Creative Writing – Prompt #1

1. Creative Writing – Prompt #1 • Newspaper Article • Interview each other for a mock newspaper article---a great method for developing characters. Interviewer must gather background information before putting pen to paper. The interviewee may be anything he or she wants---a sports super star, a war hero, a mystery writer, etc. • Take a turn being the interviewer and the interviewee. Each person must write a newspaper article about the person that they interview. • What should a newspaper article contain? • How do you develop a character?

2. Creative Writing Prompt #2 • Fairy tales have happy endings. All of us know what happened in that mushy fairy tale, Cinderella. Yeah, it’s a romantic, the prince acutally finding Cinderella. They lived happily ever after. But happy endings can sometimes be, well. . .boring. No zing. So predictable. So. . .happy. What if the shoe fit one of the sisters? Play with your imagination here. Be funny if you like. Or serious if you feel like it. Or be an Alfred Hitchcock. Whatever you are into, write your ending to the Cinderella story—but this time, make it so that the shoe fit one of the icky sisters. What does Prince Charming do? How does Cinderella cope with it? And what about the Fairy Godmother? Start your story here.

3. Dialogue Practice – Voices in the DarkCreative Writing Prompt #3 The purpose of this practice is to develop skills in dialogue writing. • In this writing activity the writer-narrator sets up the plot situation in a beginning paragraph-not too lengthy. In this plot situation, the narrator -cannot see- (either blind, or blind folded)-but can hear- two speakers, one "for" and one "against" the narrator. The dialogue should comprise 85% of the paper. The two characters discuss 'back and forth' focusing mostly on the 'blind' narrator rather than on each other. [The speaking characters may be 'developed' as well as the narrator through the dialogue.] The dialogue may have a theme. • *Incidentally the 'for and against' part of the assignment builds a tension and interest in the plot for both the reader and the listeners.

4. Creative Writing Quick Write #1 • Make a list of 40 things that happened to you this month. • They can be funny, embarrassing, infuriating, or happy. • Then pick one thing from the list and write about it.

5. Creative Writing Poetry #1 • From this prompt you will come up with a poem about an object that describes you. • First choose an object. • Next, list down the reasons that you think this object you chose represents you. • From this list of reasons, which one is the most powerful? Circle that one. • Which one conveys the strongest image of you? Circle that one. • Once you’ve chosen two main imagines, list down the things about you that support these two images. • Build your poem from here.

6. Creative Writing Prompt #5 • Below are three sets of words. Use all of the words in each set to write mini stories in 300 words or less: • paper clips, principal, lunch box, swing, girl with a pink ribbon • biology, class card, foregin student, leaf, blood sample • computer, filing cabinet, hole puncher, data entry person, printer, janitor

7. Creative Writing Prompt #6 • Where do you go when you want to get away from the pressures of family, school work, life, etc.? • Write about this place. • Some things you may want to consider: • Describe the place so that we can see it and feel it. • Tell how it makes you feel there. • Explain how this came to be your place. • Who shares or knows about this place, if anyone. • How often do you go there? • What factors drive you there?

8. Creative Writing Prompt #7 • In 400 words, create an ideal place.

9. Creative Writing Prompt #8 • Write about the color of hunger.

10. Creative Writing Prompt #9 • Re-write the fairy tale, Snow White, from ther perspective of one of the seven dwarfs. • Bashful • Doc • Dopey • Grumpy • Happy • Sleepy • Sneezy

11. Creative Writing Prompt #10 • List ten things that annoy you. • Pick one and write about it.

12. Creative Writing Prompt #11 • Put Shaggy (Scooby-doos partner) and Batgirl in and elevator and in 200 words, write about it. • You can chose any two hero action characters you like.

13. Creative Writing Quick Write #2 • In 200 words describe a hot day

14. Creative Writing Quick Write #3 • Write a story about an empty glass.

15. Creative Writing Quick Write # 4 • Write about a habit that you find hard to break.

16. Creative Writing Poetry #2 • Create a poem using Emily Dickinson’s • “Break me the sunset in a cup,” • As your starting point.

17. Creative Writing Poetry #3 • Recall an uplifting experience and write either poetry or prose about it.

18. Creative Writing RAFT #1 • R – Role • Stephen King’s Brother • A – Audience • Stephen King • F – Form • Letter • T – Topic • What he thinks about the way he was depicted in the book On Writing.

19. Creative Writing Project • Your final exam is a major project of your choice; • Short Story • Play • Poetry Collection – based on a theme • Several poems centered around a central topic • Nature • Seasons • Love • Relationships • Etc. • Research Project on a topic of your choice. • You must provide me—in writing---what your project will be and have it approved.

20. Creative Writing Activity #1 • Take a walk around the block. Look at everything – people, cars, trees, flowers, trash, sky, etc. • Write a description of your walk, using every appropriate adjective when describing what you saw. Don’t worry about using too many – this is supposed to be overblown. • Write a second description of your walk without using any adjectives or descriptive phrases. • Now that you’ve done both overblown and bare-bones versions, re-write your walk using a comfortable number of adjectives. This will be different for different writers. • How did you do? Which version was harder for you? Did you discover that you are a naturally spare writer like Dick Francis? Or a descriptive writer like Anna Quindlen? Or somewhere between the two?

21. Creative Writing Activity #1 Part 2 • Go back to your final version for more revisions: • Can you use a stronger noun and delete an adjective? Instead of “red sports car,” can you write “red Corvette?” • Can you replace a long descriptive phrase with a shorter one? How about changing “the wall was covered with spray-painted words” to “grafitti-covered wall.” Or make it more specific in its own sentence, such as “High schoolers had sprayed ’Cougars Rock’ and ‘Class of 2010’ in red across the brick.”

22. Creative Writing Activity #1 Part 3 • One final exercise to do with the narrative of your walk. • Create a character (or use one you’ve already created) and experience the walk through his or her eyes. Does the red Corvette remind him of lost dreams? Does she grimace at the ugly grafitti? Or smile at remembrances of when she did the same thing? • With your character in mind, choose which details are important to him or her and delete the others. Part of writing descriptive fiction is choosing what to include, and a character who notices the red Corvette may not care about the maple tree under which it is parked. • Change details as necessary to fit your character. Perhaps the red Corvette won’t mean as much to your character as a fully-loaded black pick-up with chrome accents. • Change details to enhance your theme. At a conference, Jessica Page Morrell encouraged writers to look for details that resonate. She gave the example of a ginkgo tree, whose yellow autumn leaves fall very suddenly, all within a few days. This sort of description can echo a failing relationship, for example.

23. Creative Writing Prompt # 12 Write the following four words on your paper: • Character • Setting • Time • Situation • Now chose a number from 1-10 and write it next to each of the four words. • You may chose any number that you want. It can be the same or different for each number, or any combination.

24. Creative Writing Prompt #12 continued • Character • a new mother • a photographer • a recent high school graduate • a restaurant owner or manager • an alien from outer space • a homeless child • a 93-year-old woman • an environmentalist • a college student • a jazz musician

25. Creative Writing Prompt #12 Continued • Setting • near a National Forest • a wedding reception • a celebration party • an expensive restaurant • a shopping mall • a city park • the porch of an old farmhouse • a polluted stream • a college library • a concert hall

26. Creative Writing #12 Prompt Continued • Time • during a forest fire • after a fight • the night of high school graduation • after a big meal • sometime in December • late at night • after a big thunderstorm has passed • in early spring • first week of the school year • during a concert

27. Creative Writing Prompt #12 Continued • Situation/Challenge • an important decision needs to be made • a secret needs to be confessed to someone else • someone's pride has been injured • a death has occurred • someone has found or lost something • someone has accused someone else of doing something wrong • reminiscing on how things have changed • someone feels like giving up • something embarrassing has just happened • someone has just reached an important goal

28. Creative Writing Prompt #12 Assignment • Write a story with the character, setting, time period, and situation that you've chosen. The character that you've chosen should be the main character in the story, but isn't necessarily the ONLY character in the story. Likewise, most of the story will take place in the setting that you've chosen, but you can include other settings or elaborate on the setting that you have chosen (breaking it into several smaller settings, for example). The situation or challenge that you've chosen may involve the main character or your main character may observe someone else who must deal with the situation or challenge. In other words, you can combine these elements anyway that you desire, so long as all four are included in your story.

29. Creative Writing Prompt #13 • Create a character who has a secret to confess, but who is afraid to confess it. Write the diary or journal entries that your character would write as she or he considers the secret, explores why it needs to be confessed, thinks about who will be affected if the secret is known, and considers why she or he is afraid. Write a series of diary or journal entries, as if they were written over a period of several days or a week. In the entries, you can incorporate the main character's interactions with others and explore the ways that the day-to-day events that the character experiences influence the way that she or he thinks about the secret and confession. Your character's decision to tell (or not) should be revealed in the final diary or journal entry. All the entries need to work together as a whole -- they should sound like the writings of a single person, and should show consistency from one entry to the next (for example, if the person writes in the diary that she is afraid of water in one journal entry, it would be inconsistent to have her mention that she had been water skiing in the entry written two days later).

30. Creative Writing Poem #4 • Step One: Randomly choose 15 entries from your dictionary. Just flip through the pages, close your eyes, and put your finger down on the page. Copy down the word that is closest to your finger. If your finger lands on a word that you don't know, you can choose the word just above or just below it. For the purposes of this assignment, count paired words as a single entry (for instance, "melting pot" is listed as a single entry).Step Two: Shape your list of dictionary entries into a poem, using at least ten of the entries (you can, of course, use them all if you want). You can add articles, helping and to be verbs, coordinating conjunctions, and prepositions.

31. Creative Writing Poem #5 Choose a place that you remember well and want to share with others. This poem relies on your filling in a form • :3 adjectives • An abstract noun • a participial phrase • 2 prepositional phrases • 2 participial phrases • the place name • cool, quick, smooth • beauty • flowing swiftly downward • over the edges of reality • defying sense • compelling sighs • fallingwater You can format your poem anyway that you like. Use more punctuation or less. Change the line breaks. Align the words with the margin. Use capital letters, play with the arrangement of the words on the page, and so forth. Be creative!