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Post by αℓℓı on Jan 2, 2009 21:27:46 GMT -5
So, basically I made this board for... Well, technically, me, being well aware that I may be the only one to ever use it. But the purpose is to provide a plethora of prompts that can be answered to help "smoke out" a writer's block by setting fire to your creative juices. Or at least, that's one way to describe it.
Personally, in my life, I have found only three ways that have ever gotten me out of a writing slump.
1. Wait it out. This seldom works, and only ever results in the most frustration. Typically it takes a long time, as well. The stupidest of options. 2. Find a brilliant source of inspiration that just forces you to want to write so bad, that you write even if you still feel the tug of the slump. The only problem is in finding that inspiration, which could take awhile. 3. To force yourself out of your slump by writing, writing, and writing until you get back in the jibe. Takes the least time and is the most effective; at least, for me.
Obviously, this is meant to go towards the third option, though, in reading this, the second may come into play and someone else's work (or one of your own older ones) may spark an idea or two.
I find that most writer's blocks are not blocks of creative ideas but, rather, the desire or willpower needed to actually sit and write those ideas out.
Some ways to actually get yourself to write include outlining scenes and giving small details, writing down how specific scenes go (without actually writing the scene), and creating new characters and bleeding detail into them and figuring out how they could work in your story.
Anyway. In the next few posts I'll give some different types of prompts.
Start your own thread if you want to answer them, and just post each separately. Keep to one thread each to keep it fairly organized, please, if you want to answer any prompts.
_____________ 1. Pok?mon Prompts 2. Genre-Based Prompts 3. Character Prompts 4. General Prompts
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Post by αℓℓı on Jan 2, 2009 23:01:50 GMT -5
- Your character has become lost in an unfamiliar route, searching for an elusive Pok?mon that, according to reports, rather fancies apples. How do you go about searching for the Pok?mon?
- Your character has been locked into a large, creepy cathedral. What happens?
- Your character is skiing (or snowboarding, or whatever) down the mountains when they crash into a tree--breaking their leg (or arm, or obtaining some sort of bad injury)--which causes an avalanche that carries them to an unexplored part of the mountain. What happens?
Feel free to PM me ideas for these.
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Post by αℓℓı on Jan 2, 2009 23:15:33 GMT -5
- Horror/Suspense
You are the last person left alive, immune to a disease that kills the brain. You are the last person alive. And then--there is a knock at the door.
- Mystery
How do you find out who killed who with what?
- Romance
Person A loves person B; Person be hates person A for seemingly no reason, yet loves person C; Person C has long adored person A and is a childhood friend, but person A is too blind in their chase for Person B to notice.
- Angst/Drama
The living victims of suicide.
- Horror/Thriller/Suspense
The chase scene.
- Adventure
One man. Or woman. Either or, whatever. LOST. In a jungle. Oh! But with dinosaurs! Yes, yes, lots of those. Dinosaurs. And... other stuff. Like that. You know.
Feel free to PM me ideas for these.
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Post by αℓℓı on Jan 2, 2009 23:55:31 GMT -5
- One of your characters have lost a close family member of theirs. How do they cope?
- If you were to have a blind, deaf, or mute character (or any combination of the three), how would they handle a situation in which what they need most is the sense that they lack?
- Pick two of your own characters that have never met each other. Think of some situations in which neither of the two would be caught dead in. Now, have them meet under one of those circumstances.
- Your character wakes up one morning to find out that, apparently, he or she is the last person left alive on the planet. How do they cope?
- Your character has been kidnapped and locked in a creepy castle with a crazed plastic surgeon trying to make them "perfect and beautiful". How do they escape with their life?
- Write from the perspective of a psychiatrist. A friend of the doctor has found a Feral Child in the woods surrounding their house; they've chosen your character to rehabilitate the nine-year-old. What happens?
- Write from the perspective of a feral child. Some person found you in the forest and handed you over to some guy calling himself a psychiatrist. You're nine years old. What happens?
- How does your character view love? Do they view love? Try writing their feelings from a first-person perspective.
- Write in first-person PoV: A regular day for your character.
Feel free to PM my ideas for these.
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Post by αℓℓı on Jan 3, 2009 0:05:09 GMT -5
- You're stranded on a deserted, tropical island. How do you survive for the first week? What becomes of you after the first seven days?
- Write a quick oneshot with only one character. Do not define that character in any other way other than that they exist; give them no identity--no name, no age, no hair/eye/skin colors. Hell, if you can, try not to define their gender. I'll be impressed if you can write about them without giving them a sex. Write them doing something you do every day.
- Write a quick oneshot to this song: Rise Above This, by Seether
- Write a quick oneshot to this song: Let The Bodies Hit The Floor, by Drowning Pool
- Write a quick oneshot to this song: Walking on Air, by Kerli
- Write a quick oneshot to this song: Capricorn, by 30 Seconds to Mars
- Write a poem with a symbolic bird motif.
- Write a poem with a symbolic butterfly motif.
- Try to pack as much symbolism into 1,000 words as you can--even if it becomes corny or redundant.
- Somehow blockade your backspace key. Look at the time, wait for the next minute. Then, write for five straight minutes, at LEAST, WITHOUT stopping, without backspacing or deleting ANYTHING--don't even correct spelling mistakes. Don't fix anything afterwords, either--post it just like that.
- Go find a book (that you've already finished). Now, before you finish reading this sentence. Don't worry, I'll still be here, waiting. ... ... ... Kay. Now that you have your book. Open it to the last page. Type what the last sentence of the story is (or somebody saying something, or whatever), and write a short story that starts with that sentence.
- Take the last line of a poem you like and start your own poem with that same exact line.
- Make a list of 10 things that have happened to you recently. Now, choose one of them and write about it.
- Describe the location of your mental get-away in vivid detail in 1,000 words or less.
- Describe the environment around you at the exact time of writing this.
- If you were to write a memoir, what would be the little, 100-word (or less) blurb on the back of the book? Write it.
- Get a book, any will do. Close your eyes, open to a page, keep it open, and touch your finger to the page. Type down the word your finger is on. Do this five times (open the book five times for more diversity) total, so that you have five words. Now, write a quick oneshot in 500 words or less using every single one of those words.
- Write a quick oneshot on: Why the caged bird sings. Not the story, but the line itself.
- Pick two of your characters at random (write them down on a piece of paper and put your finger to them randomly until you have two). Write a quick scene of the two in an elevator together.
- Pick three members of the site at random. Pick (random is best) one character each. Now, pick one of your own characters. Write, from your own character's point of view, what that character thinks of the three if he or she knows them; if the character does not know the other three, than write a scene where your character sees all three of them in a public area, and what they think about them when they see the others.
- Write a 100-word quick oneshot that has high tension building up or snapping.
- Write something anti-climatic and silly.
- Write a sex scene in 100 words or less.
- Write a 500-word quick (or less) oneshot about a person watching someone they find very attractive--but the person doesn't know they like them.
- Write a 100-word short that ends with something extremely random.
Feel free to PM me ideas for these.
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