Writing prompts

Actually, Canada, I just like riffing on “French Kissing in the USA” whenever possible, because it’s a goofy little song.

It’s been awhile since I’ve done any real brainstorming, but I love lists, I have a brain and it’s often stormy in these parts, so I have all the ingredients in place.

The goal here is to plant a few (dozen) seeds and see if any of them grow into big beautiful stories or writing exercises while I ponder other projects.

Here we go.

• a story based on the song “Eat to the Beat”
• what if they really are lizard people?
• three wishes/Invisible Weekend redux: getting to try out as a shapeshifter or some kind of shapeshifter story
• worst superpower ever
• a talking duck (walks into a bar?)
• when the line between waking and dreams blurs completely–how risky do you become in your actions?
• a monster that feeds on hope and optimism (no, not Trump)
• angry trees
• the world is suddenly depopulated by 99.6% (30.4 million people–about 7 million less than the population of Canada)
• getting stuck in the past
• a bar walks into a man
• a haunted playground
• a Stage 4 cancer patient acquires a time machine–can traveling to the future lead to a cure?
• seeing a person on the train, but only as a reflection in the window

The next task: pick one of these and turn it into a lovingly handcrafted tale of thrills and adventure that tugs at the heartstrings (which sounds pretty unhealthy when you think about it).

Do The Rains get you down, leave you feeling blue? Leave you sopping wet and wishing you could travel outside in a miraculous bubble of pleasantly heated air that would never let the damp in?

If your answer is yes, I can’t help you. Sorry.

But have some writing prompts suitable for rainy days, wrapping fish or lining bird cages*.

1. It’s raining cats and dogs. In 500 words or more, describe the ongoing horror of people being pelted by pets falling from the sky.
2. Noah has asked you to build an ark because the flood’s a-coming. He has provided you with the supplies: a ball of yarn, a couple of 2×4’s and a bottle of paste, half-eaten by one of his kids and not closed properly, so most of it has dried out. Weave a tale about your mighty ark construction and how it saves all the world. Do not exaggerate your efforts because God hates liars.
3. The storm drain is clogging with leaves and will soon cause a flood in front of your building, making it difficult for people to come and go without plunging through an enormous puddle. Write a list of ten other things you’d rather do than address this problem.
4. Write a romantic story that uses these five words that rhyme with rain: main, gain, disdain, grain, pain.
5. A magic genie gives you a choice between three kinds of rain: lava rain, electric rain and flaming oil rain. Choose wisely.
6. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could conjure a little rain cloud that would follow around someone you don’t like and pour rain on them? Write a story about how totally cool that would be.
7. Write a story about some unfeeling jerk that has a magic rain cloud follow you around and pour rain on you. Nah, just kidding. It would be totally cool.

* fish, birds and cages not included. Prompts will need to be printed on paper first. Paper not included.

Prompt from Creative Writing Prompts:

After I nearly burnt down my house, my garage, and most of the trees in a five mile radius, I mostly stopped trying to light fires.

The Burn

After I nearly burnt down my house, my garage, and most of the trees in a five mile radius, I mostly stopped trying to light fires.

But mostly stopped is not the same as stopped. I was being driven by a man who showed up at my front door every other evening. He would knock once, softly, when he knew everyone else would be asleep, everyone but me. I’d open the door and he would stand there in shadow, a hat pulled low to further hide his face. The dark of the night seemed to not just surround him but infuse him.

Each visit he handed me a box of matches with simple instructions: light each match and toss it aside when it got close to burning my fingers. Do this until all the matches were gone before the next visit in two days’ time.

I had no idea who this man was or what purpose these odd bits of pseudo-arson would achieve, but it didn’t matter because he said if I didn’t go through the box by the next visit he would make sure those I loved would burn as the matches should have.

It occurred to me the guy might just be a crank but was I willing to risk the safety of my family to prove it? I was not.

I was on the third box of matches when I became aware of their control. Each time I took out one of the wooden matchsticks and scraped its head against the side of the box, the spark and smoke and flame did something to me. I could have just gone down the street and lit the full box of matches over a sewer grate and safely met the terms of the “deal” and yet I couldn’t. I was compelled to light each match in the worst possible place and release it only when the guttering flame threatened to burn the skin of my fingers.

When the man arrived late at night with the fourth box of matches, I asked him why I had to do this.

“Some men just want to watch the world burn,” he said.

I told him that was a line from the 2008 film The Dark Knight uttered by Alfred the butler, his summation of The Joker’s motivations. And that since then it had become a popular internet meme. And was pretty dumb, as memes go.

I expected him to step forward into the light of the front step and reveal himself to be wearing full Joker make-up. Instead he just shrugged a little.

I took a match out of the box and lit it. The man took a small step back, as if he was afraid of it. That seemed weird. I held the match before him, saying there was nothing like an early start. Then I flicked the match at him, its spell over me seemingly inert.

For a moment I saw the soft brown leather of the man’s jacket illuminated by the orange glow of the match, then, as it struck, the man’s jacket exploded into flame. When I say exploded, I mean that quite literally–the force blew me back against the front door. When I staggered forward the man was gone, nothing but ash and some ragged strips of clothing in his place.

I considered the box of matches and nearly pitched them onto the street. Instead I kept them and took them with me to the bedroom, placing them on my nightstand before quietly slipping under the covers, hoping my partner would not stir. I fell asleep with surprising ease and if I dreamed, I did not remember them.

[to be continued]

 

Once again from Writing Exercises.co.uk, I present super short stories* based on a generated first sentence (or part of a sentence). The generated text is bold, my contributions are not.

First:

She stood out from the crowd because she was radioactive and two hundred feet tall.

Then:

She was carried along by the crowd of giant radioactive women that had suddenly appeared to lend support. They vanished as quickly as they had arrived, which still took a little while since they were gigantic. The aftershocks they caused persisted for several days.

Finally, and sadly:

He sat her down and held her close before telling her the terrible news: Although he loved her very much, when he stood to kiss her he could not close the 194-foot gap between them, even if he stood on his toes. All he could do was kiss some tiny section of her ankle and hug that weird bone that sticks out of the side of the ankle. What’s up with that bone, anyway? It’s kind of gross, really.

* stories that are super short, not short stories that are super

From Writing Exercises.co.uk, a site that offers a random first line generator.

The part in bold is the generated text, the rest is my thrilling conclusion to the story.

She could smell gas even before she opened the door. That was the last time she’d let Frank borrow six cans of beans.

More:

After five years, he just happened to be walking down her street? She figured he would want something, he had a desperate and needy look in his eyes. She was right–he wanted beans and plenty of them.

Still more:

He had the urge to clear the ground, to look out and see nothing. He grabbed his magic world-erasing brush and with a few swipes back and forth was gazing upon a serene black void. After awhile he got bored of this but had left his magic world-creating pen at home and so was stuck with the black void for a very long time.

And finally:

More and more people were refusing to obey the laws of the land. Soon every last can of beans had been stolen.

1. It’s raining so much you think it might be a good idea to build an ark in case the world floods. Write a shopping list for the supplies you will need, including all of the pairs of animals. Remember, unicorns are not real, so don’t include them.
2. With trees starting to bud and bloom again, write a story about happy trees. Except these trees are happiest when eating small dogs and children, like those scary apple trees in The Wizard of Oz.
3. Write a poem that includes the following things that rhyme with spring: ring, ding, sling, fling, ping, Emperor Ming
4. Spring is a time of renewal. Write a short story about two countries renewing their bitter, pointless war. Make it a romantic comedy.
5. Spring is also a time when the land again becomes covered with the lush green of vegetation. Write a story about a giant green blob that scours the land clean, leaving nothing but the desiccated bones of all humanity. Also make this a romantic comedy.

As I cast about for inspiration for National Novel Writing month–a mere two days away–I realized how selfish I was being. Why spend time thinking of ideas for myself when I could be spending time thinking of ideas for the whole world?

So here they are, a bunch of prompts that will lead any budding* author to a 50,000 word NaNoWriMo success story**!

1. A mysterious woman is feeding ducks at a pond. When you approach her she turns around and pulls off the shroud she is wearing, revealing the head of a duck. She quacks at you. What happens next?
2. Lots of people have already written novels and people love sequels. Put the two together and presto, you can write a sequel to another author’s book. No nuanced characters to invent, no pesky worlds to build, just pick up where the author left off! Note: this may not be legal so you might get sued or sent to jail or something. Maybe pick a book that came out two hundred years ago to be safe.
3. Every time the saddest person in the world cries it starts to rain. Pretty soon the world is in danger of a flood that would make Noah nod his head and say, “It’s ark-buildin’ time!” How do you make the sad person stop crying and save the planet from being a little too fish-friendly?
4. People love historical novels that tackle serious subjects with care and emotional depth. Since all the good stuff has already been written about, make your novel a sober examination of hoedowns in the frontier towns of early America.
5. An author struggling to come up with an idea for National Novel Writing Month suddenly finds herself in the middle of her own story–whatever it is! This has never been done before, trust me.
6. Those two guys on “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” decide to travel back in time to stop Hitler.
7. Something with vampires.
8. Part 1 of a 10 part series about, oh, anything. Just throw darts at a board. The important thing is people love series even more than they love sequels.
9. For inspiration, watch 50 self-made YouTube videos of people talking about how they are preparing for National Novel Writing Month. Upon completion of viewing the last video, you will never want to write again. Maybe don’t do this, actually.
10. Include the word “girl” in your novel’s title. Then use one of the other nine ideas listed above for the actual story.

* this is not a “BC bud” joke, I swear
** this is, however, an awful play on words