this one at first, but it's still a lot of fun.

There are many more prompt ideas you could come up with. The idea is to play around with them and have fun. Make up your own and wow the world!