blocked? take a prompt
If you've hit a roadblock on your writing, you've found the right place to look! Below you'll find collections of ideas on just how to get those good ideas you've been searching for.
personal blog: themeaningoflifeismeatballs.tumblr.com
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Find an article in your local newspaper and take on one of the subjects of the piece as your main character and write about how they dealt with the situation,
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Write about getting lost on a road trip. How do you get back or do you get back? Do you stop along the way? Write about the arguments that the people in the car have.
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When you got home today you discovered a huge wrapped present waiting on your doorstep for you. No letter, no return address, just a label on it that says its for you. Write about opening it.
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People usually aren’t what they seem and you can’t judge a book by its cover. Write a story that presents a character at face value and then completely changes the reader’s perception by the end of their development.
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Grab the closest book to you. Open a page completely at random and put your finger down. Use that sentence to inspire a story. Disregard content and the character in the book and make them your own.
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Quote reblogged from AUSTIN KLEONMy goal is to make a book for someone who is sitting in the waiting room at the Jiffy Lube while they were getting their oil changed. I want to make books that are picked up by a bored or waiting person who starts to thumb through them and gets drawn in enough so that they stop noticing they are waiting at the Jiffy Lube and instead start to itch to make something with their hands.
Lynda Barry (Thx, Gwenda)
Think of your ideal reader, the person you most want to enjoy your writing. Is it someone like you, someone completely different? What’s your goal? Write a short story describing your ideal reader, or maybe the life your ideal reader wishes they had.
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Think about something you’ve always wanted to tell somebody but couldn’t. In a story or a poem reveal your secret to that person.
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Author Kurt Vonnegut provides a list of eight tips to create a successful short story. Follow these tips and create your own short story. Too hard? Pick one or two of the tips that you like and start there.
- Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
- Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
- Every sentence must do one of two things-reveal character or advance the action.
- Start as close to the end as possible.
- Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
- Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
- Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.
Vonnegut qualifies the list by adding that Flannery O’Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that.
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Photo reblogged from Andrea's Art Box
Blackout Poem - Dear Blocked Writer
A slew of blackout poems coming your way, starting with a Dear Abby-inspired set.
here i am, starting.
