Writing prompts

Searching for writing prompts is, on the one hand, easy. I enter “writing prompts” into a Google search and get 12.7 million results. It would take approximately one billion years to comb through 12.7 million results. Luckily, Google ranks the results, putting the allegedly best ones at the top. Let’s take a quick peek at the top three results from Google and check out the embarrassment of riches that shall be found, writing prompt-wise:

Result 1: Creative Writing Prompts, courtesy of Writer’s Digest and written by Brian A. Klems, their online editor. These are actually not bad at all, though they tend to favor specific scenarios rather than general ones (which is a preference, really) and more twists than your small intestine. Example:

Ah the freedom of flight, the weightlessness of free-fall. Doesn’t it feel wonderful? Well it would if you weren’t launching at maximum velocity towards a gaping hole that leads to the center of the earth. Why are you going there? What’s going on?

Result 2: Writing Prompts as featured on a Reddit subreddit. Reddit’s layout bothers me in a way I can’t articulate. The user-submitted prompts here tend to be brief and wacky/kind of dumb. Example:

Your girlfriend is the only protection earth has against an invasion by giant monsters. You want to break up with her. The government won’t let you.

Result 3: 180 Journal Writing Prompts on the Daily Teaching Tools site. The site design is like stepping back in time to 1999. Stare at its layout and you can almost sense the budding Y2K fear. As you might expect, these prompts are aimed at kids and are not built around writing fiction. Example:

Describe a real made-up dream or nightmare.

I’m not sure how a dream can be both real and made-up. Maybe that’s part of the writing challenge, to make the impossible possible. Reach for the stars, kids!

I originally intended this post to be a complaint about how easy it is to find prompts but how difficult it is to find good prompts. I don’t know if Google re-jiggered the results since my last check, but these are generally better than the ones I’d found previously.

That said, I’m still going to ignore all of them in favor of writing some prompts myself. I’m not going to do anything with the prompts, I’m just writing them down because I can. Because I must. But mostly because I’m too lazy and uninspired to do more than that tonight.

1. You are a contributor to The Worst Writing Prompt website and have been asked to come up with the worst writing prompt ever. What is it? Does it make people scream in horror? It should make people scream in horror.
2. You have a nice ripe banana. The monkey very badly wants the banana. The monkey is cute and hungry. You refuse to give the banana to the monkey. In 500 words explain what the hell is wrong with you.
3. You wake up to discover you’ve switched bodies with Karl Marx. Since Marx is dead you find yourself buried alive in his grave, slowly smothering to death under the crushing weight of the earth. Describe your day.
4. You’ve always wanted to go to a Beach Boys concert and finally score tickets for the front row. Excited, you take your seat, only to find that instead of The Beach Boys, the band on stage is a bunch of skeletons wearing Hawaiian shirts and singing “Kokomo.” They sound a lot like The Beach Boys, though. Do you ask for a refund? Explain why or why not.
5. Write a story about three blue jays, a raccoon and a grey whale that make a magical journey across Canada.
6. You are a robot and can only speak in binary code. Write a love poem to a nice female or male robot in binary code.
7. In the year 2722 acid wash jeans finally come back in style. How does this affect future society?
8. An old gypsy places a curse on you. You scold the gypsy for perpetuating unhealthy ethnic stereotypes. What happens next?
9. Persuade a friend to become a drug addict so you can use him to research a story on drug addiction. Just write about it, don’t actually do it because your friend will get high on meth and try to kill you with an axe.
10. You find an ancient mystic lamp and rubbing it causes a genie to appear. The genie grants you 3,000 wishes. What do you wish for?

I am running late so tonight’s prompt is super short. It is again from http://www.writing.com/main/writing_prompts

Prompt: Write a four line poem about a haunted house. (Do this two times: once where each line rhymes and then again with no rhyming at all.)

Poems:

A Cheesy Haunting

I checked a haunted house
It wasn’t very scary
The ghost was just a mouse
His name was Hairy Larry

Spooky Haiku

The house is haunted
Ghosts a-plenty all about
Boo they say all night

(Yes, the haiku breaks the rule of the prompt. I’m a rebel.)

I’m doing a bonus prompt tonight.

From writing.com, here is writing prompt #180:

Bonus Prompt: One of a pair of genetically cloned babies robs a bank.

Story:

Babies are small and weak and lack the necessary muscle strength needed to properly hold and handle guns. They also lack the cognitive skills to think through and design a plan to successfully rob a bank, unless the bank is their diaper and their goal is to rob it by peeing in it.

But if the other cloned baby–the one that doesn’t rob banks–could form complex thoughts, this is what it would think: this is one of the dumbest writing prompts in the history of the universe.

The End.

Prompt #4: You go to donate blood, but something goes terribly wrong (click link to read the story)

Read more

I’ve decided that doing all of the writing prompts from 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2 will make me crazy and while that may lead to some inventive writing in its own right, I cherish my mental well-being just enough to not risk it for the sake of describing  if I was a piece of macaroni, what shape would I be?

Having said that, I am still going to work from a prompt each day, whether it’s from the above-mentioned book or elsewhere.

Tonight I’m using prompt #14 from 25 Creative Writing Prompts as featured on writingforward.com.

Prompt: Write about nature. Include the following words: hard drive, stapler, phone, car, billboard.

Story:

When the time for my vacation came around I decided to go on vacation, being a logical and sensible person. I was tired from working in my high-tech position at a powerful technology company, working on super computers and other technical machines. I needed a break, to get away from it all for a little while. Two weeks, to be precise. I needed to visit Nature and touch trees and roll in the grass.

I booked a week at a fabulous yet quaint resort a co-worker recommended. I was going to have so much fun it would be illegal, as they say. I wouldn’t do anything actually illegal, of course, because that would be against the law.

I arrived at the resort right on time and checked in at the front desk upon arrival. The nice young lady at the counter handed me a small envelope. Inside it were two key cards.

“Gosh,” I said to her, “I was hoping for a simple key. I work with these fancy cards every day!” I laughed and she smiled and then turned away from me. I went to my room, changed into a snazzy pair of plaid shorts, a nice t-shirt from my company and a pair of open-toe sandals. It was warm so I took my socks off, allowing my toes to wiggle freely. Wiggle, toes, wiggle. Ah, vacation!

I went to a bar near the pool and ordered a drink. “I’d like something fruity and sweet, with one of those cute little paper umbrellas in it,” I told the bartender. “Of course, you can substitute some other object if you don’t have little paper umbrellas,” I added. He smiled and turned away from me. When he turned back he offered me a wide, fluted glass filled with a lime green fluid of some sort. Sticking out of the fluid was a miniature hard drive. I noted to the bartender that while this was very cute, it was perhaps not entirely sanitary. He laughed and laughed and told me I was crazy and please just go away. I laughed, too, it was all pretty crazy and funny. I found a free chaise lounge and sat down, putting the drink on an accompanying table. The hard drive looked like it was leaking grease. The bartender never asked for money so I didn’t mind too much.

I settled back into the chair, relaxing in the cool shade of a stapler tree. Wait, I thought, that can’t be right! I looked up and the tree was indeed a large red stapler, standing on end, topped with the fronds of a palm tree. This must be a theme resort, I thought, which made sense since my co-worker was a “nerd” and loved these kinds of things. No wonder he recommended it!

My eyes fluttered open and I realized I had dozed off. How relaxing! The sound of my ringing phone had stirred me out of my slumber. I flipped it open and took the call. It was my car telling me it had run over a billboard. It was crying. Stupid car.

I wasn’t going to let a “smart” car ruin my vacation, though. I told it to clean up the mess and have the bill sent to the company, as it was technically a company car. It honked affirmatively and hung up.

I went back inside and asked the young lady at the front desk if she knew the best place to find trees, to get close to nature. She suggested Yosemite Park, which was over two thousand miles away. Then she laughed and turned away from me. I knew she wanted to make it an adventure, so I also laughed, then did a Google search on my laptop and found a local park that was filled with trees. I called the car to ask if it could pick me up and it had composed itself enough to assure me it could be at the resort in fifteen minutes. I told it to drive carefully and it growled its engine at me. What a saucy car.

Unfortunately the car did not diagnose its condition properly after the billboard incident and it plowed into a copse of trees when we arrived at the park, due to malfunctioning brakes. I broke both legs, bringing my vacation to an early end.

I did touch a tree, though, albeit with my head when I went through the windshield. I think about the irony and laugh and laugh. Ah vacation!

~fin~

Alternately, this is what I first wrote after looking at the prompt. It actually follows the rule of being short-short:

On vacation I relaxed in the cool shade of a stapler tree, sipping on my hard drive julep. Suddenly my phone rang. It was my car telling me it had just run over a billboard. It was crying. Stupid car.

Prompt #2: What past memory do you cherish the most and why? If you could trade that memory for something amazing to happen in the future, would you do it? Why or why not?

Story:

I remember the day I learned to ride a bike. It all happened on that one day, not because I was a fast learner, but because I was determined beyond all reason.

It started out with my father, a man of limited patience, helping to guide me up and down the driveway, having first moved the family car and his beloved Ford pickup out onto the street in front of our house. I sat tentatively on the banana seat of my bike. I called it a mustang for some reason, though I don’t remember the brand now. The training wheels had been screwed off earlier and were sitting in the workshop, ready to be fastened to the future bike of my baby sister. My dad and I were equally confident I would no longer need them.

My dad guided me up and down the driveway a couple of times, holding onto the bike with an increasingly looser grip until he finally let go. I moved forward under my own momentum, wobbly but still upright. Then I toppled over. I wasn’t hurt because I was barely moving, a contributing factor to the toppling. I walked the bike to the top of the driveway and we tried again. My dad released a little earlier this time, probably trying to show his confidence in me. I rewarded this show of confidence by crashing even faster than before.

He muttered something under his breath and we made a third attempt, then a fourth and a few more after that. It was like watching a film of the Titanic striking the iceberg. The result was always the same: disaster.

I walked the bike up to the top of the driveway, not in the least bit discouraged by the setbacks, but dad was done. He expressed his dismay through the use of colorful metaphors, careful to not actually blame me for being an uncoordinated putz.

I felt bad. I also felt clumsy, a bit stupid and a little bruised. The bruising was part ego and part left knee. I’d landed on it at least three times going down.

I got on the bike and took a breath. I knew if I crashed now it would be worse somehow. A secret shame. Plus landing on the left knee a fourth time would hurt like hell. I pushed with my left foot and began coasting down the gentle slope of the driveway. I wobbled, I nearly yanked the handlebars too hard to the left, then too hard to the right, but somehow I managed to keep the bike moving forward.

And then it happened. The wobble vanished. The handlebars became steady in my hands. I was riding and not crashing. I felt giddy. I wanted to whoop in triumph but that might bring me crashing down. Instead I rode down the street to the cul-de-sac, then back to the driveway, reveling in my secret victory.

I knew how to ride a bike. And just like the old saying goes, I didn’t forget. I never had another crash again. I was on a high for the rest of the week.

I would never trade the sweet memory of that day, the gleeful sensation of overcoming what seemed like an impossible task. Well, actually, I suppose I would trade it for world peace. I mean, I could always just walk and world peace is probably more important than riding a bike, even one with a cool banana seat. But it would have to be genuine world peace and not some surprise twist like “all humanity is wiped out, therefore peace” or “humans revert back to protoplasm, incapable of shooting rifles or tossing fragmentation grenades.”

Man, I loved that bike.

Today I am starting a new writing project. I am dispensing with both quality and quantity in favor of regularity. Think of it as Metamucil for the mind. Or maybe don’t do that.

Specifically, I am going to use the prompts featured in 1,000 Creative Writing Prompts, Volume 2 (Goodreads link) to write ultra-short stories that are no more than a few paragraphs long. I will work through the prompts in order, one per day. After that, I will perhaps have a party of some sort.

Sometimes instead of a story I will simply answer the questions (most of the prompts are in the form of questions).

Note that in my first attempt below I completely blow the concept of “ultra-short” with a story that is 1123 words long. Whoops.

Prompt #1: If you could travel back to any time in the past, what date would you choose and why? Would you attempt to influence past events while you were there? Why or why not?

Story:

Bradley had been a barista at a Starbucks knock-off for five years and as he mindlessly sprayed whipped cream on top of yet another large mocha he thought that this was about four years too many. Maybe even five. He wanted to do more with his life. He wasn’t sure what that would entail except that it wouldn’t include spraying whipped cream on large mochas.

He finished his shift and as he walked through the cooling air of evening toward his shoebox apartment the sounds of downtown seemed muted and distant. It was a weeknight and things were winding down. His walk was short, only eight blocks. Once home he’d watch Game of Thrones or something else. It didn’t matter, he never really paid attention, anyway. He’d nosh on a nuked pizza pop and burn his tongue like he always did. Then it would be off to bed, followed by a Groundhog Day-like repeat of everything the next morning. It was life and it was quietly horrible, but Bradley was not a man of action. If there was to be a plan that would change his course, it would need to be delivered.

As he reached the halfway point of his short trip home, the delivery arrived. It came in the form of a nondescript man dressed so blandly that Bradley’s eyes couldn’t properly focus on him. He was wearing some sort of jacket and pants and a hat. A fedora, maybe, like hipsters wear. All of these items only registered at the most basic level, colorless shapes stuck to a human form. Bradley never saw the face of the man or if he did the face left no impression.

The man shoved a small box toward Bradley as he brushed past and Bradley took the box without thinking. A moment later he assumed it was a bomb and almost chucked it in the street, but that struck Bradley as a very bad idea just before he released the package. Instead he thought to gently set it down on top of a trash receptacle and let some city worker deal with it, hopefully without blowing himself or others up.

But he could not let go of the box. It was neatly wrapped in plain brown paper. It bore no writing or markings of any kind. Bright white string was neatly tied around it. Bradley put a finger on the string and as if by magic it unraveled and fell to the ground. He pulled at the paper and it, too, slid away, leaving him with an unadorned wooden box. It had a simple lid with no hinge and Bradley pulled it off. Inside was a small device that looked a bit like a TV remote. A slip of paper was underneath it. He took out the paper and written on it was the following:

Hello! This small device is a battery-operated time machine. Simply punch in the time you wish to visit and you will be taken there immediately. You can return to your own time by simply entering the appropriate date. Don’t be afraid to experiment! Time has a way of healing all wounds, even those to itself. Want to stop Hitler? Go ahead and give it a shot!

It was ridiculous and Bradley was hungry, so he went home and nuked a pizza pop. But he brought the device with him, and sat it on the coffee table. When he had finished dinner and salved his tongue with some Pepsi, he grabbed his laptop and did a search on when Hitler was born. He was no dummy. If he was going to take out Hitler it would be when he was a tiny baby, not a Nazi leader surrounded by other Nazis with guns and tanks.

April 20, 1889, in some town called Braunau am Inn. It seemed like ancient history to Bradley. Did they even have cars in 1889? Bradley tried riding a horse once when his family went on vacation to Wyoming and his ass had hurt for a week after. He didn’t like the idea of chasing down baby Hitler on a horse. He would add 15 years to the date because Hitler would still only be some brooding high school punk and he could run him down with a new-fangled automobile.

He went to the bathroom and checked his hair in the mirror. It seemed important to look decent for time travel.

He returned to the living room and took the device from the box. He punched in April 20, 1904 and wondered how it would know where to send him. Maybe he just had to concentrate on the name of the city. He said out loud, in a stupid-sounding German accent, “Braunau am Inn!” He pressed the neon green button on the device labeled GO.

An acrid smell rose into his nostrils and the apartment went dark. Bradley felt a surge of panic and began groping about, trying to grab onto something, anything. The darkness lifted suddenly and Bradley found himself standing in the middle of a cobblestone street. Old timey, he thought, as he looked around at the buildings. He heard a strange and ridiculous sound and spun around toward it. It was a car horn. So there were cars! Good.

Except the car was bearing down on him and he had no time to move. The horn made its strange and ridiculous sound again but cut off when the car smashed into Bradley, sending him tumbling toward a gutter where he lay broken and bleeding.

The driver got out and raced to him. The passenger, a sullen-looking teenage boy, also got out, but he went to the device that laid on the cobblestone. He eyed the display, still showing April 20, 1904. He nodded, then threw the device into a nearby field. Out of sight in the tall grass, he could not see it burn a black patch into the grass before fading from view.

The boy walked over to Bradley. Bradley looked up, focusing with his left eye, the other shut tight and leaking blood. He could feel some parts of his body and couldn’t feel others. He was no doctor but he was pretty sure he had suffered fatal injuries. He asked himself if this is what dying felt like and the answer was a confident “You betcha.”

“Are you Hitler?” Bradley asked the boy.

The teen tilted his head, neither confirming nor denying. Bradley took it as confirmation because clearly things were not unfolding as intended.

“Nuts. I should have chosen baby Hitler.”

The possibly teenage Hitler shrugged and walked away. Bradley coughed a mix of blood and spittle, then closed his eyes. He rubbed his tongue over his teeth and vowed to let the pizza pops cool down properly next time. Then he remembered there would be no next time and felt a small twinge of regret as he expired.