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Homemade Prompts
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John Caruso
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Jul 19, 2004 12:51 PDT
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HOMEMADE PROMPTS
In this post we’ll dig into the ol’ bag of tricks to come up with a
writing jump-start activity. I know that sometimes I feel overwhelmed
when I’m not in the middle of an active project (of course I can also
feel overwhelmed when I AM in the middle of an active project, but
that’s another post). I don’t always like using pre-set story starters.
Sometimes they work, and they can work well. But most of the time I find
them to feel stilted and obvious. I feel self-conscious using them.
Consequently, the work I produce when using pre-made story starters
comes off as self-conscious and stilted. I find my best work occurs when
the writing ends up careening off in some direction unforeseen by or
unconnected to the original prompt.
To address this issue, I thought I would make my own list of story
starters. This worked…fine enough, I suppose. Even though I felt more
comfortable with my starters, they still lacked an element of surprise I
could get from third-party starters. Once I wrote a starter, I realized
I had a pre-conceived notion of where they prompt should go. Why go
through the trouble of making a list of story starters to get my writing
going when I should be writing on the idea that gave me the story
starter in the first place? Now before you start throwing the rotten
tomatoes, yes, yes, I understand the value of keeping idea fragments in
a notebook. Do it, you won’t regret it. But what I’m talking about here
is a list of story starters—prompts—that should help you start from
writing from nothing and eventually lead to a new piece of work.
What I needed, then, was a prompt that felt personal enough to maintain
my interest yet random enough to provide surprise and a fresh
perspective. The answer presented itself in two piles. On a series of
note cards I wrote the beginning part of a writing prompt. On another
set of cards, I wrote second halves. For instance:
Set the first:
I remember when I was young and...
Eating at the restaurant with a date she knew she would never see
again...
As the blood dripped from the paper cut on his finger...
Set the second:
...time expanded so that minutes felt like hours.
...the woman from the dry cleaner’s shop sobbed.
...a car jumped the curb and struck a child.
After you’ve written a bunch of cards, shuffle the piles, draw a card
from each, and put them together to form your prompt. The more cards you
have, the more possibilities you’ll have. With the examples above, you
would have at least nine different outcomes. I say “at least” because it
wouldn’t be out of the question to pick two cards from the same pile, or
even make a super prompt with two from each. Remember, the goal is to
jump start creativity not to follow the rules verbatim.
So with the above prompts, I could write about how I remember when I was
young and I saw the woman from the dry cleaner’s shop sobbing. I could
write about how a woman was on a date that wasn’t going well, and she
saw the woman from the shop sobbing (in the next booth? Outside the
window? in the kitchen of the restaurant?). You get the idea.
Whenever an idea or phrase strikes you, jot it down and your piles grow.
Furthermore, you’ll find that the process of coming up with a good chuck
of cards all at once will help to loosen up your writing mind. I will
sometimes write cards as a warm-up exercise for other writing.
So start writing your cards. Shuffle your piles. Smile at the unexpected
connections and spring boards. But most of all, get that pen moving
across the page.
John Caruso
joh-@coffeehouseforwriters.com
Copyright 2004, John Caruso
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