Writing Prompts

Writing Prompts, what are they?

If you’re a fiction writer, you may want to consider the use writing prompts to kick-start your creativity. A writing prompt is a topic around which you start jotting down ideas. The prompt can be a single word, a short phrase, a complete paragraph or even a picture. The idea being, to give you something to focus upon while you write. You may stick closely to the original prompt or you may, as many do, wander off at a tangent.
The point is to start writing, without being held back by inhibitions or doubts. Your first notes will be rough, disjointed, but the more you refine your idea the closer you’ll to something polished and complete. Maybe a scene or even a complete story.

Here are four good reasons for writing to prompts:

1.When faced with a blank page, many times it’s hard to start writing. Focusing on your unrelated prompt for a while, helps get the creative juices flowing. Writing for  for just ten minutes on a prompt, you should find it easier to return to the piece you intended to write. You may also find that if you stop trying to think so hard about what you wanted to write and switch you attention to the prompt instead, the words and ideas for your original piece start to come to you after all.

2.The things you write, responding to inspiration of your chosen prompt may end up as worthwhile material in their own right. Your prompt may give you ideas from which a complete story can grow. You may get a fresh idea for another piece you’re already working on. It’s often surprising how much material you come up with once you get started.

3.Working to a prompt regularly, helps to get you into the habit of writing. It can act as an exercise regime, helping to build up your “mental muscles” so that you start to find your writing sessions get longer and longer, while the effort gets easier.

4.Prompts can be a great way to get involved in a writing community. Some writing groups offer a prompt for everyone to write about, with the intention being for everyone to come up with something they can then share. The leader of one such group handed out a 3 x 5 card. Each member wrote down two nouns, two verbs, two adjectives, and one color. The twist to the exercise came when we passed the cards two places to the left. The card we received, became the basis of a 300-500 word piece. This can be a source of great encouragement, although knowing others will read what you have written can inhibit your creativity.


Examples of Writing Prompts

Here are twenty writing prompts that you could use to spark your imagination. If you want to use one, don’t worry about where the ideas take you or whether what you’ve written is “good”. The point is just to get into the flow of writing. You can come back later and polish if you wish to.
 01. It was the first hard snowfall of the year.
 02. She woke, shivering, in the dark of the night.
 03. His feet were already numb. He should have listened.
 04. Silk lace.
 05. She studied her swollen face in the mirror.
 06. Red eyes.
 07. This time her boss had gone too far.
 08. She’d have to hitch a ride home.
 09. The streets are deserted. Where is everyone? Where had they all gone?
 10. The city burned, fire lighting up the night sky
 11. They came back every year to lay flowers on the side of the road.
 12. Stars blazed in the night sky.
 13. He woke to the song of birds in the meadow.
 14. The garden was overgrown now.
 15. The smell of freshly-cut grass.
 16. He hadn’t seen her since the day they left High School
 17. ‘Shh! Hear that?’ ‘I didn’t hear anything.’
 18. He’d never noticed a door there before.
 19. Where does this corridor led?
 20. ‘I told her not to go there!’
 21. He’d always hated speaking in public.

Where To Find Writing Prompts Online.
The internet is a wonderful source of writing prompts. There are sites dedicated to providing them which a quick search will turn up. Examples include:

 •Creative-Writing-Solutions.com
 •WritersDigest.com
 •CreativeWritingPrompts.com

I also came across numerous blogs offering a regular writing prompt to inspire you and where you can, if you wish, post what you’ve written.

 •DragonWritingPrompts.blogspot.com
 •OneMinuteWriter.blogspot.com
 •SundayScribblings.blogspot.com


There are also many other sites that can, inadvertently, provide a rich seam of material for writing prompts – for example news sites with their intriguing headlines or pictorial sites such as Flickr.com that give you access to a vast range of photographs that can prompt your writing.
Have a Twitter account, there are users you can follow and receive a stream of prompts Three examples:
 •twitter.com/writingprompt
 •twitter.com/NoTelling
 •twitter.com/writingink

Another idea is just to keep an eye on all the tweets being written by people all over the world, some of which can, inadvertently, be used as writing prompts.

How To Make Your Own Writing Prompts

You can find ideas for writing prompts of your own from all sorts of places. Get used to keeping your eyes open for words and phrases that fire your imagination. Sometimes snatches of overheard conversation, headlines, signs, words picked from a book and so on. Jot them down any and all, then use them as writing prompts to spark your creativity. You never know what road they may take you down..