In March of this year I wrote a posting for FWA titled: A Friday Folly: Get Prompted! Since then, my group and I have had many months of writing to fun, and sometimes difficult prompts. These are prompts that are all directed toward some aspect of the craft. To wind up the year I thought I’d share with you a half-dozen that worked well. Why not try some of these yourself, or within your writing group?
1. Working with numbers
When we use numbers there is a specificity to what we’re describing. And linking those numbers can force us to go deeper into an image or explore a thought more thoroughly. Below are links to poems from poets Wallace Stevens, Rita Dove, and Clint Smith. Stevens looks at a subject from many angles in his famous poem 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird. Rita Dove gives us a beautiful little poem at this link titled Geometry. And Smith in his poem Counting Descent delves downward into his family’s history. (See excerpt below.)
Counting Descent
by Clint Smith
My grandfather is a quarter century
older than his right to vote & two
decades younger than the President
who signed the paper that made it so
He married my grandmother when they
were four years younger than I am now
& were twice as sure about each other…
Your task: write a scene, or a poem, or a bit of dialogue, using numbers in any way you want. Try to go deeper into your subject as you write by following some numerical path that makes sense. For ex.: start with a large number and then count down or divide it by the number of children/divorces in your family. Use lots of numbers. Play with them, and they may add up to something worthwhile.
2. The idea of home (POV)
Start by thinking of a house, or other structure you’ve lived in. (Or one of your characters has lived in.) Write a sketch/poem about it using sensual detail—but don’t rely heavily on sight. What did it smell like? Sound like? Feel like? Concentrate on a specific moment in time in that house. A real place is more likely to “come alive” in your writing, but you may use a place from
something else you are writing.
Now, thinking about how something can “come alive,” let’s reverse this. Assume your dwelling is the narrator, what would it remember about you (or your character) during a specific time/incident? Use sensory details from its perspective. For example, School’s First Day of School by Adam Rex tells the story from the school building’s perspective.
3. The villain’s POV
Write a scene that explores the perspective of a villain in a children’s story you know well. The golem? The wolf? The spider? What is that villain’s backstory? What new information can you provide about the character that was left out of the story? What object/thing might this character have in his/her/its possession? What does he/she/they/it fear? Or love? And why?
4. Lateral thinking with sensual detail
Think of a place/space/pastoral scene you especially like/love. Write a paragraph describing it. Use specifics and don’t make comparisons/metaphors or similes. Stick with straight forward description. Use sensual detail—images, smells, sounds, etc.
Now, for some lateral thinking. Compare that setting to someone in your family, or another person you know well. Similar/opposite? Use the sensual details from the paragraph you’ve written and create metaphors/similes or other comparisons to this person.
5. A fun exercise in imaginative thinking—things you’d never read, hear, or see
Make a list poem (or simply a list) with one of the ideas below. NOTE: it works best if you use the lingo surrounding the environment of the object/genre. Read these excerpts from Road Signs We Never See, a poem by Joe Kelty for inspiration:
NO TURN ON BLUE
SPEED LIMIT 46.24 MPH
PASS WITH ABANDON
WRONG RIGHT-OF-WAY…
…
ROAD SLIPPERY WHEN PRESENT
FLOOR IT HERE TO CORNER
NOSEDIVE, 1 MILE
TAILGATING ZONE…
…
BRIDGE MAY BE ICY OR MISSING
ROAD RAGE LIKELY NEXT 50 MILES
BUCKLE UP OR KISS UP
Be silly, or serious! For example, if I were writing a poem titled Things You’d Never Read in a Romance Novel, I might have a line like this: “Oh, Fabio darling, did you fart?” In other words, just go for it! Below are some suggestions to get you started.
THINGS YOU’D NEVER HEAR …
–in a weather report
–over the announcement system at an airport
–as a public service announcement
THINGS YOU’D NEVER READ …
–in a romance novel
–in a science fiction book
–on a get-well card
THINGS YOU’D NEVER SEE …
–at a yard sale
–on a sign at a protest rally
–on a menu
6. Understatement vs hyperbole
Think of a particularly emotional moment in your life, or create one for a character if you don’t want to use yourself: happy, sad, fearful…
First, write about your experience in a calm, understated way using mostly single syllable words. For inspiration read this beautiful, understated poem by Langston Hughes (untitled poem, in the public domain):
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began—
I loved my friend.
Now, write about your experience using large exaggerations. Here is an excerpt illustrating hyperbole by Carl Sandburg from his poem Yarns of the People.
They have yarns
Of a skyscraper so tall they had to put hinges
On the two top stories so to let the moon go by,
Of one corn crop in Missouri when the roots
Went so deep and drew off so much water
The Mississippi riverbed that year was dry.
Of pancakes so thin they had only one side …
Final thoughts
It’s helpful if you set aside a specific day/time at least once a week, or so, to simply write to a prompt. Write to these prompts, or to some of the many others you can find online. And it’s fun if you do this with a group and share afterward. Most prompts can be adapted to fit whatever genre/format one writes. Whatever you do, save what you’ve written. Several of the folks in my group have gone on to polish their prompt writings into finished pieces.
Peggy Lantz
What fun!
Niki Kantzios
What fun ideas! I’ll try them out on my writers’ gang. Thanks.