Writing Prompt #22

I wasn't really one to purchase writing books, as any information in them I could likely find on the Internet. However, I was on a date with the spouse and we found a section on writing in a bookstore. Most of the books were about journalism, but I found one I could potentially use and bought it.

I have absolutely fallen in love with this book.

It has personality traits and psychological profiles for all kinds of characters, as well as several prompts for you to create characters and situations using the information you just learned. I have a feeling my writing is going to go in a completely new direction.

And so, in this wave of excitement, I've developed today's writing prompt with a focus on characters.

definition of solipsism: the theory or belief that you are all that exists. Therefore, a solipsist is someone who believes this.
definition source: Oxford English Dictionary, definition 2  http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/184295#eid22038490

Writing Prompt #21

College is over and done with, and now I find myself confronted with a lot of free time. Sure I still work, but now that there's no homework and studying I have a lot of time to fill. Naturally, I'll be writing, but now and then I have to take a break, and what will I do with myself? That's the crisis of my life.

Today's writing prompt doesn't come from a book. I was thinking about the fact that my most recent ideas are all about the beginning, and there's no end in sight. Not that that's a bad thing. Ray Bradbury, for example, began Farenheit 451 with just a concept: the protagonist's job is to burn books. Then, after writing a bit, Bradbury realized that his character wasn't the type to burn books, and so the rest of the story was born. I figure that's how my idea is going to pan out (not that I'm saying I write on the same level as Ray Bradbury. I have a lot more ground to cover before that can happen).

But endings. They sometimes are frustrating. They sometimes leave us wishing there would be more of the story, but knowing that the story has ended well. Sometimes we feel alienated from everything that happened in the book, just as the author intended it to be. Perhaps these endings happen by accident, but I like to believe some of them were planned. So today the prompt is all about the ending, starting with it and working backwards to get the story.

Writing Prompt #20

Well, it's been a super long chunk of weeks. I'm talking triple the homework load kind of long, the type of long that lets you dream of getting 5 hours of sleep a night. I got through it, thankfully, and now there is less than a month until my graduation ceremony, which also means less than a month for all of my pending homework assignments to be turned in. I'm really looking forward to a month of not sleeping.
On the brighter side, now that that mess of homework is done with I had time to create another writing prompt.

Writing Prompt #19

This next one was one of the first library snippets I wrote down. When I read it I got the sense of disappointment from what they were saying. But at the same time I saw the potential for joy, for delight that it was a boy. So I suppose it's up to the individual writer how this line is to be taken.

Writing Prompts #13-18

I've been in a writing prompt mood today. Rather than blow up the blog feed with post after post, I've decided to put the rest of today's writing prompts in one post.

Here we have the story of Billy. He's had an operation, yet to be determined, and now he's down for a nap. Why did he need an operation? Where's he going after he recovers?

Science fiction, has at times, changed the way humanity views the world and the future. In some cases the science fiction tells a tale of progress and a better way of living, but in other cases science fiction tells us about the darker sides of humanity. Where do these uncontrollable items fall? Salvation or destruction? Or is it yet to be revealed?

The Princess Bride is a tale of true love, and it has echoed through generations. My mother introduced the movie to me. I plan to introduce it to my children. The story is timeless (even if the special effects are not.) There's something about love that makes people want to read the story, as evidenced by Twilight's popularity (but don't ask me to give a rave review of that particular story) and Disney's tendency to turn horrific tales of murder and frustrated dreams into beloved romances (The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, The Snow Queen, etc.) We even like to watch stories of lost love, like One Day. So what kind of love is this prompt about?

Ah, the concept of memory. It's such a convenient tool for a storyteller to slip backstory into the current tale. What's this memory about?

In this prompt, try writing in the second person. Was it challenging, or did it strangely feel like the natural thing to do? There have been stories that have made use of the second person, like Italo Calvino's If On a Winter's Night a Traveler, and not the third person impersonal that some people mistake second person to be. If you need help, perhaps imagine that you're watching someone go about their day, the day of their grandfather's funeral. What do they look like? What do they do? How do they feel?

I'm not sure how much introduction this prompt needs. To me it seems to be a narrator who's addressing the reader directly, like a friend. But perhaps this is too ambiguous?

Writing Prompt #12

I found this line a while ago and have been obsessed with it ever since. There's so many things that this could be referring to, and no matter what it is that's being used, we don't know how to use it. The implications of the ignorance are up to the writer, but I think there's no doubt that this line implies implications.

Writing Prompt #11

Villains. Dirty heroes. A love that never happens because a character's morals are too gray. These tragedies of humanity are elements that draw me into stories, and this is today's writing prompt. If you write about a villain, make him self-aware (by him, I mean it in the neuter form. Pick what gender you wish). Make him know he's a villain, that he's causing harm, and make him do it anyway. Make him have reasons to go against his principles. Give him a choice to be bad. If you choose to write about a hero, why is he bloodthirsty? Is he one of those types that should be a villain, but he got what he wanted in the end? Here's a chance to develop a 'deeper' character.

Writing Prompt #10

Oh Wednesday. I think I'd enjoy it more if I got enough sleep last night, but there was incident involving a roasting pumpkin and I had to wait around for that to be dealt with before I could go to bed. So at midnight I plop down to sleep, and at about five in the morning something metal was crashing into our roof. At about seven thirty someone hopped up there to fix it, and by that time my body was done getting woken up and I was obliged to start the day. So, on the subject of incidents and happenstances, here's the next prompt:

Writing Prompt #9

Today's prompt hunt was an exciting one. The temperatures dropped down here in Arizona and for the first time this semester I got to wear a jacket and scarf. Since the library was heated, I had no need to wear a jacket and had dropped it on the floor when wandering the bookshelves. The books I stood by weren't very inspirational, so I decided it was time to move on. Rather than pick up the jacket, I decided to kick it ahead of me and search the books near where it landed. (No jackets were harmed in this endeavor). This jacket found me some good lines. So, on the subject of useful objects, today's prompt involves focusing on an object.

Writing Prompt #8

It seems every other day I have a major assignment due, which means I'm in for a long haul of not sleeping. That's where the best ideas come from, right? I hope I can get through this without going insane. But everything coming due means that graduation is just around the corner, and I think that's the part of this I need to focus on.
For this writing prompt, I was so struck by the things I found in this book that I wrote down the title to read it after the craziness of graduation is over. So your ideas about this lovely sentence may be tainted by the source material.

Writing Prompt #7

This prompt is due to a very lazy Sunday. I must have laid around two hours now trying to find things to fill the time. I feel ideas stirring so perhaps it's only a matter of time before the words start coming in.

Writing Prompt #6

We just got done with a scary movie night and I'm trying to take my mind off of scary things. Maybe my heart is racing because of the caffeine? Either way, my mind is going a mile a minute and I had to churn something out. But then, I couldn't find my flash drive that has every writing project I've started since I was eleven (not ready to trust cloud storage yet. Call me crazy.) I assume I just left it at work again, but until then I have to fly blind and write a random scene, instead of continuing where I left off. But in the spirit of scary movies and the tail-end of Halloween weekend, here's my next prompt:

Writing Prompt #5

I'm a little excited about this prompt. When I opened the book for this one (I think it was a novelized movie script) and saw this line, I knew I had to write it down. There's so many directions you could go with this, no matter what genre you write. Perhaps it's because this prompt is only one word.

Writing Prompt #4

This next batch of prompts comes from the top floor of the University of Arizona library. After my internship I wander through the shelves, selecting random books and writing the sentences that stand out to me. It makes for great thinking material.

Writing Prompt #3

I guess now that I'm on the third prompt that they aren't quite "prompts." If it were a prompt it would tell you what to write, but these don't do that. I still like to think of them as prompts, though, because when I read them I think of what I would say next and how this chosen line would become a story. What characters would say these things? For me, the fact that it gets me thinking about things I could write makes it a prompt.

Writing Prompt #2

The second of my three snippets from that book of poetry:

Writing Prompt #1

This is the first of my writing prompts, courtesy of the UA Poetry Center. I think what struck me is that a line like this existed in a book with that title (hence why I included the title).