Thanksgiving’s Alternate Writing Prompt

Writing prompts can generate unusual, original material for our stories. Remember the one our English teachers often used in September, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” or the holiday-themed essays for February’s Valentine’s Day, October’s Halloween, May’s Mother’s Day, and December’s array of religious holidays? This month, November, presents us with the popular theme of Thanksgiving. Background from the History Channel’s website says: 

“Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in the United States, and Thanksgiving 2020 occurs on Thursday, November 26. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. It wasn’t until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day to be held each November.”

This history is helpful if we want to write a traditional piece on this holiday. But wait! 

Let’s think outside the dots of turkey, colonists, and autumn’s changing leaves. For a new story, let’s expand on a related memory.

An Runaway Turkey Writing Prompt

Brainstorm a memorable Thanksgiving for five or ten minutes. Scribble some notes, letting your imagination delve into an aspect of that special time, perhaps one person or one thing. For instance, write a paragraph about your favorite aunt’s roasted turkey, golden brown and steaming on the dining room table, and how you loved her three-inch-tall pumpkin pie topped with homemade whipped cream. Add a colorful description of your aunt, as if she’s a character in a novel.

When you’re ready, look at the first paragraph about turkey and pie, and slice it off as if it’s a dried-out leftover. Beef up the description of your aunt (now fictionalized), and cherry-pick some of your real aunt’s glorious and inglorious idiosyncrasies. Sit her down in a different setting—perhaps alone at a corner table in El Floridita, one of Hemmingway’s favorite bars in Havana, Cuba. It’s her sixtieth birthday. Go with that and see what happens. Maybe she’ll meet Ernest.

Stories Born on Thanksgiving

From a Thanksgiving memory, keep freewriting, brainstorming, and associating one idea with another. Savor the process as you would that three-inch-tall pumpkin pie. Soon you’ll discover when and how to jettison the Thanksgiving motif, carving it off to let new material stand on its own, the way master sculptors describe the process of chiseling a block of marble to reveal the figure waiting within. 

Readers will never know your story started with Thanksgiving. They don’t need to. That’s part of the fun of being a creator—treasuring these inside secrets. Whatever you write this Thanksgiving month, celebrate your work. Remember that the process of playing, discovering, and shaping stories is the main dish of your writerly-life holiday.