To Prompt or Not to Prompt, That is the Question

Love them or hate them?

This image has nothing to do with prompts. But wouldn’t it be fun to use as one?

I taught a virtual writing workshop last weekend with my business partner, Debbie. The stated goal of our workshop was to hurtle writers into the new year with ideas and inspiration for their writing. Part of what we did was write to prompts, and another part of what we did was talk about the use of prompts.

Prompts and I are old friends and I’ve written a lot about them before. On my old blog, I had a regular series called Promptitude and for awhile I had a virtual prompt machine a lovely reader created for me. The archives there have pages of prompt posts. I even have a Tumblr blog devoted to prompts. Let’s see if I can find it. Oh yes, here it is. (Did you know Tumblr is experiencing a comeback thanks to Elon’s takeover of Twitter? Crazy.)

From my years of being a friend to prompts, I know that while many people love them, others hate them. (Poor, sad prompts.) I get that. I’ve had experiences good and bad with them myself. The good experiences are fabulous—words flow, new ideas pop up, strange but useful connections appear on the page. The bad experiences are boring and sometimes even tedious. Is there anything worse than stringing a bunch of meaningless words together on the page because some stupid writing teacher told you to?

Well, yes, yes there is. But we won’t go into such things at the moment.

To my mind, there are times when writing to prompts can work wonders. And times when using them can lead you astray. We’ll talk about the wonder part first, but before that, how about a quick review of prompt writing “rules.” I put the word “rules” in quotes because I’m not a big rule follower and I don’t expect my people to be either. But there are some, let’s call them guidelines, that make writing to prompts more useful.

First of all, remember that a prompt is just that—a prompt. It is not a topic. It is not a subject. It is a starting point. And that means that you can go anywhere and everywhere with it. The prompt may wax poetic about the gorgeous blue sky but you end up writing about snow. Or cactus. Or a dog. Or that time you got stuck in an elevator in a high-rise in Manhattan. Then again, maybe you do write about blue sky. The point is, it doesn’t matter. The prompt exists to get you going. It does not exist to make you hew stolidly to its meaning.

Second, the best way to use prompts is to let your writing rip. It’s good to set a timer and then push the pen across the page. (Or fingers across the keyboard, but honestly, with prompts, writing by hand is best.) Don’t stop, don’t think, keep writing. If you get stuck, write, I don’t know what to write over and over again until something else comes. Doing this avoids the temptation to hue exactly to the meaning of the prompt (which may bore you) and it also allows you to better access your subconscious, which is pretty much the magic of prompt writing.

Okay, review of rules guidelines completed, on to the wonder part. Here are some of the ways that prompts can be useful:

• You can use them as a warm-up. Start your writing session with a five- or ten-minute prompt writing session. Get the flow going.

• You can use them when you are stuck. Choose a random prompt and write or use one from your WIP (see below).

• You can use them to get your fears and worries out on the page (about writing and life). Similar to Julia Cameron’s morning pages, you can use prompts to get your ya-yas out.

• You can use them to train yourself to write in flow. The more you write, the easier it is.

• You can use them to help overcome perfectionism. When you choose a random prompt and go for it, you know it doesn’t matter.

• You can use them when you don’t have a lot of time to write but want to do something. Don’t have time to get deeply involved with your novel, but want to write something to keep your brain engaged with the process? Use a prompt.

• You can use them as an entry point into your WIP (work in progress). Take a line from a scene, the final line of your last chapter, make up a simple prompt about your character (right now my character is _____). Use your imagination—just about any aspect of your WIP can be used as a prompt.

And now for the bits about when they don’t work. Last week, or sometime recently (ever since the onset of the pandemic, time has been weird for me) I read a newsletter from Jennifer Loudon. It attracted my attention because she had boldly written, beware prompts! And she made a good point about them—that sometimes they can lead you astray. She told the story of a writer working on a non-fiction book who was using prompts “to create gorgeous passages of prose” but losing sight of her story.

I agree that this can easily happen—especially with non-fiction. A writer can get so wrapped up in writing said gorgeous prose that the actual story gets lost. But, I do think there are ways that prompts can happily be used with your WIP, as noted above.

They can be used to procrastinate. Similar to the above, if you’re blocked or stuck somewhere in your story, it can be tempting, oh so tempting, to write to a prompt and then say, see? I wrote. Sort of the writer’s equivalent of sticking their tongue out and saying “Nah nah nah nah na.” So don’t do that.

It’s also good to note that there are, to my mind, two kinds of prompts. There are what I call the random kind, wherein a lovely or crazy or goofy sentence is the starting point, or there is the thoughtful kind, wherein the writer is commanded to write about a specific thing. (Again bear in mind that you might want to write only to that specific thing or go wild with flights of fancy.)

An example of the random kind: The bare branches of the cherry tree dripped with cold rain

An example of the thoughtful kind: Write about something you hate.

Okay, I think I’ve covered everything you ever wanted to know about prompts, but if I’ve missed something, let me know in the comments. Oh wait—where can you find prompts? I linked to a bunch of pages full of prompts in the second paragraph of this post. And, something I often weirdly forget, my cousin and I wrote a book full of them. You can get that here. Or just Google—the interwebs are full of prompt sites! I also recommend keeping an ongoing list of prompts in your journal or on your computer.

I’m so excited about restarting my blog here on Substack. Please do subscribe if you land on this post! And I’d love to hear what other writing blogs you follow here.

And also, I’d like to remind you that I’m a writing coach and if you are having trouble with your writing, hit me up. To be honest I’m not fully familiar with the ins and outs of this space yet. But if you leave me a comment I’ll see it. And if this post has come into your inbox, I believe, operative word believe, that you can reply to it and I’ll get it. And also you can buy my novels here.

Onward! Sending love, light, and good writing juju!