A prompt a month: 12 writing prompts for writers in 2018
You cannot write good if you don't write regularly. But of course, time is restricted, and even if you find some time to sit down - what are you going to write about?
Easy writing prompts are one way to get some exercise in. So I wrote down 12 examples for you, one prompt for each month, to sharpen your narrative skills.
If you would like to send me your results, feel free to do so :) I'm curious how you solve the tasks and always happy to give some feedback.
January
Start a scene with the words: „Winter was the only time she put on her dress and went out.“
February
Each character needs a problem. Find one for the following protagonist: A policeman nearing retirement.
March
Finding ideas. Select an article from a newspaper and develop it into a short story.
April
Develop a dialogue for the following characters:
A successful young lawyer and her neurotic live-in boyfriend.
(She gets offered a job in New York. And he is a surfer who enjoys living near the ocean.)
May
Inventing conflicts.
Sometimes the conflicts are not that obvious. Find one for the following characters:
May and Steven are junior executives in a midwestern department store.
June
Give your character a voice.
Write two telephone conversations. In each of them, the character has to inform his/her brother about the car accident of his/her sister-in-law. Develop words and speech for:
a truck driver
the British Minister of Finance
July
Dialogue vs. description.
Watch a scene of a series/movie/TV-show that shows people in conversation. (A family scene at a dinner table, for example).
Then, write a page or two about the situation and conflict without using any direct speech.
August
Find three clichés (in your speech, the speech of a friend or any that come to your mind.) For each of these washed-out expressions, find three fresher ways to say it.
September
Learning from other Writers Part 1.
Find a dialogue scene you like and one that you don't like. Read them out loud and find out what makes them different. Does the one that you don't like lack in reality or spontaneity?
Re-write the "bad" dialogue.
October
Same as September. But instead of a dialogue, choose two scenes that describe a situation.
November
Describe a sad person without using the word "sad" or "sadness".
Do the same for a character who is angry.
December
Find a scene in a novel that is esentially tragic. Find a character in another novel that is essentially comical. Then, integrate the comical character into the sad scenes and see what happens.
Merken
