Writing Prompts (Richard Draude)

Writing Prompts, what are they?

If you’re a fiction writer, you may want to consider the use writing prompts to kick-start your creativity. A writing prompt is a topic around which you start jotting down ideas. The prompt can be a single word, a short phrase, a complete paragraph or even a picture. The idea being, to give you something to focus upon while you write. You may stick closely to the original prompt or you may, as many do, wander off at a tangent.
The point is to start writing, without being held back by inhibitions or doubts. Your first notes will be rough, disjointed, but the more you refine your idea the closer you’ll to something polished and complete. Maybe a scene or even a complete story.

Here are four good reasons for writing to prompts:

1.When faced with a blank page, many times it’s hard to start writing. Focusing on your unrelated prompt for a while, helps get the creative juices flowing. Writing for  for just ten minutes on a prompt, you should find it easier to return to the piece you intended to write. You may also find that if you stop trying to think so hard about what you wanted to write and switch you attention to the prompt instead, the words and ideas for your original piece start to come to you after all.

2.The things you write, responding to inspiration of your chosen prompt may end up as worthwhile material in their own right. Your prompt may give you ideas from which a complete story can grow. You may get a fresh idea for another piece you’re already working on. It’s often surprising how much material you come up with once you get started.

3.Working to a prompt regularly, helps to get you into the habit of writing. It can act as an exercise regime, helping to build up your “mental muscles” so that you start to find your writing sessions get longer and longer, while the effort gets easier.

4.Prompts can be a great way to get involved in a writing community. Some writing groups offer a prompt for everyone to write about, with the intention being for everyone to come up with something they can then share. The leader of one such group handed out a 3 x 5 card. Each member wrote down two nouns, two verbs, two adjectives, and one color. The twist to the exercise came when we passed the cards two places to the left. The card we received, became the basis of a 300-500 word piece. This can be a source of great encouragement, although knowing others will read what you have written can inhibit your creativity.


Examples of Writing Prompts

Here are twenty writing prompts that you could use to spark your imagination. If you want to use one, don’t worry about where the ideas take you or whether what you’ve written is “good”. The point is just to get into the flow of writing. You can come back later and polish if you wish to.
 01. It was the first hard snowfall of the year.
 02. She woke, shivering, in the dark of the night.
 03. His feet were already numb. He should have listened.
 04. Silk lace.
 05. She studied her swollen face in the mirror.
 06. Red eyes.
 07. This time her boss had gone too far.
 08. She’d have to hitch a ride home.
 09. The streets are deserted. Where is everyone? Where had they all gone?
 10. The city burned, fire lighting up the night sky
 11. They came back every year to lay flowers on the side of the road.
 12. Stars blazed in the night sky.
 13. He woke to the song of birds in the meadow.
 14. The garden was overgrown now.
 15. The smell of freshly-cut grass.
 16. He hadn’t seen her since the day they left High School
 17. ‘Shh! Hear that?’ ‘I didn’t hear anything.’
 18. He’d never noticed a door there before.
 19. Where does this corridor led?
 20. ‘I told her not to go there!’
 21. He’d always hated speaking in public.

Where To Find Writing Prompts Online.
The internet is a wonderful source of writing prompts. There are sites dedicated to providing them which a quick search will turn up. Examples include:

 •Creative-Writing-Solutions.com
 •WritersDigest.com
 •CreativeWritingPrompts.com

I also came across numerous blogs offering a regular writing prompt to inspire you and where you can, if you wish, post what you’ve written.

 •DragonWritingPrompts.blogspot.com
 •OneMinuteWriter.blogspot.com
 •SundayScribblings.blogspot.com


There are also many other sites that can, inadvertently, provide a rich seam of material for writing prompts – for example news sites with their intriguing headlines or pictorial sites such as Flickr.com that give you access to a vast range of photographs that can prompt your writing.
Have a Twitter account, there are users you can follow and receive a stream of prompts Three examples:
 •twitter.com/writingprompt
 •twitter.com/NoTelling
 •twitter.com/writingink

Another idea is just to keep an eye on all the tweets being written by people all over the world, some of which can, inadvertently, be used as writing prompts.

How To Make Your Own Writing Prompts

You can find ideas for writing prompts of your own from all sorts of places. Get used to keeping your eyes open for words and phrases that fire your imagination. Sometimes snatches of overheard conversation, headlines, signs, words picked from a book and so on. Jot them down any and all, then use them as writing prompts to spark your creativity. You never know what road they may take you down..

Do you need an Editor? (Richard Draude)

Do you need an Editor?

I'm constantly amazed at writers who come to our writers group or any group with a story they've written to have it critiqued. From the first it's easy to tell whether they've really serious about having others opinions or they just there to have their egos stroked.

They sit there stone faced, nodding while the members provided honest observations about problems they see in the writing, the story or both. Some listen, go home, work on incorporating the comments they feel are most helpful into the next chapter. Some listen, but return with little if any improvement. The ones I really feel for are those who get their feelings hurt and don't return. Instead they go elsewhere, looking for someone to tell them its a great novel. If that's what you need, have your mother read it.

If you are one of the lucky few accepted by a publisher, tuck your ego in your in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. The redlines, corrections, deletions, and changes have just begun. In case you don't know, a traditional publishers employs an army of people who will go over your book. Content, line, grammar editors and proof readers, stand between you and publication. So you work has just begun.

Case in point. A woman came to Mystic Publishers a few years ago with a novel she wished to self-publish. She was asked if she'd had the manuscript edited. She replied that her family had read it and it was ready for publication. Most self-publishing houses would have said great and sent it to press. After reading the first two chapters, the people at Mystic suggested they have an editor look at it. What the author received back shocked her. Every page had some much red on it you have though the story had tried to slash its wrists. The author hired the editor, made the corrections, but never bothered to have someone proof read it. She insisted on printing 500 copies. He son bought a copy and returned it the next day the book's errors all red-lined. Almost every page had errors. Now the author has 500 units of fire starter.

Three years ago I joined a writers group to share my work. For one reason, to a better idea of what I'm doing right, but mostly where I'm going wrong. I soon learned that while theses are good people and good writers, they're not there to stroke anyone's ego.

Case in point. My first book, I published in a vacuum, so to speak. Wrote it, talked a few people into editing it and made the corrections. No one else saw it until it hit the market, (and didn't sell). A friends wife read it and handed the book back to me with sticky tabs on numerous pages. Close to fifty typos.  When I started sharing it with the group I learned very quickly what show don't tell really means. I went back pulled the ISBN number and rewrote the story. The first half was just released by NewLink Publishing, titled, Dreams and Deceptions. (ISBN # 978-1-941271-00-1) It's on Amazon and available for the Kindle and available in most other eBook formats on Smash Words. Part two Plots and Prophecies will be released early in 2015. I'm busy working on books 3 & 4

So, do you need and editor?  John Grisham, Stephen King, Isaac Asimov, JK Rowlins, Sue Grafton, and Orson Scott Card all have editors, Heck, Even in the make-believe TV world of Jessica Fletcher and Richard Castle, and Tim McGee, they all have editor. What makes us think we don't.
Don't get discouraged, to turn a good story into a great novel takes hard work and dedication and at least one decent editor.

5 Senses—How to Invoke Them In Your Writing (Denice Whitmore)

5 Senses

We all use description in our writing. We describe characters and settings, actions and reactions. Most of what we write is description of some sort. By using the 5 senses, we can broaden our descriptions from a list of attributes to an experience for our readers.

Touch—How do you describe touch? The word feel/felt is passive so how can we describe how something feels without using that word? Let’s think of some words that describe something that you've touched.

Silky, smooth, rough, scaly, sticky, slimy, hard, soft, ribbed, slick, grainy slippery…you get the idea.

It’s not the adjectives themselves but how they are woven into the nouns, verbs and phrases that will truly help a reader know how an unfamiliar, or even familiar, object feels. Let’s have an example.

           

            He ran his hand through her _______ hair.

A little cliché, I know. But what if we didn't go with the obvious choice? What if we chose sticky? This would have a huge impact on his reaction.

He ran his hand through her sticky hair. He stared at his fingers, squishing them together. The skin peeling apart from top to bottom and then he did it again, fascinated at the suction the sugary substance caused.

We've all experienced that as kids and, while unexpected here, we get a clear picture of how sticky feels.

Smell—We all know what things smell like. Describing the actual smell without using comparisons can be a challenge. Let’s think of some words that describe smells.

Foul, sweet, burning, smoky, pungent, fruity, rancid, decayed, fresh, stale, dusty, minty, woody, earthy, sweaty, musty, dank.

How would you describe fresh cut grass? Or, the smell of baking bread? How about the smell of a dirty diaper? These are all things we have smelled before but putting words to a description can be hard. A lot of times we rely on common experience of the readers to fill in the blanks. When we write things like, fresh cut grass, or the smell of baking bread, or even dirty diaper, they definitely evoke something in each of us. But because everyone’s experiences are different, what they think of will not be the same as what the writer intended.

Scent also has the strongest connection to memory. Who hasn’t walked into the house while cookies were baking and thought of visits to Grandma’s or baking with Mom? But we can’t just rely on ‘tells’ and the readers experience to describe scent. As an exercise, try using adjectives to describe the following. Some may be harder that you think. If you come up with a good one, share it in the comments.

·         Fresh cut grass

·         Baking bread

·         A garden/your favorite flowers

·         Two-week-old leftovers in the fridge

Taste—How would you describe the taste of salt to someone who has never eaten it? Not as easy as it sounds, is it? Especially since we use ‘salty’ as an adjective. So, on to the list of taste words.

Salty, sweet, sour, sweet and sour, savory, rich, tangy, bitter, bittersweet, fruity, starchy, flavorful, raspberry(or all the fruit flavors), mild, spicy.

When writing about taste, your goal should be to evoke the memory of a specific taste in your reader by giving the description of the item and the characters reaction to it.

She loaded the chip with salsa. Opening wide, she crunched down and chewed rolling the tomatoes, peppers and lime flavors around in her mouth. She smiled at her date, but then her eyes watered and she gasped for air. She swallowed the mouthful and the heat slid down to her stomach. Drawing in a deep breath, she plunged her head into the punch bowl, cooling the burn with huge gulps of the sweet, fruity drink.

           

Or how about the taste of ice cream?

He slid his tongue over the cold scoop on the cone. Flecks of bittersweet chocolate mingled with the sugary cream. He closed his eyes savoring the mix of flavors.

Draw on your personal experiences and sensations to help the readers identify and make their mouth’s water.

Hearing—Sounds are important to our lives. If you describe a setting and leave out the sounds you haven’t given the reader a complete picture. Would you describe a carnival without the barker yelling, the music of the merry-go-round floating on the breeze, a bell ringing and people cheering as someone wins a prize, and let’s not forget the shrieks of the daring souls brave enough to ride the roller coaster. These all add to the setting.

But sometimes we can use sound to convey action.

Pop! Pop! Pop! He ducked, bullets peppering the wall above his head.

This is called onomatopoeia. These words imitate the natural sound of things. Think of them as sound effects for writers. Here are some examples of onomatopoeia.

Boom, crash, pop, splash, drip, plop, warble, whoosh, croak, whistle, giggle, growl, bawl, clang, clap, clink, slap, thud, buzz, chirp, meow, moo.

These words mimic the sound they describe. They are often found at the beginning of a sentence and signify the sounds themselves. They can also heighten the tension or surprise the reader as in the example above. So don’t forget the sound of your setting for a complete picture.

Sight—Last of all is sight. As writers, we are used to describing the visual aspects of our characters and setting. But we have to remember to make them part of the story and not just a laundry list of description. Here’s an example.

He was tall, about six feet. He had blond hair and blue eyes. He wore blue jeans and a black t-shirt.

Pretty boring, right? Now let’s make it part of the story.

I looked up into his face when the gun cocked. The boy’s blue eyes shifted around the alley. Switching the gun to his left hand he wiped his palm on his tight, black t-shirt. He turned and ran away, his messy blond hair blowing in the wind.

Making the details part of the action makes it more interesting for the reader.

Using color can be tricky. Ally Condie stands out to me as someone who has mastered the use of color in her writing. Here are the first few paragraphs of her book Matched.

Now that I’ve found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night? My wings aren’t white or feathered; they’re green, made of green silk, which shudders in the wind and bends when I move—first in a circle, then in a line, finally in a shape of my own invention. The black behind me doesn’t worry me; neither do the stars ahead.

            I smile at myself, at the foolishness of my imagination. People cannot fly, though before the Society, there were myths about those who could. I saw a painting of one of them once. White wings, blue sky, gold circles above their heads, eyes turned up in surprise as though they couldn’t believe what the artist had painted them doing, couldn’t believe that their feet didn’t touch the ground.

            Those stories weren’t true. I know that. But tonight it’s easy to forget.

She uses color seven different times in that passage alone. Never once did she ‘tell’ us something about the color. She didn’t tell us her dress was green or the night was black or even that the painting was of angels. She ‘showed’ us the thoughts of her POV character and worked the color in. So let us find better ways of using sight in our writing to make it vivid.

By employing all the senses in our writing, we don’t just tell our readers a story, we let them share in the experience of our characters. We can evoke emotion and memory. We can create well-rounded settings and vivid, colorful pictures. So go forth and try something new. Expand your descriptions to artistry.

Keep writing.

LOSE THE ADVERBS AND GAIN THE READER

This post is about using (overusing) adverbs in narrative not in dialogue.

While adverbs have their place, (even in narrative) beginners tend to use them to far to often, and established authors use them because they know they can get away with it. When it comes to adverb usage, the rules doe all should be:

1.) Omit the adverb if it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence.

2.) Adverb usage means you’re not using a strong enough verb.

3.) If the adverb passes these two tests, you should keep it

Fast food employees need rules to do their job, but we're writers, we aren’t flipping burgers. We need to know the "Why?" or we get cooked (Rejected).

　
Before you send those hard worked pages of your novel to an agent or publisher for consideration, follow the adverb rules listed above. If you do some soul searching and honest reflection you'll find 99% of adverbs (even the most judiciously (lol) place ones), to an editor sound like nails on a chalkboard. You've played by the rules, yet in all honesty your adverbs failed the test. There has to be more to this adverb thing.

Why, you ask? Why this unnecessary prejudice against the lowly adverb? After your adverb-soul-searching I just spoke of, you'll find these three reasons to avoid adverbs helpful.

Reason 1The use of any adverb may be a strong indicator of some contextual problems surrounding it, so it becomes a form of telling, not showing. Whether you’re writing in 1st person or 3rd person, at some point in your story you provide the reader with descriptive narrative. One example is in describing a setting the character is in, entering , or going to enter. Even if you have an adverb in the scene that passes all the rules, pull out from the sentence and ask yourself  "Am I doing a good enough job with the narration."  It’s possible you’re not painting the picture you want. What you need is a brush stroke, not a touch up. The adverb is a bandage for bad exposition.

Reason 2The adverb may be an indicator of a point of view issue. This was a problem for many scenes for my co-author me. Our first book, written twenty years ago and recently pick up by a publisher, had many weak passages. We were confused until we realized we needed a tighter POV. (Pounded into our head by our publisher Show - Don't tell.) Twenty years ago we felt the adverbs conveyed the feelings of the scenes central character. Once we understood the problem, the adverbs disappeared and our scenes are much better.

Reason 3 Once you see the difference you'll understand how adverbs distance the connection between the reader and your characters, not enhance it. As writers there's a tendency to use adverbs because we feel we're heightening the reader experience, but in fact, once you take an honest look, most of the time the opposite is true. 

(True Story) Take this excerpt from the first scene in a novel. The widower's young son wakes from a terrifying nightmare. The father enter the room and quiets him. 

He hugged his weeping son, kissed his forehead, then gently rocked him back to sleep.

The adverb "gently" sounds like a good adverb. You would think so. The editor struck down. Your first thought is, that would remove the meaning. But in fact, the loss of the adverb enhances the scene.

He hugged his weeping son, kissed his forehead, then rocked him back to sleep.

By omitting the adverb "gently", it forces the reader to imagine the scene. And this, my dear writer, is what you want the reader to do. You want them to engage, to empathize and imagine. You want them to become your character. If you modify your verbs to tell the reader exactly what is going on, you keep them arms length and they never become invested in the character or your story.

At the Las Vegas writers conference an agent told us "If I find more then three adverbs in three hundred words I stop and send it back". 

For you writers. Forget the editors and grammar

The hoax that backfired.

Everyone knows the adage, "You can’t judge a book by its cover." In 1969 that aphorism got an extra dose of validity when Penelope Ashe, a bored housewife from Long Island, NY, wrote the trashy sensation Naked Came the Stranger.

As part of her book tour, she appeared on talk shows and made the bookstore rounds. But the Long Island housewife was anything but. She certainly wasn't what her book jacket claimed. Penelope Ashe was as fictional as the novel she supposedly wrote. In reality, both were the work of Mike McGrady, a Newsday columnist disgusted with the lurid state of the modern bestseller. Instead of complaining, he decided to expose the problem by writing a book of zero redeeming social value and even less literary merit.

He enlisted the help of 24 Newsday colleagues, tasking each with a chapter, and instructed them that there should be “an unremitting emphasis on sex.” He also warned that “true excellence in writing will be quickly blue-penciled into oblivion.” Once McGrady had the smutty chapters in hand (which included acrobatic trysts in tollbooths, encounters with progressive rabbis, and cameos by Shetland ponies), he painstakingly edited the prose to make it worse. In 1969, an independent publisher released the first edition of Naked Came the Stranger, with the part of Penelope Ashe played by McGrady’s sister-in-law.

To the McGrady's dismay, his cynical ploy worked. The media was all too fascinated with the salacious daydreams of the “demure housewife” turned author. And though The New York Times wrote, “In the category of erotic fantasy, this one rates about a C,” the public didn't mind. By the time the journalist revealed his hoax a few months later, the novel had already moved 20,000 copies. Far from sinking the book’s prospects, the negative press pushed sales even higher. By the end of the year, there were more than 100,000 copies in print, and the novel had spent 13 weeks on the Times’s bestseller list. As of 2012, the tome had sold nearly 400,000 copies, mostly to readers who were in on the joke. But in 1990, McGrady told Newsday he couldn't stop thinking about those first sales: “What has always worried me are the 20,000 people who bought it before the hoax was exposed.”

 

Read the full text here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/49674/14-greatest-hoaxes-all-time#ixzz2VkhJIaoN

--brought to you by mental floss

Show, Don't Tell (Richard Draude)

Speech and Thought Through Personality .

The fiction-writing dictum for both publisher & editor is, “Show, don’t tell.”

How do you apply that in practical terms when it comes to communicating characterization without exposition?

People in different eras have unique speech and speech patterns, but restrain yourself from indulging in periodization in your historical novel; if your Elizabethan-era characters talk like Shakespeare’s, people:

1) won’t understand much of what they say and

2) will be distracted by your forced — and fatally flawed — attempt at authenticity.

Do immerse yourself in that period’s society: What did people know about history and sociology and psychology and spirituality (even if they never used those terms to identify them)? What were prevailing political and social and religious viewpoints? How open were the people of then day, about expressing themselves? Do not to let modern sensibilities intrude on the way your characters speak and think. Do, however, permit them and their speeches and thoughts to be accessible to modern readers.

The extent to which characters will express their ideas and opinions, or ruminate about them, and the language with which they will do so, depends on a few other factors:

People of different generations and different social backgrounds generally speak differently. Geriatric characters should exhibit speech and speech patterns distinct from juvenile ones and consistent with norms unless an exception is a deliberate dramatic point — for instance, if a teenager who has switched bodies with an elderly person is trying to pass vocally as well as visually as a senior citizen.

Likewise, the speech and thoughts of well-educated characters will usually be distinguishable from that of those of others with less formal schooling. Of course, no one should assume that a person with only a high school education is less intelligent than a college graduate, or the reverse, but their vocabulary and the level of sophistication of their thoughts will, unless they are self-educated, likely differ.

Further individualization of characters makes fiction writing more vivid. How does one’s personality affect words and thoughts? A repressed person’s speech patterns will differ significantly from an extrovert’s. A tense, angry character will exhibit different rhythms of speech and thought than a carefree individual.

Length of speeches and thoughts is also a consideration: Philosophically minded people do not tend to make snap judgments. Children do not soliloquize. Match the extent to which people speak and think to their personalities. Keep in mind that various sentence lengths and paragraph lengths have differing dramatic values, too — long passages tend to be soothing (but, when too long, are sleep-inducing), while short bursts create or maintain tension (though,done to excess, can be as wearying as extensive paragraphs).

In essence, capitalize on your knowledge of individual characters to establish vocabulary and modes of speech and thought, as well as on familiarity with societal norms for speaking and thinking appropriate to the era in which your characters live.

First Sentences by Denice Whitmore

First Sentences by Denice Whitmore 

In fiction writing, a good first sentence pulls the reader into the story. It makes them want to keep reading. The reader forms his first impression of you as a writer, your characters, and your writing style and then makes a decision whether they want to spend their time and invest emotionally in your book, all from the first sentence. No pressure. Right?

 

I have attended first page reads at the Las Vegas Writer’s Conference where the panel of agents and publishers (who are supposed to raise their hand when they would stop reading) shot their hands up during the first sentence and no one heard the rest of the page because the first sentence was weak and didn't spark their interest.

Personally, I struggle with the first sentence of every chapter. I want the beginning of each chapter to grab my readers. When they feel like putting the book down at the end of the chapter and they turn the page just to take a peek(you know you have done this) they get hooked in and read just one more chapter(who cares if it’s one am).

Think of the first sentence as an invitation. You, the writer, are inviting the reader to join you on a journey. Will it be a fun journey? A perilous journey? A heart wrenching journey? Or maybe a combination. Find the spot where the journey begins—that point where the character jumps off the cliff, straight into the conflict that will propel the story forward.

So how do we hook the reader right off the bat? Here are few examples from some of my favorite books.

One of my favorite authors is Maggie Stiefvater. The first book I read by her was Shiver. It’s the first in her series about the Wolves of Mercy Falls. Here is the first sentence of that book.

 

I remember lying in the snow, a small red spot of warm going cold, surrounded by wolves.

 

What a great opening. She uses the white of the snow and the red spot to paint a visual. She uses warm and cold to awaken other senses. And just for the kicker she adds in ‘surrounded by wolves.’ Now I have to know what will happen. I am worried for this person lying in the cold snow with warm red, and wolves. How did they get there? But more importantly, how do they get out of there? She found the spot where her character is smack in the middle of it and starts her story there.

I read a lot of books with my four boys. Our copy of The Lighting Thief by Rick Riordan is a dog-eared, yellow-paged, crumpled, well-read paperback (and I still have two, not old enough to read it yet). Here is the first line. 

Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.

 

Riordan immediately sets up the voice of Percy Jackson as the main character. He introduces the problem facing Percy and how he feels about it right from the start. He doesn’t give away all the details leaving the reader wondering—half-blood what? And, what’s so bad about being a half-blood? What kind of adventure will this be? We were hooked right away.

I often browse the book section at Costco. One day I found a book by Brandon Sanderson. As it turns out, it was his debut novel for young-adult audiences called, The Rithmatist. I had recently been introduced to him by my nephew and enjoy watching his lecture series on his website www.writeaboutdragons.com but had not yet read any of his books. I am an avid young adult reader so I bought it (loved it by the way). Here is the first line of the prologue.

Lilly’s lamp blew out as she bolted down the hallway.

He lets us know from the get go that we are not in our modern world. This girl carries a lamp with a flame not a flash light or a cell phone with a flash light app. She is running from something and now she is in the dark as well. It gives a feeling of foreboding for Lilly and we need to find out what will happen to her.

So remember to invite your readers into your world, where the action starts, giving a sense of the characters voice and introducing a question to their mind (Oh. Is that all?). Sounds daunting when you put it like that. But you don’t have to write your first sentence first. Complete your first draft and you will intimately know your characters, their quirks, voice and all the wonderful attributes that you wrote into them. Sometimes knowing how the story ends will help you find the perfect beginning.

            Keep writing.