Writing Prompts Work
December 1, 2024 by Harvey
In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* Important
* Writing Prompts Work
* It’s December First!
* Upping Your Game
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quote of the Day
“The biggest mistake you can make is to play it safe; a life without adventure is like a meal without seasoning, bland and forgettable.” Dr. Mardy Grothe
Important
Yesterday I subscribed to the Writem substack as a paid subscriber for a year. Most notably, Writem is known for providing valuable marketing tips to writers.
As a result of my paid subscription, Jake graciously gave me five one-month free subscriptions to give away.
Obviously, only you know where you are with your writing, publishing, and marketing efforts. Also, I have no way of knowing whether you already subscribe to Writem.
So if you are writing regularly and would like to receive one of those subscriptions, please email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com and let me know. I’d be happy to award one of the free subscriptions to you.
Writing Prompts Work
If you sign up for the free Writer’s Digest newsletter, you will receive, also free, “A Year of Writing Prompts” in PDF. (I am not an affiliate.)
Not a bad deal. Of course, if you want to you can cancel your subscription to the newsletter after you download the free PDF.
Some folks like using writing prompts. We usually think of those as a specific list of vague or specific ideas that grab our interest and prompt us to write a story.
My personal all-time favorite prompt is also probably the most vague of all writing prompts. I often issue it as a challenge to help writers believe in themselves enough to kick the myths of fiction writing to the curb. Here’s the prompt:
“Drop a character with a problem or conflict into a setting. Now write it.”
In most writing prompt lists, the specific problem or conflict is usually included in the prompt. It’s most often the main problem or conflict, and the story revolves around resolving it.
In my favorite prompt (above), the problem or conflict is not named. It doesn’t even have to be ‘the’ problem or conflict around which the story revolves, and it usually isn’t.
It might be an untied shoelace or a bright, shiny object lying in the front yard or a butterfly bumping into the protagonist’s face as s/he steps out onto the porch to leave for work or a car going by on the road or whatever.
The only purpose of the initial problem or conflict is to enable you to start writing.
The idea is, as that problem or conflict is resolved and the story continues to unfold, you keep writing and the main problem or conflict of the story eventually appears and is resolved as well.
Then you only have to write “The end.” (grin)
But in a broader sense, we all use writing prompts every time we begin a story.
For example, my writing prompt for this issue of TNDJ was remembering that I downloaded the Writer’s Digest PDF of writing prompts and wanted to pass that along to you.
But I did that in the first paragraph above, so this segment might easily have ended there. But I kept writing and let the post unfold as it wanted to. (See? I write most TNDJ topics into the dark too.)
So I’ll wind myself down now by listing a few of my personal favorite kinds of writing prompts. See whether these also strike a chord with you:
a character pops into my head with a line of dialogue and a certain expression on his or her face
I see or read or hear something that prompts a ‘what if,’ which in turn expands into a story idea
I smell a scent (a certain flavor of pipe smoke or fresh-baked rolls or bread or a freshly mowed lawn or a rainstorm or whatever) that evokes a memory
a sentence pops out at me as an excellent epigram for a new story while reading another writer’s story or novelI browse interesting, story-invoking photos I’ve downloaded from Unsplash or some other royalty-free source
I browse sometimes years-old story starts I abandoned because I lost interest but kept them because they were interesting enough to begin writing in the first place
and so on.
If the kinds of prompts listed above strike a chord with you, you’re all set.
You only need to proceed to the application part of the process, during which you apply your bottom to your writing chair, apply your fingertips to the keyboard, and Just Write.
Oh, and in the list above, I should have also included
an idea pops into my head,
as one just did:
A borderline psychopathic professional fiction writer with a lucrative side gig as a professional assassin is writing a blog post about writing prompts for TNDJ, an instructional blog for fiction writers, when his VaporStream device suddenly goes off with a message that, when he presses the On button, will convey his latest assignment.
And the story idea, and the story, are off and running.
Nah, I’m not joking. And appropriately enough, the idea came to me as I was writing this this issue on writing prompts. How cool is that?
So see? Writing prompts work no matter where you get them. As soon as I finish writing this post (Friday), I’ll start writing the story I mentioned above.
If you’d like to see how that story turns out, pick up a copy of Blackwell Ops 32: Jack Twist when I finish it in about two weeks. (grin)
It’s December First!
If you set a monthly, quarterly, and/or annual goal, it’s time for that final push. Take a look at your goals, adjust them if necessary, then set your jaw and go for it! Enjoy the adventure!
This is also a great time to look forward to the new year and set your goals for 2025. However you choose to do that, I still recommend setting a daily word count goal.
For goal-setting, the daily goal is really the lowest common denominator. A daily word-count goal also adjusts to fit your individual life.
If you can write only on certain days or for a certain number of hours per day, etc. take all of that into account.
If you prefer a weekly or monthly goal, that’s fine. Just divide that number by 7 or the number of days in the month (or the number of days in the week or month you are able to write) and you’ll have a daily word count goal.
Remember to set your daily goal just high enough to keep you in the chair a little longer each day. When you reach it, you will have a warm and maybe exhilarating sense of achievement.
Upping Your Game
By the way, if you’re a would-be or beginning fiction writer or if you’ve been around awhile but have backslidden into the myths or had a problem shaking them in the first place, I recommend you check On Writing Fiction on the Journal website.
There you will find several articles, all derived from earlier issues of TNDJ, that might help. Feel free to copy/paste and print or even share them with other writers, as long as you do so without charging a fee.
I ask only that you please remember to also provide appropriate attribution (©2024 Harvey Stanbrough harveystanbrough@gmail.com).
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Why I Never Get Writer’s Block Another great post.
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: “Adventure” Read this issue in light of writing into the dark (grin)
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1260
Writing of Blackwell Ops 32: Jack Twist
Day 1…… 3528 words. To date…… 3528
Fiction for November………………… 90789
Fiction for December………………… XXXX
Fiction for 2024………………………. 927921
Nonfiction for December…………….. 1260
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 363830
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,115,790
Average Fiction WPD (November)…. 3026
2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 17
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 101
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 268
Short story collections……………………. 29
Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
If you are able, please support TNDJ with a paid subscription. Thank you!
Just wanted to take a minute to thank you, Harvey for setting up the challenges. They have been great and a ton of fun. I learned a lot about myself as a writer and so much more about story telling. Just as you've been teaching, the more you write and finish stories and move on to the next one without hesitation the more we develop. In the past I had a tendency to overthink the process.
That is bad. Very bad.
Now, I just write. I put my characters in an extremely bad situation and write to see how they tell me they get out of it. But then I also write a lot of horror, so unfortunately my characters lives don't end well.
I've also written and produced more than I thought I ever had time for.
I encourage anyone to step in on a challenge. I have learned a ton and it's a lot of fun. I really didn't realize how much critical mind I was allowing to control me. I thought I did but I wouldn't have realized just how much without the challenges.