Friday, December 23rd, 2011  So…
Things have been pretty quiet around the blog lately. I’ve been baking lots of cookies, and working more than I want to at the day job, but it’s been hard to concentrate on the writing stuff — mostly — because I was being sued and had to go to court.
In short: I was leaving a parking lot nearly three (3!) years ago when a man backed out of a parking space and struck my car. He brought suit against me this July. He claimed it was my fault, and he sought recompense for doctor’s bills, pain and suffering, damage to his car, etc.
The amount he sued me for elevated the case out of the lower court and we had to go to trial.
My lawyer successfully defended me, so all is well. (Now, maybe I can get back to the writing.)
A funny part of the story: I learned I was being sued by advertising. I received three letters in the mail, all from attorneys offering to represent me, before I’d even been served.
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Involve one of your characters with the law: have them be sued (or sue someone) and need to go to trial. Or, have them witness an event at which they have to testify. Worse, have him or her be held up at gunpoint, or be standing at the register when someone comes in to rob the establishment. Tell what happens.
- Create a fictional legal system to use in a short story or novel. Design the laws (and the reasons for them), how they are broken, and what the punishments are. If the punishment includes working off the debt, define how this is accomplished. If lawbreakers are punished with incarceration, design the jail system and holding cells. If punishment includes banishment, include information on where people are banished to (the living conditions, the environment, what they’re provided with, etc.). What other ways are people held accountable for their deeds in your world?
- Imagine a world where no laws exist. How does the world function? Is it a good or bad place to live in? How do people protect themselves against (human) predators? How could a legal system evolve? Would people want it to?
- Define our legal system as you would to a child.
- Write about the time you broke the law: Have you broken the speed limit? Ignored a ‘Do Not Litter’ sign? Walked off the path in a public park? Were you caught? What happened? Did you talk your way out of the situation? Did you have to pay a fine? Did you go to jail?
- Imagine being arrested for a crime you didn’t commit. The evidence against you looks bad. It’s so bad, that if you didn’t know you hadn’t done it, you would have thought you’d done it. Does the jury find for you or against you? Write how the trial proceeds.
- Imagine you are an attorney when “the case of the century” is handed to you to prosecute or defend. You know the outcome of the trail will change the world as you know it. What is this case? What is your argument as the prosecutor or defender? What will happen if you win or lose the trial?
Friday, December 16th, 2011  Today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, a key event in the American Revolution.
On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of Colonists boarded the ships — some dressed as Mohawk Indians — and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor.
(Governing officials thought Colonists would give in, accept the tax, and purchase the tea. They had no idea that the burgeoning American Spirit would incite such rebellion.)
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write about rebellion: a time in the world’s history, or a time in your history. Have you ever gone against the establishment? Or fought for something for which you believed you were in the right?
- Write a rebellion into your current manuscript: it could be a tiny little thing (breaking a small infraction) or the telling of a war.
- Write about tea. Do you like or not? Do you drink it often? If not, when are you compelled to drink it? Are you a ‘ritual’ tea drinker…. following a precise set of rules for the heating of the water (and the teapot) and the correct timing of the brew? Or, are you a ‘boil a water and toss a bag into it’ kind of person?
- Do your characters drink tea? How about coffee? Beer? Soda, whiskey, wine? (Do you find your characters consume the same foods you do?) Write a scene where one of your characters drinks something other than what you have him normally drink. Do his actions change? His thoughts? Does this make the scene better or worse?
Friday, December 9th, 2011  Today (December 9) in 1884, the US Patent Office issued Levant Richardson a patent for his invention of ball-bearing roller skates. (This made skates much, much faster.)
About a century later, I asked for, and joyfully received, a pair for my 13th birthday.
I don’t know why, but they’ve become the symbol of “home” for me. I moved out of my parent’s house when I went away to college and got my own apartment. Little by little, all that was mine migrated from my parent’s house to my apartment…
…except the skates.
When my parents decided to sell the house I grew up in, they brought me the skates.
And when they moved into their new house, I found a closet there to stash them in.
They moved again, and we repeated the process. When Mom found the skates that time, she threatened to throw them out if I didn’t come get them. I explained to her that as long as they were at her house, that it was as though the house were mine, too. It felt a little more like coming home, than visiting in my parent’s new house when I came to see them.
I’m not sure she gets it.
The fact is: the skates aren’t the issue, it’s what they represent. I could have fixated on anything to be my little slice of home at the new house.
I’ve got a lot of fond memories associated with those skates, including the ones which have nothing to do with skating (that is, the little squabble with my folks over where they should live.)
Do you have any fond skate memories? What about something else that might symbolize home?
Here’s Your Prompt
- Write about skates: roller skates, ice skates, in-line skates. If you have no memories, make something up.
Did you ever wish for skates? Do you have a scene in a book which includes skates? Write that character’s back story related to the skates.
- Write a story about something that symbolizes “home” to you. You could write fact, fiction, memoir, or poetry. Be specific. Include descriptions of how you feel, or what you think, when you encounter these things.
Friday, December 2nd, 2011  December is “National Write to a Friend Month,” so I thought I’d do a prompt on writing letters.
With the advent of email, it seems that the “art” of letter writing has gone by the wayside, but it doesn’t have to. I like receiving personalized letters via snail mail (so I make sure to write some, so that people write me back).
Writing to a friend differs from writing to a business, but both include a salutation, a body, a closing and a signature. A friendly letter doesn’t need to have a date on it, but I’m partial to that method.
The facts:
- Salutation – The opening of the letter, for example, “Dear Mom”
- Body – The text of the letter. The body contains everything you say up to the closing.
- Closing – How you “sign off” from the body. It brings closure to what’s been said, and alerts the reader that the letter is ending. An example: Until next time…
- Signature – Your name (so that the recipient knows who the letter is from).
- Date – The date can go at the top of the page or the bottom. Your choice.
Letter writing is useful, even if you never mail it out. They can be cathartic — allowing you to get all your feelings down on paper. You can say all those things you want to say to someone, and then burn it up before anyone reads it.
You can write a letter to your children and tuck it away for them to find after you pass on.
You can write letters instead of diary entries.
Letters make a great memoir in place of a narrative.
Letters can be used in novels and stories to move the plot along. (Also very useful for figuring out what your characters want. If you don’t know where the story is going, have your main characters write letters to each other. Don’t censor your writing: just see what comes out of your brain as you’re writing.)
Here’s Your Prompt:
Write a letter!
Friday, November 25th, 2011 This idea will work if you’re blocked, or if you want to write, but don’t have any idea what you want to say.
It can work with a short story, a novel or a poem; anything, in fact.
I believe I first heard this method from author Bruce Holland Rogers, though I can’t be 100% certain. (Bruce, if you’re listening, please set me straight.)
What to do:
Take a book off your shelf and crack it open to the first page, or the first page of a chapter, or a poem at random.
Read the sentence, then write one very similar to it, changing the nouns and verbs and setting, etc. Then move on to the second and third, or as many will help you as a jumping off point. Then, continue on your own.
So, for example, from Chapter 2 of Anne Ursu’s book, Shadow Thieves, the second chapter begins:
Charlotte was one month into the school year at Hartnett Prepatory School, and thus far the year had proved to be just like all other years, except more so.
I might write something like this:
Mark had been in the sanitarium for eight weeks now. And it wasn’t quite living up to the standard of nuthouses he’d formed in his mind. It was worse.
We could go on…
Anne’s opening paragraph (in C2) continues:
Eight of the other girls in her class, whose names all begin with A, had left for the summer as brunettes and had come back as blonds.
So I write:
Three of the others in his “we see dead people” ward, had been treated to brain stimulation therapy that left them near comatose, until their bodies seemed to heal the damage. (And then, they didn’t see their dead relatives anymore.)
Mark sighed, glad he’d seen the first two come back looking like zombies after their treatment. He never would have known how to act otherwise. The treatment left him giddy, feeling free, and his Uncle Bob sounded even more clear than before. And if he wasn’t mistaken, his dead sister, Melissa, had something really important to tell to him.
He simply had to act like the others, so the docs wouldn’t catch on. Soon, he’d be out of here, too.
Didn’t take me long to go off on a tangent, eh? And I took an interesting YA sentence, and waltzed off into something supernatural. It doesn’t matter what you start with, your brain will engage with what you want to write.
Here’s Your Prompt:
Take a book off the shelf and open it to the beginning, the beginning of a random chapter, or anywhere, if it’s a poetry book.
Read the first few lines to see if the content is interesting to you. (If not, choose another spot.)
Write the first line exactly as written, skip a few lines on your page, and then start your own writing.
See where it leads you!
Friday, November 11th, 2011  In honor of our country’s Veterans, I’m hosting a Veteran’s Day Writing Prompt today.
Many thanks to all the men and women who’ve served in the US Armed Forces. I’m grateful that our country has a strong military, for both the freedoms it’s continued to safeguard and how safe I feel knowing it’s there to protect us.
Thank you to the men and women who continue to serve.
A quick digression:
I wrote a little about my family’s strong military background and some info about Veteran’s Day in my post last year, if you’re interested.
Last year’s post has a pic of my great-Uncle Walter. That’s him in the background of the picture to the right. He and my great-Uncle Frank are pictured in a downtown Baltimore bar, having a drink before they both return to duty after the Christmas holiday.
(Wasn’t Frank a handsome fellow? He looks like an old-time movie star to me. I’m sure the ladies swooned when they saw him coming.)
Now, on to the prompt…
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Write a diary entry for a single day in the timeline of any “great war.” Include specific details, as well as personal reactions.
- Write a thank you note to a veteran (or current member) of the armed forces.
- Take a few moments and brainstorm some words that come to you when you think about the military. Write a poem using one or more of the thoughts that occurred to you.
- Make a list of words that define “the perfect soldier.” Create a character sketch of this hero.
- Based on the prompt above, choose the one trait you think every soldier should have. Now, create a character sketch of a soldier who doesn’t have that trait, or blatantly disregards it. (Does that make him an unfit soldier? An anti-hero? A villain?)
- Imagine the military of the future. What gadgets do they have? What skills do they need?
- Write a story about U.S. Military Occupation on the moon. Why are we there? What’s happened? What would happen if weren’t there?
- What if there were no militias the world over? Would the world be a better place, or worse?
Friday, November 4th, 2011  Today is National Candy Day.
You’d think someone would have the good sense to combine it with Halloween, when it comes right on the heels of it, wouldn’t you?
No worries, though, I plan to celebrate with my absolute favorite candy/drink combination:
York Peppermint Patty and an ICE COLD bottle of Diet Coke. There’s nothing better than that cool minty sensation burning down the back of your throat in a huge swallow of icy cola.
Yum.
But not before breakfast. That would be sacrilege. Perhaps for a mid-morning snack…
(According to the National Confectioner’s Association, there are no less than 15 “National Chocolate” something or other days and one International Chocolate Day, as well as 35 “National” candy days total in the yearly calendar, including National Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day, only a few days away on November 7. However, their calendar doesn’t mention National Candy Day at all…nor does it mention that, apparently, June is National Candy month.)
Before you get started today, I recommend channeling your inner child and eat all the candy you find around the house. If you don’t have any leftover, I’ll bet you could catch a good sale. You remember the immortal words of Bart Simpson, right?
“It’s okay. There’s no sugar in Pixie sticks.”
Here’s Your Prompt:
- Invent a new candy! Put on your Wonka hat and create the sugary treat missing the world over. Make a list of all the ingredients that have to go in (don’t forget those spoonfuls of love and pinches of mystery.) Describe it, draw it, and then write the advertising copy.
- Do this slowly: Close your eyes and lift your favorite candy to your nose. What does it smell like? Can you smell the individual ingredients that make it up? What do you think of when you smell them? (Does vanilla remind you of sex? Does cinnamon recall the pungent odor of a burning fire or a cup of hot chocolate?)
What is the texture of the candy on your fingertips? What does that remind you of. Lastly, take a bite. Take note of the texture, the blending flavors on your tongue. How much did you salivate? Write down all these sensations, thoughts, feelings.
- Think of a character you are writing about. What is his or her favorite candy? Why? How does knowing this change your story? Could this candy play a key role in the plot of the story?
- What kind of candy best describes your personality? Write about it.
- Write a haiku or other poem about candy. The heart of the poem can be about anything: an ode to your favorite candy, or a poem of disgust for what you think is the worse; that candy should be banned, how candy once saved your life (or nearly destroyed it), that candy should be served before dinner… Anything.
Friday, October 28th, 2011  Leaving the restaurant last night after my monthly writer’s group meeting, I was struck by a hint of sadness. It’s always like that: similar minds coming together for a few hours, talking shop, encouraging each other, witnessing some really great writing.
Last night we laughed a lot. And I’m still smiling thinking of our conversations.
And then we had to go home. The End.
How sad.
We stepped outside into utter darkness, a fierce wind blowing, the promise of rain in the air…letting us know that it wasn’t just the evening ending. The year is fast on its way to being over, too.
So, today we’re talking about endings…arguably the most important part of a story. Does it have to tie up all the loose ends? Not necessarily. I like to think the characters I love have more to aspire to then the end of the book. The ending does have to solve the major problem, though: I can’t have all that build-up without some kind of resolution (even if it’s one I don’t like). That just feels like hard work without any reward.
When I get to the end of a book, I want to feel like I’ve just eaten chocolate.
Here’s Your Prompt:
Write an ending.
Have you read a book that you didn’t like the ending of? Re-write it. Have you seen any movies that had you mesmerized…until the last twenty minutes? Write the rant you’ve been discussing around the water cooler. Once you’ve gotten it all out, write a better ending.
Write about something that ended before you expected to.
Write the ending of your own life. Write three endings to your life.
When you’re done writing, write “THE END” at the bottom of the page. How did that make you feel?
Friday, October 21st, 2011
This was the scene I faced the other day, driving home from work. Fog, fog, everywhere!
Strangely, it was just as thick on the highway as it was on the back roads. Usually, the highway is clear no matter how foggy it is elsewhere, I presume from all the traffic…?
It was a slow commute, and of course my mind wandered to writing about fog…
I’ve done a lot of that myself. I find it fascinating, eerie, comforting, mysterious…. You name it. A lot depends on my mood. It’s a great backdrop for a story, or poetry. In grade school I wrote scads of really bad poetry (some, which didn’t even rhyme!) about fog, and thoughts and feelings lost in it, like ghosts… I’ll spare you the rest.
Here’s Your Prompt:
Write about fog. It doesn’t matter if you write about a memorable experience, or a scene with a character you’ve created (or even with a famous character someone else created), or a poem, etc.
Also: the fog doesn’t have to be physical. Just use the idea of fog in your writing.
You could write about foggy memories, or the fog of inebriation, or a drug-induced fog, or an emotional onslaught, etc. Doesn’t matter. You choose.
Here are some foggy prompts to get you started:
- There’s a little child // Running round this house // And he never leaves // He will never leave // And the fog comes up from the sewers // And glows in the dark – (Song Lyrics by Radiohead)
- Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face. – Robert Browning
- The fog is thick as pea soup. You could cut it with a knife.
- Cause the fog’s getting thicker // And the world’s spinning fast // The chaos is building // It’s going to last – (Song Lyrics by Maroon 5)
- …but a strange young girl hung around the neck of the hostess is about as welcome as a fog at a garden party. – Etiquette, 1922 by Emily Post. Chapter 17: Balls and Dances
- She carries the evening in her chest // And knows that she must wither away // She lays her head in his lap //
And asks for a last kiss – (Song Lyrics for the Song “Nebel” by Rammstein – Nebel, translated to English = “fog”)
- [Indications of Danger.] Alarm. Alarum, larum [archaic], alarm bell, tocsin, alerte [F.], beat of drum, sound of trumpet, note of alarm, hue and cry, fiery cross; signal of distress; flag at -half-mast, – half-staff; blue lights; war cry, war whoop; warning [See Warning]; fog signal, fog bell, fog horn, siren; yellow flag; danger signal; red light, red flag; fire bell, fire alarm, still alarm; burglar alarm; watchman’s rattle, police whistle. – (Roget’s Thesaurus, 1922)
- Some say no evil thing that walks by night, in fog or fire, by lake or moorish fen, Blue meagre hag, or stubborn unlaid ghost That breaks his magic chains at curfew time, No goblin, or swart fairy of the mine,
Hath hurtful power o’er true virginity. – John Milton
- “A Scotch fog will wet an Englishman through.” – Common saying
- October 22nd to November 21st used to be referred to in the French Republican calendar as Brumaire, or, fog-month.
And here is some information about how fog is formed from USA Today.
Friday, October 14th, 2011 If you’re just jumping on board, you might want to read last week’s prompt where I discussed one method of building characters for your stories.
This week, we’ll use the same method for coming up with some interesting situations to put them in: a bone for your muse, so to speak.
Here’s Your Prompt:
As you did last week, divide a sheet of paper into thirds and label the first third, “Article of Clothing/Weapon/Random Object,” label the second, “Event or Action,” and label the third, “Emotion, Feeling or Mood.”
(If we were in grade school, I’d make you fold the paper into the three sections, and complete each column before moving on to the next. But you can do this anyway you want. However, I caution against writing across the row, because it’s too easy to come up with hackneyed situations, for example: bouquet, a wedding, happiness. Yuk!)
The first column should be filled with words or phrases such as: chain mail armor, dagger, persimmon.
If you’re having trouble coming up with words on the list, try the Random Noun Generator, which lists up to 10 words at a time. (Not all of them are nouns, unfortunately. You may need to push the generate button a few times to get enough words for your lists.) But do try on you own at first, it’s always good practice to think!
Seventh Sanctum has a Random Weapon Generator, but the weapons are fictional. You’ve got to decide what they do.
The second column should list words such as: “the wedding of the century,” “someone sneezed,” “a robbery,” “a car broke down,” etc.
The third column should be filled with emotions, feelings and moods, such as: mad, happy, glad, forlorn. Try to find some nuances among these, instead of sticking with the mundane. If all you can think of are “the usual,” write down the first ten (10) on a different sheet of paper, and then toss it out. Dig deep into your mind.
| Article of Clothing/Weapon/Random Object |
Event or Action |
Emotion, Feeling or Mood |
| dagger |
war |
hurt |
| chainmail |
a cough |
mistrusting |
| orange |
choking |
offended |
| pot of coffee |
went forward in time |
furious |
Now comes the fun part: choose one item from each column (and never more than one item from each row). You’ll use these to write a scene with the character you created last week.
For a true sense of randomness, use a random number generator from Random.com to pick the item from each column.
I suggest, however, that you choose the event or action which will most upset your character. Conflict will make the scene much more dramatic.
A point of note: I used quotes around the phrase “Good Characters” in the title because I mean good in the sense of well crafted, rather than meaning a goody-goody character. Similarly, “bad” in the title means “unfortunate for your character” rather than (necessarily) dire.
So, your (well-crafted) pre-teen gang member might hate to attend that wedding of the century, or worse, be a bridesmaid.
Once you’ve picked from each column, write the scene described with your character.
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