Writing Prompt #44: Self-Villainization

Pick an attribute you struggle with in yourself and create a villain who embraces it.

Writing Prompt #43: Gas

Create a really cool character…and then make them a vessel for fart jokes.

Credit to my brilliant sister...if she wants it.

[Additional Note: This blog gets an average of two page views a day. That means that 50% of my audience has not only heard this prompt, but invented it.

If you are the member of this 50%, come to me with your dissatisfaction and I will give you another prompt, because you are important and special.]

Writing Prompt #42: Beverage

Use a beverage for something other than drinking.

Writing Prompt #41: Unabashed Sadness

Write a story where the character is allowed to be completely, unabashedly sad and it's acceptable for her to cry and scream and throw herself over a casket or cling to someone's skirt or throw himself against a door until he's purple and yellow and still screaming.

Or a story about a fairy princess who rides a unicorn that farts rainbows. But personally I think the above would be more cathartic.

Writing Prompt #40: Coping

Write a scene or a sketch or a story in which every single person is coping with something they cannot share and each person is coping a different way.

How are you going to make this interesting? I don't know. But when you figure out how to make coping fun, leave me a comment and let me know how.

Writing Prompt #39: Reconciliation

Write a reconciliation where the person who was wronged gets down on their knees.

Writing Prompt #38: Hard Choice

Make a character choose between a rule he believes in strongly and something he really wants.

Writing Prompt #37: Gift Wrap

You receive a package with scorch marks or blood stains on the outside. What’s inside it, and why has it come to you?

Writing Prompt #36: Swallow

A character has to eat something to be polite. Go.

Writing Prompt #35: Best Thing Ever

Have you ever been watching an infomercial, and asked yourself, "What if this really WAS the best thing ever?"

Write a story where a "not-in-stores" gadget is the key to all existence.

Writing Prompt #34: Side Effects May Include...

The side effects brought on by your medicine cabinet or even your refrigerator can be crazy…even more so if you’re writing science fiction or fantasy.

Give your character a goal: persuade someone to do something, gain possession of something, or destroy somewhere. Then hinder them by giving them a medical side effect that makes everything harder and harder.

Writing Prompt #33: I want to see what the sci-fi dudes do with this

Send two of your characters on a cutesy date, complete with goofy rules- and keep it way cheap.

Writing Prompt #32: Slimy and Fascinating

Something vitally interesting is vomited up.

Ta-dah.

Yes I did just take this a step grosser than yesterday's. Don’t tell me this isn’t fun.

Writing Prompt #31: Let's Go Projectile

Someone is vomited on. Have fun. And you’re welcome.

Writing Prompt #30: Juxtaposition

Write a really happy scene that happens at a funeral.

Writing Prompt #29: Per the Regulations

Take something you don't believe should be regulated by the government. What if it was?

Now make ignoring that regulation really important for someone.

Writing Prompt #28: Child-Sized

Take a successful adult story and make it a story for children. Change ages, level of violence, genre, and anything else appropriate. 

What is Othello for kindergarteners? Jane Eyre for preteens?

Writing Prompt #27: will-bending

Make a character who lives by a very firm rule, and then make him break it.

Writing Prompt #26: Real or Not Real?

I’m challenging you to write a scene where a character with an objective is not sure what’s real and what isn’t.

There are lots of logical ways to establish this- something slipped in a drink, a concussion, someone playing giant complicated mind games with you...paranoia. Just remember- this doesn’t have to be dark. It could be funny, even. Or, you know, dark and funny. That works.

Writing Prompt #25: Regrets Rectified

Give a character the chance to rectify a regret. “I always wished I’d done X. Now I can.”

Writing Prompt #24: Surprise! Stuff is Hard.

When I started this, I did not grasp the reality of a blog a day for the next few years. I just realized in the last few days that this is hard. And you know? This is a point I’ve gotten to with almost every thing I’ve ever done.

“Wow, making a movie is actually a pretty big undertaking.” “Hah, Polish grammar is closing around my neck like a python.” “Ten hours a day of Chinese is not fun like I thought.” “This isn’t the lark I set out on.”

There’s this point in every adventure where you actually understand what you’ve set out to do and how big it is, and you ask yourself, “Am I really doing this?”

I want you to bring your character to this point. His adventure is long and tedious and difficult and now he sees what it’s going to cost him, and he’s asking if it’s worth it. Write a scene that asks and answers that question.

And if this sounds boring, make him have this discourse while hanging upside down.

Writing Prompt #23: Choose Your Weapon

One of my favorite things about watching Korean television shows like “City Hunter” is seeing the hero grab a spoon and defeat the guy with the knife. One episode in particular showcased McGuiver-like ingenuity (and beautiful action choreography) by having the masked hero face down a mob who fought with pipes- wielding a water bottle.

Turn something near you into a weapon and write the scene explaining why it’s used. Is your character a martial arts expert, or just desperate?

Have fun.

Writing Prompt #22: Jonah and the Whale

Well, since I accidentally posted tomorrow's prompt last night, here's back-up.

A friend of mine is judging a writing contest for an online magazine, for entrants ten to fourteen years old. I'm a little over that age limit, but the prompt she gave sent my mind spinning.

She is challenging you to re-imagine, in a modern setting, the story of Jonah and the whale.

Whoa.

There are so many spins you could take on this. Is it a story about running away from something you know you should do, or about not wanting to help people who are "too evil?" Do we put in a human face to represent God or is there a way to make prophecy accessible to readers who've never encountered it? Are we keeping the life-and-death stakes? What are we using in place of the whale (or are we using a whale)?

My favorite version that my family has cooked up was my dad's re-imagining of the story as the tale of an eight-year-old. I love my dad.

Well, there you go. And if you happen to know anyone (yourself?) between ten and fourteen who writes really fast, here's the link to the contest site. I wish you bon voyage.

www.songsfromtheword.com/NewChristianBooks/invitation

Writing Prompt #21: Dancing with Incompetents

I’ve done a bit of tutoring in my time, but usually I’m hired when it looks like someone is going to fail a test. At best, I get a few hours to make someone look competent at a subject they’ve been ignoring for years. At worst, they slide into the seat beside me and say, “I haven’t studied this month. We’ve got five minutes, right? Explain.”

I don’t have time to make people understand what they’re doing. I don’t have time to make sure they’ll actually know it for the rest of their lives. I only have the time to invent stupid gimmicks and rhymes so they remember the material for the next thirty minutes, and hope they get most of it right.

I’m challenging you to write a scene where your character must teach someone who is wildly incapable to do something. The seven year old has to pilot the spaceship. Your ditsy twin must impersonate you in the presidential debate. This idiot must be able to perform surgery immediately.

Necessity is the mother of mnemonics.

Have fun.

Writing Prompt #20: Out of Character

Write about character trying to respect and honor someone who’s acting some way that’s out of character or unfitting to their position.

The king has dementia. The father is delusional on medicine. Your ship’s captain is making a decision you know he would say is wrong. The girl he loves is drunk. What are you going to do? How do you respect someone when they’re drooling, crazy, or doing something wrong?

Find a way to honor them right where they are.

Writing Prompt #19: Perspectives

I was in one of my college classes waiting for the teacher, and this one kinda airy girl said her cell phone wasn't working, but "I guess it could be worse." And one of the soldiers in the room said, conversationally, "Yeah. You could wake up without both your legs." And she said, "That would be weird,” ...and kind of giggled.

What for him was a part of normal life, for her was something out of a Dr. Seuss book. The people in our class were from very different worlds.

I'm challenging you to write a scene with people from two very different backgrounds and perspectives, and find a way for them to work together. A little patience with people who don’t understand us and a little respect for what we don’t know can go a long way.

Writing Prompt #18: Unseasonal Wardrobe

Put a character in unseasonal attire, be it a winter coat in August, a tank top in a snow storm, or a Christmas sweater in May.

Writing Prompt #17: Moving On

Mourning is complicated and confusing. Many cultures have guidelines that are understood, and you know what to wear, how to act, and how long until life should go back to normal (for instance, the practice of "sitting Shiva.") But in America, it isn't like that. Expectations are amorphous, and sometimes you don't know if you're allowed to mourn at all.

My challenge is the following: write a character who is mourning something that is not a person.

Bonus points if their personal mourning process includes singing, goblins or machine guns.

Writing Prompt #16: Changing the Venue

In the last post we talked about how fun and necessary it is to have a big showdown with the villain. I’m challenging you to find a new venue for this event.

Find something weird, be it a convenience store or a park fountain or the children’s section of the local library and then create a story so that this venue is meaningful.

Writing Prompt 15: Trash Talk

In the last post about hero vs. villain showdowns we mentioned David and Goliath. There’s one aspect of this story I think a lot of people miss: it features some serious trash talking.

These two guys are about to fight to the death and they start by insulting each other’s gods and “when I’m through with you-”

Goliath: Am I a dog that you’re sending little boys with sticks? Come here and I'll give your flesh to the wild animals.

David: I'm going to feed your carcass to the birds. I'm going to cut off your head with your sword. And then I'll hand over the bodies of your army to be eaten by vultures.

Okay, yes, I left out the famous section, but often we get so caught up in the part that delineates the differences between the two champions that we miss the part where David says he’s going to cut off Goliath’s head and feed him to the buzzards.

Your prompt: write a face-off between two majorly different opponents…and write EPIC trash-talk to start it off.

And if you're stuck, the example from above can be found at http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Samuel%2017:42-47&version=NIV

Writing Prompt #14: Showdown

One crucial part of making an ending satisfying is that big showdown with the villain. We love the David and Goliath drag-out where two really different people meet face to face, communicate their differences and fight winner-take-all.  That’s why in films, even if the enemy is something big and amorphous like racism or a giant bureaucratic government, there will be one particular character to give evil a face, so we can smash it.

I am challenging you to create a giant, satisfying face-off, between ideas, using a flawed hero and an attractive villain.

Hardest prompt yet? Why yes. You're welcome.

Writing Prompt #13: Enclosed Spaces

Conflict is often exacerbated when you can’t get away from it.

There are lots of enclosed spaces in the world: elevators, lifeboats, janitor’s closets, the roofs of sky-scrapers. Take two characters who don’t want to be together and TRAP them.