Writing Prompt #135: False Alarm

A character has to reason away news of something awful.

If you're feeling kind, you can find a way for them to be right.

Writing Prompt #134: Brave Face

Smack your character across the face with horrible news they weren't expecting. Now, make them be normal for someone else.

Writing Prompt #133: Trade-off

Pick something normal and traditional to childhood, and take it away from your character. Now, explain why she thinks what she got instead was worth the trade.

Writing Prompt #132: Surprise Apology

A character apologizes for something that thee person being apologized to didn't think was wrong.

Writing Prompt #131: Annoying

The time you can most clearly see a person's characters is when he's dealing with someone who annoys him.

Is he still respectful to the authority figure who demeans him? Is he still kind to the friend who is rude or imposing? When people who can offer him nothing ask for his time, how does he respond?

Put a character opposite someone who can drive him nuts, and show us what his character is really like.

Writing Prompt #130: Contrast

The great function of "love triangles" in stories is to compare and contrast two people. What makes them different? What about them is similar, and where do they diverge?

You don't need an overwrought love triangle to do this. Every person we meet brings out the ways that every other person is unique. Create a contrast. Show us how the person who you're showing-off is special.

The more similar the two (or more) people are, the more delicate the contrasts you can show.

Writing Prompt #129: Trust Fall

Your character has to trust another person.

Some ideas include a medical procedure, a terrifying foray into ballroom dancing, a group assignment, or a foreign country.

Writing Prompt #128: Bashing Chandeliers

Something your character expected to be wonderful turns out terribly, terribly wrong.

Writing Prompt #127: Expectation

The expectation of something happening in the future hinders your character's ability to focus on a task.

Writing Prompt #126: Planning for the Worst

Everyone else is exciting about something wonderful happening, but your character is planning for the worst. Why?

Writing Prompt #125: a weird way of comforting

I was sad tonight, so my mom took me to a grocery store and calmly gave me tap-dancing lesson.

I want you to write a scene where someone helps someone else in a way that you wouldn't normally think of helping; a scene where someone comforts someone else in a way you don't normally comfort. According to Mr. Rogers, there are many ways to say 'I love you.' Find a new way to say, "I'm here for you, and you should feel better soon."

Writing Prompt #124: Telenovela

One hallmark of Spanish soap operas, or maybe soap operas in general, is that every single character is tangled up with all the others.

A character can't just have a long-lost mother; she has to be working for her long-lost mother and in love with her long-lost mother's stepson and friends with the woman who intentionally hit her long-lost mother with a car and got her lost and going to the scorned ex-lover of her long-lost mother for advice and finding inspiration through friendship with her long-lost mother's cheating ex-husband.

Create a few characters who would normally avoid each other in earnest, and freakishly entangle every aspect of their lives.

And if you need to, throw in a homicidal grandmother, because they make pretty fantastic characters when fully drawn.

Writing Prompt #123: Need-to-Know

A parent tries to a secret from their child.

Writing Prompt #122: Something Awful

Something terrible happens out of the blue.

Writing Prompt #121: Distant News

A character receives news from a distant land.

Writing Prompt #120: Twitterpated

Write about a character who is dancing-on-sunshine, spinning-in-the-hardware-store in like with someone.

Writing Prompt #119: Tackling Hamlet

Your character has to stop a revenge.

Writing Prompt #118: Unlikeable

Jacob lied to his dad while the guy was on his deathbed. "Yes, dad, I sound like Jacob, but I'm Esau. Totally. Pinkie swear."

How do you justify that to yourself? How do you get there?


How do you like a character while they do something like that?

I'm challenging you to write a character who does a really unlikeable thing. A theft, a betrayal, a swindle. Can you, without belittling the evil, portray a character in the act of something that they know is wrong?

I dare you.

Writing Prompt #117: Fearless

We admire people who are fearless; dancing on sidewalks, speaking to strangers in the elevator, pleasantly defending their point of view, even when others will despise them for it.

Give us a character who does something fearless. Let us love him. And then, give him a fear, and let us cheer for him as he overcomes it.

Writing Prompt #116: Intentional Sanity

A character going mad takes concrete steps to counter insanity. (You know you can always root for this guy.)

Writing Prompt #115: Inappropriate Venue

Set an incredibly tense, personal scene in the worst, most inappropriate location possible.

Ideas: a break-up, a "define the relationship" conversation, a confession, a proposal, an intervention/ a college midterm, a children's birthday party, a wedding, a funeral, on the stage of a school play

Writing Prompt #114: multi-objective conflict

Give someone a big, huge, walloping problem. Now give them a helpless person to take care of.

Writing Prompt #113: Fight to Heal

A character accidentally hurts someone they care about. How can they fix it?

Writing Prompt #112: Difficult Friendship

Write a character who chooses to continue being a friend to a person whose behavior they consider wrong.

How can you be a friend to someone when you can't support some of their actions?

Writing Prompt #111: Objective Thinking

Pick an inanimate object and describe life as that object. Then, write a human character with a similar experience.

A window- People always look right through me.

A chair- I always play a supporting role.

A lock- You'll never get through me unless you have the key.

Writing Prompt #110: Re-Learning

Your character has to pick up a forgotten skill. Long-atrophied language? Soft-shoe routine? Go for it.

Writing Prompt #109: No More Thinking

Bring a character to that place where additional thinking does not do any good. Push him/her to ACT, whether they know what they're doing or not. No more thinking in circles. No more talking it out. Go for it. Make the best move you see.

Writing Prompt #108: Unwanted Confession

A character has to deal with an unwanted confession of affection. Make sure both characters have objectives in the scene- including the one being approached.

Writing Prompt #107: Safe

Make a character feel safe.

Writing Prompt #106: make me like him

I challenge you to endear me to a secondary character in as few words as possible...with a narrator that hates him.

Writing Prompt #105: Different Values

I recently had a pleasant conversation with a young person in which he started showing me photographs of gifts that he'd given to his mom, and listing off prices. I'm always happy to see other people happy and I enjoy hearing people's stories, but the disparity in our respective incomes and that he thought the conversation was normal amused me greatly. The last gift he'd given his mom was a hundred and twenty times the price of the last gift I'd given mine. While in his social group, chatting about incomes and the prices of purchases is ordinary and accepted, I would be sternly dressed down by my family for talking about the same.

I challenge you to find a value that is foreign to you, or a subject that is generally taboo in your circles, and write about people who talk about it.

Money? Religion? Sex? Toe fungus? Go for it.