Writing Prompts Aren’t Just for Beginners
Writing Prompts Aren’t Just for Beginners
How to use them and why you should
The Story Writer’s Path
How to use them and why you should
The usefulness of writing prompts
A writing prompt is the most basic of things — in its simplest form, a sentence that becomes a topic for writers. A prompt can become more complicated, too, growing into a paragraph setting up a situation, conflict, or characters to write about. Or it can be as unadorned as a single word. Or an evocative image.
A prompt is simple, and yet golden. Because a writing prompt is a doorway to putting words on the page. Who hasn’t faced the blank page or monitor with blanching face and blank mind? A writing prompt gives you a starting point. And that’s what so many of us need. A prompt to jog the words out of the fuzzy old brain.
Prompts for new writers
For this reason, many a new writer has been advised to use a writing prompt to launch into their work. When first you start writing, you may not be sure what, exactly you want to write about. Or you might have a vague idea but are unsure how to develop it. Further, maybe you don’t even know what genre you want to write in — fiction? non-fiction? stories? essays? novels? memoir?
Writing prompts aid the writer in figuring all this out. Because, so often clarity happens only after you start writing. The ideas and creativity come as you write. But in order for this to happen, you need to be writing, to have something to write about. This is where writing prompts come in so handy.
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But, prompts are for all writers
After you’ve been writing for a while, you probably settle into a project or projects. You’ve decided you want to concentrate on your memoir, or maybe a short story. You’re moving along nicely, the piece developing. But then, suddenly it is not.
The words don’t come. The sentences don’t form, the paragraphs don’t hold together.
And you are facing the dreaded writer’s block.
You don’t know what to write, or how to write it. Suddenly, you feel like a beginner all over again. You fumble around, confused. And finally you get up from the desk and quit writing.
Enter the writing prompt.
Pick a writing prompt, any writing prompt, and write to it. Get words on the page. The best (and only) way out is through. You’ve got to write to get over your writing block. It doesn’t matter what you write, only that you write.
Don’t angst out over the process. Pick a prompt and write. You’ll feel such relief to be putting words on the page again. And odds are you’ll get insight into your block as you work.
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Why writing prompts work
The idea here is to short circuit the critical editor and scared inner child who rear their heads when you start writing. Keeping the pen moving allows access to your subconscious, where lots of the good stuff lies waiting.
Prompts also aid you in making writing flow more easily. You get used to your hand moving across the page as you write to prompts regularly. You get accustomed to expressing yourself in writing. It’s a process, like so much else. And once you’ve mastered it writing to a prompt, it is easy (ish) to transfer that ability to the piece you long to write.
How to use writing prompts
To be honest, as with all things creative, you can use them any old way you want. But the following guidelines may help.
Where to find them
Everywhere. Google “writing prompts” and lists of them come up. Books of them populate reference sections. You can also make your own lists of them for such times as they become needed. Note favorite lines of poetry or prose, an evocative sentence you found online or elsewhere, lines from your own WIPs.
Use a timer
Setting a timer is helpful so that you give yourself a chance to get going before giving up. Fifteen minutes is a good interval. You can do anything for fifteen minutes, right?
If you know you’ve committed to writing for fifteen minutes, you won’t stop at five. While five minutes is good (because any amount of writing is good), writing for fifteen minutes allows you to go deeply into your writing topic.
If you are still engaged when the timer goes off, feel free to keep writing. That’s the point, after all.
Keep writing. For God’s sake, keep the pen moving
This is the key concept in writing to a prompt. Keep your pen moving across the page or keyboard no matter what. If you don’t know what to write, write that: I don’t know what to write, I don’t know what to write, I don’t know what to write. Eventually your brain will kick in and you’ll get back to some semblance of a topic.
If the dreaded critical voice emerges, give it a sentence on the page and keep going. Eventually, more quickly than you think, it will limp away, leaving you with your brilliance.
Just remember: keep going. The only way out is through.
Remember, a prompt is a starting point only
You don’t have to adhere religiously to the topic. Go where your pen takes you. Let the words flow. You may start out responding to the prompt about the woman with blue hair at the cafe, and end up writing about an astronaut on Mars. Doesn’t matter. Go with it.
Don’t agonize over which prompt to use
Just choose one and go. Close your eyes and point to a prompt, then start writing. You can easily do this with an article online or something you’re reading. Point to a sentence and use it as a prompt. Don’t think, don’t over-analyze, write.
Mine your work
Go back and read over what you’ve written. Underline or highlight the sentences you like. You can use these as new writing prompts or put them directly into your WIP. You’ll likely have swaths of writing of use. Often what happens when I write to prompts is that the prompt writing turns into a scene for my novel.
Use prompts from your WIP
Writing to prompts sometimes gets a bad rap from experienced writers because they see it as a waste of time. Who wants to spend fifteen minutes on random writing when they could be using those precious moments on their WIP?
But you can easily adapt the habit by choosing prompts from your WIP. Take the last line of your most recent scene as a prompt, or use a description of a character to find more insight about her. Use a proposed theme as a prompt, or one of your favorite sentences that doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.
Using bits of your current work as prompts can open windows to insight about it in a fast and easy way.
Make it a habit
Choose a prompt, and write to it fifteen minutes a day. The ideas you get, the sentences you craft, the places you go on the page will astound you. No matter where you are in your writing career, this practice has the ability to be life-changing.
A few prompts to get you started
Take them and go forth and write.
Once upon a time in the west.
Somewhere over the rainbow.
“It’s raining,” she said.
Can we please?
There’s never a cop when you need one.
Earth is the penal colony for another planet, we just don’t know it.
The best color is green.
Life is hard, and then it gets harder.
Step by step we travel far.
Darkness fell, and then thing got really crazy.