Lost The Plot?
500 Writing Prompts and How To Use Them
by Adam Maxwell
with contributions by
C.G. Allan
Adrian Graham
Rosalind Wyllie
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 Adam Maxwell
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
"The Unbelievably Silly But Flash Drive Of
Jackie Armstrong" (a children's story) by C.G. Allan
"Microfiction" by Adrian Graham
and "Trust" by Rosalind Wyllie
are all used with the kind permission of the authors.
Copyright of these works all remain with their respective authors © 2011
First Published in August 2011
Cover design by Laura Swaddle
Book design by Adam Maxwell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission from the author, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief excerpts in a review.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Adam Maxwell has a website and it is here www.adammaxwell.com
For Eve
Contents
Mr Maxwell's Spectacular Story Suggester
Security Has Been Called by Adam Maxwell
Flash Fiction Commentary by Adam Maxwell
The Unbelievably Silly But Flash Drive Of
Jackie Armstrong (a short children's story) by C.G. Allan
Short Story Commentary by C.G. Allan
Script Commentary by Rosalind Wyllie
Introduction
The book you hold in your hands or read on your screen is born of immense frustration. Almost every writer I have ever met has an almost pathological predisposition to procrastination and often believe there is a magical answer to the question 'where do you get your ideas?'
Of course the answer to that question is simple 'you pull them out of thin air' but that doesn't stop writers wanting to get some start of spark, or starting point for their writing, a kick up the arse to stop messing about and just get on with it.
There are any number of ways and means of putting your writing brain into gear and the one I have chosen to explore in this book is the writing prompt. Of course I have begun the process of writing this book with a monumental amount of research. Or 'procrastination' if you prefer and the biggest problem I have found is that the prompts out there in the world, on the web and in books were just so boring. I mean boring on a quantum level. So boring that if there was an infinite number of universes there would not exist an eventuality where they would not be boring.
And so I sourced websites, went to writers' groups and bought books. Lot's of books. And they were all various flavours of crap. Pick a prompt at random, they would say. Use it as your inspiration.
So I would pick. And the prompt would be 'The Sea'.
The bloody sea.
And I would sit not having ideas, remaining deeply uninspired and writing nothing.
Pick another.
'Write a story from the point of view of a tree'
And it made me want to bang my head against the wall.
After the bandages had been removed I all but gave up on receiving writing stimulus this way and went about finding that I could quite happily chance upon ideas in different ways. But I always felt it was a bit of a shame, a missed opportunity because the idea of good writing prompts seemed solid to me.
I mean, don't get me wrong, there are people out there who could write a novel from 'The Sea'. A fine and high-brow literary affair, no doubt. But it's different for me and, I think, the majority of writers. Not only do I not write high-brow literary prose, I have no intention of ever doing so and, if I'm honest don't really enjoy reading that sort of thing.
I like something a little more immediate in my reading and in my writing. So, eventually I came to the conclusion that no-one was going to write a book of prompts that I thought were more my cup of tea (coffee actually) and I would have to do it myself.
And this is the result.
The book is ultimately here to give you a kick up the arse and get writing in whatever form you enjoy. I have written a few additional sections to give you something supplementary to procrastinate over but I hope they will only add to your writerly knowledge and help you get more out of the book.
Anyway, I hope you like the book and the prompts, I hope you find them useful and if you don't I suggest you write a story entitled 'The Sea'.
But What Form Should It Take?
or
'Is it a short story or a play or a novel or...?'
Because sometimes before you sit down and choose a prompt, it might be a good idea to know what form your literary masterpiece will take. Alternatively once you chosen a prompt you might decide 'there's no way that will work as a novella - what are my other options?'
Your options are, unfortunately, limited only by your imagination. But since you need a kick start for that I thought I would go through the following forms and discuss them in a little more detail in the process of doing this I hope this will also give you some small insight into how to develop the prompt into something more substantial.
And they are, in no particular order:
6 word fiction
Twitfic
Microfiction
Flash Fiction & Short Short Story
Short Story
Novelette
Novella
Novel
Poetry
Script
Every writer has their own preference as to what genre they favour. A lot of new writers tend to pick one and stick with it because they think they should or perhaps because they have never though about what the possible alternatives might be.
I thought it might be useful to give you a little bit of information on some of the traditional and slightly less traditional forms. Of course this is far from an exhaustive list, just a few to pique your interest and perhaps shove you towards trying something a little different. In reality the word counts and forms overlap and interact and are a lot more difficult to pin down than I would have you believe but I've tried to include word counts in the prose bits just to give you an idea.
Some of these you will be extremely familiar with, others, perhaps, you may not have heard of. So let us begin, as is customary, at the top of the list.
6 Word Fiction
As you might imagine, the pertinent clue to this form's constraints is in the snappy title. Hemingway (that's Ernest, not his less famous brother Wilf) is said to have written a story in just six words:
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
And what's more he is said to have called it his best work.
I suppose the key to this genre, indeed to that story is knowing what constitutes a story and in this case it would appear that it has:
A beginning
A middle
Some Conflict
An end
This could be said to be true of most storytelling but Hemingway's 6 word story has distilled that into what is potentially its purest form.
Although the beginning and end are not described you mind instantly kicks in and fills in the gaps and starts asking questions. Why have they never been worn? What happened to the baby? Is this a tragic story? And so on.
Distilling your own writing down to this level takes an extremely high level of skill in self-editing and is something that I tried and failed to do on a few occasions. I would also be surprised if you could inject enough difference into the 6 word stories if you were writing from the prompts in this book.
Whilst it is entirely conceivable that ten people will write ten wildly different stories from the same prompt I would be more surprised if they did so when attempting a 6 word story. The level of brevity is such that I suspect at least eight of those ten would try to distil the prompt down and arrive at the same story. If you are one of the other two or just an argumentative sort then please, feel free. I wouldn't have mentioned it if I didn't think it was interesting.
Twitfic
Or 'Twitter Fiction' if you prefer. When any new medium for communicating springs up there are always innovators who try to push the boundaries of creativity and use that medium features and constraints in their storytelling.
For those of you reading this who are unaware, Twitter is a micro-blogging site allowing users to 'Tweet' updates of 140 characters or less (as a result this would also include spaces and punctuation). In addition you can follow other users' tweets.
This has been embraced in a number of ways by authors to a variety of different ends. Notable examples (to my mind) include:
Character Tweets
Some authors have been tweeting in character, expanding the universe of their books and making the characters seem more real. Others have set up multiple accounts and had the characters interacting with each other either as an extension of their writing or actually as a means to tell the story.
Narrative Tweets
These would fall into two categories. Firstly, the single tweet which, in a slight extension of the idea of 6 Word Fiction follows many of the same 'rules' as I mentioned for that form.
Secondly there is the ongoing narrative written in bursts of 140 characters. Generally speaking this form of narrative also tries to ensure that each tweet is 'self-contained' and makes sense out of context. Outside of these limitations the story is developed over time by the author in the usual manner.
Parody and Homage
Another popular use of Twitter in terms of fiction is for parody or homage to modern or classic literature. In terms of parody a past novel is transposed into modern parlance through the medium of Twitter (i.e. Pride and Prejudice with the character using modern slang and opinions of one another). Homage tends to take the form of the serious retelling of a story using the new medium (i.e. Chapter 10 of James Joyce's Ulysses was transposed as part of Bloomsday and featured fifty four of the novel's characters as Twitter users as the interlocking events of their day unfolded real-time).
Like all forms, if it is done well your story and characters will jump off the page (or screen) but if you simply try to crowbar material from another genre in then it will undoubtedly lack the necessary spark.
Microfiction
This is where we truly begin to get into an area which is truly grey. Word counts from here on out are all subjective and averaged out through my various readings and researchings so please don't come knocking telling me that I'm wrong. There are no definitive answers so I just had to draw the lines somewhere.
Sorry, where was I? Ah yes, Microfiction is usually no more than 400 words long. That means that you've got a bit more space to breath than if you were writing Twitter Fiction but realistically you have got to be in and out with maximum impact very quickly indeed. I'm not going to dwell on Micofiction because, as I see it, outside of the word count it shares the same structural rules as Flash Fiction. Which leads us neatly into...
Flash Fiction & Short Short Stories
Flash Fiction and Short Short Stories tend to fall under the 1000 word mark although I have seen some stretch quite comfortably to 2000. Flash fiction is the form I tend to write in more than any other.
One of the key characteristics of Flash Fiction is that it has a plot. That is to say that something actually happens or is in the process of happening. Sometimes this can be externally in the form of a scene or event but it can equally be something that is happening internally to a character, inside their own head.
The brevity of the word count usually means that you join the action at a crisis point for the simple reason that you don't have time to go into enormous backstories, it must be implicit. For this reason the story usually does not follow the traditional beginning, middle, end structure. Instead you find that the story will be either a beginning or a middle or an end.
An example of this I have used before and will no doubt do so again is that if, for example you have a married couple there is automatically a beginning. Somewhere before the story they were married and this would certainly constitute a beginning. If the same couple are arguing about his infidelity you are starting the action in the middle. And if they are arguing shortly before the wife hurls a knife at the husband, freeing herself from his duplicity forever you could say that you started at the end. That was almost a whole story and it ended before this paragraph did.
Part of the enjoyment for the reader in a story like this is letting their minds fill in the details and allowing the story to become all the richer for it. When you read a story from start to finish, filling in the details as you go, finish the story, glance back at the title and realise it throws a whole new light on the characters you now know there is a real sense of satisfaction generated that involves the reader directly in the story.
Short Stories
Well, short stories is the term that everyone labels anything that isn't a novel these days but since we are looking at each form in turn it is worth looking at how they fit into my world view. Short stories overlap both with Flash Fiction and subsequently with Novelettes and Novellas in that their lengths fluctuate wildly between 2000 words and 20,000 words.
What makes them different is, once more, their construction. Whereas in the case of Flash Fiction you would concentrate on a single portion of the wider picture, the extra word count in a short story allows you to explore more with your narrative. In dramatic terms a shorter piece might be said to focus entirely on a climax (whether that be straight action, emotional, internal or otherwise). The short story would normally contain introduction, several levels of complications leading to crisis and ultimately climax.
You may think that going for this form would give you free rein to include a multitude of characters and a timeline spanning several decades. It's possible. More than likely if you're writing a short story you would be better off selecting a more limited number of characters and a shorter timescale.
An interesting aspect short stories share with longer narrative forms is that they do not follow any rules. That, paradoxically, is what attracts writers to them, the ability to create their own structures and forms within a particular word count.
Novelette
Usually a novelette would be anywhere between 7500 and 17500 words in length. Historically the term 'novelette' has been one of mild derision implying it's lack of girth in comparison to its novel and novella cousins with which it shares so many characteristics that I shall say no more about it.
Except perhaps that I like it. Nothing wrong with a novelette from where I'm sitting.
Novella
Picking up where novelettes have left off, the novella usually has between 17500 and 70000 depending on who you ask. Your rule of thumb is pretty much going to be that if it's longer than a novelette and shorter than a novel it's going to be a novella.
The differentiation between each comes down to the structure once more with the added length allowing for more conflict to take place. In addition and in contrast to short stories there is further opportunity for introduction and exposition throughout the narrative. You can allow yourself more characters and allow them to get into more and more complicated japes (to use the technical term).
The additional development of the events, characters and themes of your story is ultimately the benefit of this form.
Novel
With over 70000 words you can pretty much go wild with multiple perspectives, narrative changes, japes galore, conflict, more conflict, sub plots and the occasional modicum of resolution reaching a climactic - erm - climax and leaving the reader richer both emotionally and intellectually.
The presence of sub plots is something that can crop up from anything with a word length of a short story all the way through to novels but the novel is unique in its ability to explore them in greater detail.
With a novel you have the ability to create an entire world, explore its themes, twists and turns combining factors of all of the previous forms with:
Introduction - getting things off the ground
Exposition - a bit of chit chat and background to thicken up themes and characters
Crisis - uh, oh it's all gone a bit wrong
More Crisis - ack, more things have gone wrong
Even more crisis - will things ever sort themselves out?
Climax - yes they will and here's how...
Resolution - thank goodness, we all live happily ever after.
Or perhaps not because the beauty of the novel is that it is always evolving, changing and being presented in new and different formats. So sometimes it doesn't have all of these elements, sometimes it doesn't have any of these elements and sometimes the author invents all of their own elements and uses them as a basis instead.
Poetry
Should really be the subject of an entirely different book. As an author rooted mainly in the prose styles poetry is not a subject I would like to write on with any kind of authority.
Suffice to say there is no reason the prompts couldn't be used as a basis for poetry and its forms are at least as many and varied as its prose.
Just so you feel I have covered it I will say this:
Sometimes it rhymes.
And sometimes it does not.
Not enough? Oh, okay, but don't blame me if I get it wrong.
Effective poetry is very often about connecting to something deeper. A great poem finds a way through the subconscious to connect to what's underneath. It uses language to unpack the route through to its core subject and reach out to the reader.
A poem unpacks how something feels then wraps it up again in language that is... well... poetic would be the best word.
Some of aspects of poetry that differentiate it from prose include its use of rhythm, rhyme, metre, length of lines, verses (or stanzas), how it sounds when read aloud and the use of metaphor and simile.
Poetry is (mostly) a very structural form and as with any form the best place to start mastering it is to read an awful lot and you'll see the different forms and try the ones that appeal to you.
Script
Combining Plays, Screenplays and everything in between. Scriptwriting at its core is creating the same sorts of drama using the same sort of dramatic structure as prose forms but written in the form of dialogue between characters. The ultimate aim of writing a script is to have it performed rather than read straight off the page.
When writing script the setting and characters will most likely be dictated by where the script will ultimately be performed. It's no use writing an ensemble script where twenty people all remain on stage for the whole performance if a theatre company only has ten actors. Likewise writing a space epic full of effects shots may be out of your reach if all you have is your uncle's old VHS video camera.
Reading scripts of the type you intend to write is again a great way to get an idea of where to pitch yourself.
I have included an example of how to develop a writing prompt into a short script to try to illustrate what I consider to be the structural similarities to writing prose, the challenge being the apparent limitations of the form. Of course there are also a lot of benefits too.
Just ask Shakespeare.
How To Use This Book
Writers love to procrastinate. That's one of the reasons you're reading this and one of the reasons I wrote it: to avoid the tricky business of actually sitting down and doing some proper writing. On the pages that follow you will find five hundred prompts to slice through your procrastination and get you to do what you should have been doing before you started reading.
In essence all you need to do is open the book on any one of the prompt pages then, before you have a chance to read anything on the pages, just point to one. There. Right there. That one. Write it down and then write your story from it. Couldn't be easier could it?
Still want a bit more advice (procrastination) on what to do? What the hell, it's either that or get back to my latest story. How about some suggestions on how to get the most out of the prompts and how you could use them (incidentally each of the authors who have provided examples for this book have also written a little bit about how they used it so check that out too)
Imposed Title/First Line Approach
Not sure this requires a great deal of explanation. Select a prompt, write it down. There's no changing your mind, this prompt is chosen and now you're stuck with it. Then just start writing and see where it takes you. If you were writing flash fiction you might write for five minutes straight then at the end of the time limit, stop and see what you have. At the very worst it will be a first draft which you can craft into a nugget of pure gold.
Scan and Plan
Start scanning through the prompts and find one which sparks your imagination. Write down your prompt of choice. Brainstorm it a bit, either in your actual brain or on paper then off you go, start writing.
Maths Mix Up
Pick a number. Go on. Okay?
Right, go to that prompt number then write a story from it. Add the number to itself. That's story number two. Add the number again. There's story number three.