Writing Prompt #165: Honor for the Lowly

Someone treats a child with respect.

Writing Prompt #164: Response to Injustice

Someone accepts unfair punishment with grace.

Writing Prompt #163: Juxtaposition of Result

Someone falls short.

Someone else comes through.

This is a magnificent way to examine a theme. Just check out King Saul's reign and David's. It's so cool.

Writing Prompt #162: Insult to Not-Injury

Someone responds to an insult with a blessing.

Yeah, I totally stole this from the Bible.

I want to see how this works.

Writing Prompt #161: Lack of Will

A character must exert his or her will to do something they really don't want to do.

Writing Prompt #160: Corrected Thinking

A character has to stop a thought and replace it with the way they believe they should be thinking.

Writing Prompt #159: Social Avoidance

Give one character a good motivation to avoid people, and then give another character the need to foil that desire.

Basically, make someone avoid others and then shove a person at them.

Writing Prompt #158: Manners and Malevolence

Why would you choose to be polite to someone who had done terrible things without apology? Why would you be kind to someone wretchedly evil who hurt your friend?

Give someone a reason, and write a scene.

Your scene can be the encounter, or the decision, or both, but get into the how and the why. If this is easy for you personally, then find a circumstance that would make it hard.

If your character's will breaks and she shatters the dude's collar bone, you are disqualified.

Writing Prompt #157: Worth Waiting

A character gives up something that would be momentarily enjoyable in expectation of something of long-term worth.

Writing Prompt #156: Understanding Unexpected

You know that cliche scene where the character has something really important they're trying to say but no one understands them and it spirals downwards in a horror of misunderstanding and frustration?

I want you to write the opposite of that. Your character is incoherent and confusing and inarticulate and someone understands. Pick the most unlikely character to understand them. Now, why do they get it, and how will they help your character now that they understand?

Writing Prompt #155: Making Rules

When something happens that has never happened before, a lot of times there aren't rules to fall back on. You don't have a clear idea of limits or guidelines or what is expected. This can be fun, but sometimes it's just dangerous. There are situations where you need a really firm idea ahead of time of what you need to do and where things have to stop.

Have characters lay down guidelines ahead of time for an event. This can be having a friend over or dealing with an enemy or a first kiss. Conflict and unsurety are a must. Make your characters to define where they stand and what they won't compromise on.

When you don't know where you're standing and why, it's really easy to be moved.

Writing Prompt #154: Break a Rule

Two people have a rule they follow with each other. It can be formal or informal. Make one of them break it.

Ideas:

No apologizing.

We don't talk about parents.

We only act like we know each other outside school.


We don't make physical contact.


No one mentions eye drops.

Writing Prompt #153: Reverse a Villain

Take traits from one of the villains in your life, and make the character a hero.

Writing Prompt #152: A Comparison of Gifts

Today incidental placement on a shelf showed me starkly the differences between two people in my life.

One object was a gift from a friend. He had seen my interest in the object and heard my passing exclamation at its prettiness, and later acquired it. Then, he had found something else to make it prettier. He'd given it to me as a gift, on my birthday. The object has sat in a position of prominence wherever I've lived since then. It's one of the prettiest things I own, and I treasure it.

The other thing had been given to me in passing, as an afterthought, by someone who was going to throw it away. I'd treasured it on the same shelf, right next to the gift.

Why do we treasure the things thrown to us by people who don't care? How do we delude ourselves into treasuring a paper duck the way we treasure a vase? And why do we give people top shelf in our lives when we don't matter in theirs?

Write a story where two objects- be they gifts or possessions or trash- demonstrate the differences between two people.

I cleared off a shelf in my life today. I hope you have friends and good people and relationships to treasure in yours.

Writing Prompt #151: Fortitude

A character has to ignore their own suffering to get something done.

Writing Prompt #150: Sliced and Diced

A character finds a way to be gentle and kind with someone who hurt them badly.

My favorite way to do this is to find a troubled child they remind me of, and focus on loving them the way I'd love that kid.

Writing Prompt #149: Fine

I have been spending all day saying, "I'm fine."

My mom: Are you okay?
Me: I'm fine.
My mom: Are you okay?
Me: I'm fine.
My mom: Are you okay?
Me: I'm fine.

Your prompt: A character says they're fine and they are completely, terrifyingly wrong.

Writing Prompt #148: Small Victories

Write a scene where a character pushes past fear to do the right thing in something small.

Writing Prompt #147: Requests

Isn't it interesting that some people can ask us for help, and we feel manipulated and put upon, but someone else can ask us for help, and our hearts leap forward in delight at being needed?

Why do some people make us so happy when they ask us for things? And why are other people different?

Write a scene (or scenes) where someone is asked for help by two different people, one experience negative and one positive, and show us the difference.

Writing Prompt #146: Spilled

A character has to inform another character about something traumatic or odd or uncomfortable from their own life. How do they get it into conversation, and how do they keep the other person from worrying or thinking they're a freak?

Writing Prompt #145: Bad Parable

Someone is trying to use a story to teach something, but it goes wrong.

Ways stories typically go wrong:

- Unintended moral.
- Moral that sounds really terrible said out loud.
- Incredibly morbid subject matter (like the removal of organs)
- Making the consequences of the story so insane that you will terrify the child forever (like the removal of organs)
- Trying to fix the terrible ending but negating your moral. ("And that's why it's okay to remove organs!")

Things that make these stories a lot more entertaining:

- Poetic details that make it very clear exactly who your dad is talking about.
- Heavy use of fantasy and lots of "Once upon a Time."
- Organs. Actually, pretty much all of the horrible stuff from before. It only makes the story better.

Writing Prompt #144: Conflicting Advice

Have you ever had a conversation with a respected adult or authority figure where they start giving one kind of advice and then they transition to another track and by the end you have multiple commands that contradict each other and a fairy tale that went nowhere and you're right where you were when you started?

Someone is giving advice but they're contradicting their own advice.

Writing Prompt #143: Saying No

Your character says no to something he/she really wanted to say yes to. Why?

Writing Prompt #142: Conversation with a Stranger

Your character asks a personal question of a total stranger. Why? What happens next? Does it change the way your character thinks?

Writing Prompt #141: An Overdose of Happiness

Someone is so busy being happy that they forget something important.

Like updating this blog. Apologies.

Writing Prompt #140: No Good Deed

A person is destroyed by a small courtesy.

(Thanks, Michael.)

Writing Prompt #139: That Kind of Person

It's always strange when someone responds to a plan of mine with, "You won't. You're not that kind of person." It makes me want to ask, what kind of person am I, and why don't you think she'd do what I want to do?

Write a story where your character does something that would be easy to block with "You're not that kind of person." Make them push through it.

Alternately, stop a plan with "You're not that kind of person." Maybe their friend is right, just like mine was.

Writing Prompt #138: Secret Forgiveness

Your character forgives someone for a massive amount of harm that the person doesn't know they did.

Writing Prompt #137: Un-masking

Someone isn't the person your character thought him to be.

My immediate thought is something small and subtle and delicate, but I hope someone somewhere writes a story with lizard-aliens. That would be fun.

Writing Prompt #136: Benefit of a Doubt

Heroes and Heroines in stories constantly jump to the worst conclusions about the people they love, while the audience screams "No no no! It was his evil twin; listen to him!"

I'm challenging you to write a scene where a person is faced with pretty damning evidence, but treats the accused the way you would want to be treated.