A Writer's Craft Community discussion

In addition to the ones at the end of each chapter, there are a number of writing prompts in the For Students section of the companion website for A Writer's Craft: Multi-Genre Creative Writing. You can download the PDF file of Journal Exercises.

Please add your favorite writing prompts here!

Here's a prompt to try with your birthdate and a print copy of a dictionary. Open the dictionary to any random page and find the entry that corresponds to the number of your birth month (counting entries from the top of the page). Write down that word. Then flip to another random page. Write down the word for the entry that corresponds to the number of your birth day. Finally, flip to another page in the dictionary and using the last digit of your birth year, count back from the bottom of the page to find the entry that corresponds to that number. You now have 3 words. Write a paragraph or a page (or a poem) that incorporates a form of these words — you could take a verb and use it as a noun or use the adjective or adverb form of the word. See what you can come up with as you try to connect these words — they don't all have to be in the same sentence or even the same paragraph or stanza.

Write an erasure poem. First find a text you'd like to use. It may be poetry or prose, and it may be something you love or something you disagree with. Read the text and find within it words that say something completely different. Some poets choose individual letters from words to construct new words. Now take a black marker and redact out all the other words in the text (or use white-out or paper to cover the words, if you prefer). In this way, you create your poem by erasing the other text, yet you leave the original words in their original places. Often poets include a reference to the original text either by keeping the title or adding a title and epigram.

Take a photo or painting of a person you don't know. It might be from the newspaper or from a literary journal like Ponder Review that contains art. (If you can't find an image with people in it, then consider the artist or a person looking at the image.) Write a character sketch based initially on what you can see in the photo or painting. Describe what the person looks like, what they're wearing, where they live, etc. Move beyond the picture and imagine this person's life. What kind of family do they have? What do they do with their days? What things might they own? What does this person most want in the situation they are in? What desires might they have for their future? What experiences have they lived through that shape who they are today (either at the time the photograph was taken or now)?

Try writing a familiar story pattern in reverse. For instance, take the pattern of a quest. Instead of writing the search to find something, start with finding it and write the journey to rid your character of the thing they wanted to find. Who do they give it to? Or how does the desired thing (or person?) take over their lives until they have to lose it again.

Poets & Writers publishes weekly prompts on their The Time is Now page.

Recently, I heard an actor talking about how he prepared for a role by writing a journal for the character. My sense was this was a journal in the character's past, not the time of the script. In either case, it seemed like a good activity to do as a fiction writer or playwright: create a journal entry for a day in the life of your character that precedes the time of your story. If you get into it, you could journal every day for a week (or longer) about a week in your character's life.

Write a sentence tree poem. If you've ever been taught to diagram sentences by having the main clause on one line and clauses and phrases branching off, then you can follow those rules. If not, make up your own diagram for a long sentence with part of the sentence on one line and other parts branching off at different angles. Let new thoughts or partial thoughts sprout like twigs from the branches. You can type this like a concrete poem, keeping its shape, or write the lines, branches, and twigs as individual horizontal lines. Your poem may have multiple sentences, of course! But start it hand-written and non-linear, making shapes with your lines, then decide how you want to type it out.

Once a month, Rattle posts an ekphrastic challenge, asking poets to respond to a new work of art. You could write poetry or prose, and you don't have to submit to Rattle, but the images of art that they select might prove inspirational. Spend some time with the image before writing, looking at it in detail and letting an impression sink in. Then don't describe the artwork, but instead write what you think or feel after living with it.

Draft a diptych poem or a poem in two parts, modeled after paintings that are displayed together in connected panels. Start with one subject or image. Write a few lines (maybe 3-8 lines, maybe more) then shift to a distinctly different subject or image for the rest of the poem. The images should be different, but there should be some connection in your mind. You don't need a transition from one to the next, but they should go together for some reason that you don't explain.

Feeling ambitious? Turn it into a triptych by adding another section. Often the central panel of a triptych is most important or at least larger and the outer panels are smaller, related images.

Recently, someone posted in another group that they were looking for uplifting prompts for nonfiction. Memory exercises are good. I thought I'd add some here. These would be just as good for fiction or poetry.

1) Write about a holiday that you enjoy most. You might pick one specific holiday and describe what happened that year or you might pick a holiday and describe the traditions you associate with it and how those have evolved through the years.

2) Write about a vacation. Maybe this is a trip you took with your family or with a friend. What was important about the trip for you (or about not going anywhere if it was a staycation). Was it the destination or was it the people that mattered most (or both). Focus your writing in the important moments, though don't leave out the obstacles you had to overcome to get there.

3) Find an object that you associate associate with someone, however obliquely. (Maybe your teacher will bring in an object and ask you to associate with it.) Write about the person and why the object makes you think of them.

4) Write about learning to read or learning to ride a bike or any accomplishment from your past. What made this accomplishment seem so great? Was it because of the difficulty of what you did or that others had done it before you or that you impressed someone by doing it, etc.? Try to convey the challenge as well as the joy of succeeding.

5) Write about a favorite relative. If you can, interview the person to learn more about their past, but if you're unable to talk with them, then write from memory and tell about the moments that make them important in your life.

Reading The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop has me thinking about writing exercises that could be used to get at cultural differences. I don't want to ask students to write from a different cultural perspective, since that can be fraught with pitfalls even for experienced writers, but instead, I'd like to get students to explore their own:

1) Write about a place where you felt out of place and uncomfortable. Write about the unusual things in that space that you noticed because they were new to you or the normal things that seemed unusual due to the circumstances. Think about the emotions you experienced in that space: was it new and exciting or intimidating or both (or something else). Try to evoke those emotions through your description of the space, though you can name your emotions as well.

2) Think of an heirloom or a ritual that has deep family or cultural significance to you. Describe that object or the objects associated with the ritual in detail in order to evoke the people you associate with those objects.

3) Write a list of names you associate with your heritage. This might be family names, place names, languages, etc. For each name, write down one or more statements associated with them. Write a list poem or a lyrical paragraph, listing the names and associations.

4) Imagine your grandparents or great-grandparents when they were younger. What conversation might they have about their prospective (great-)grandchild before your parents or grandparents were even a glimmer in their eyes? Write that dialogue as if you could hear it in a dream or in a play. They may be speaking only to one another or they may be aware of you and speaking to you directly.

5) Think of a 'nonliterary' cultural form that you're familiar with: it might be a limerick, a joke, the way your family has of telling stories at the dinner table, a sermon, a prayer, the way friends taunt each other in the schoolyard, etc. Consider the rhythms of that language. Then write a paragraph, a poem, or dialogue (etc.) that loosely mimics the rhythm of this speech. Your writing can be an ode to that kind of speech or it can be a parody.

Describe a place that could be a setting for a story. That place may be as big as a city or as small as a park or even a house or garden. In your description, include at least one character who could inhabit that place and two spaces within that place (these could be rooms in a house, houses on a block, businesses, landmarks, park benches, etc.). Your description should be about one page, though it can be longer

Describe a road trip you have taken or would like to take. For this exercise, it does not have to be a story: just describe where you start, where you end, and what stops there are (or could be) along the way. You can also describe who went (or would go) along on this journey and who the encountered along the way.

Draw a map of the place or places where you'd like to set your story. This can be one place or a journey between places. These should be actual places that you can put on a map, though you can give them fictional names. On your map, you should indicate at least 5 spaces where parts of the story could be set, and put in some identifying features (roads, streets, landmarks, etc.). Draw an icon for each place. These can be simple sketches, generic icons, or more elaborate pictures — for this exercise it's fine if your illustrations are not very artistic! Though it's great if they are. The only words on your map should be the names of the places.

(In my Digital Writing class, we then wrote these stories on Google Maps, though you could write it as a traditional story or you could add the story in text boxes on the hand-drawn map.)

Briefly describe one of the following situations (or something similar): a romantic getaway, a family gathering, a shopping trip, or a class reunion. Then list at least 5 ways the situation could go wrong, be derailed, or get out of hand. For each way it could go wrong (etc.) list two or more ways the situation could go right, get back on track, or turn out better than expected—and at least one way the situation could get worse.

Find a natural object to observe. This can be a living being or something inanimate, maybe a plant, leaf, insect, shell, soil, etc. Take a close look and describe this in detail. Describe its appearance, its movements if it moves), the way it feels. Try describing it first in a very objective way like a scientist might. Then try describing it using metaphor and simile to evoke a mood or to use more ornamental language: let yourself get as far from the objective, factual voice as you can while remaining true to the details you observe.

Return to the natural object you observed in the last prompt, and observe it from a different perspective. If you were close up the first time, try describing it from a distance, or try observing it through a magnifying glass or even a microscope. Maybe turn it over or imagine it from the inside out. How does your perception change when you choose different angles? How has the thing you observed changed in the tie that you first observed it? Maybe it has aged or decayed or even moved on from the place where you first saw it.