Though you can see it from everywhere in the city, people won’t speak of it and it’s airbrushed from official photos. Set a story there.
(When you’re done, if you want to see the tale of the real building, click the picture.)
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Two childhood best friends: KaiKai is outgoing, Eilian reserved. They decide to form a group and bring in two others to round out their talents: Gan and Rio. (It can be any group you want: fighters for hire, monster slayers, fortune tellers, musicians, dancers, samurai, exterminators, party hosts …) KaiKai and Eilian have eyes for talent and the two new members’ talents overshadow the two founding members’.
Gan and KaiKai discover their talents mesh exceptionally well and form a tight partnership when they work together. Eilian prefers to hang back and work in the background, but is there jealousy rumbling beneath? After the group has been together for a while, it gets out that the other new member, Rio, is of a reviled faction (religion, race, planet, philosophy, culture, heritage …) but he or she has such charisma those who hire them don’t mind. (But will it last?)
They haven’t had a job for a bit and are getting hungry for work (and for a substantial meal.) Tempers are short.
Write from the point of view of one of the members. Or from each in turn.
Though the Weekly World News is no more, here’s the headlines from the archives of City Newstand in Chicago, for writing prompts or just for fun :-)
Top 10 Tabloid Headlines from MAY 1998
Probably not the quote he wanted remembered for, but it has obviously been speaking to people for over a millennium and a half. ;-)
Use the quote as the first line, last line, somewhere in the middle or just for inspiration. (Did I cover all the possibilities? ;-)
O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.
– Saint Augustine (354 AD - 430 AD)
Cut up the following words, mix them up and choose 8 randomly. Play around with combinations. Pick a few more until you find something you like.
The write free verse (no need to rhyme or stick to a particular length of line) using your words somewhere in the poem. (Feel free to change tenses and so forth.)
PEOPLE
actor
alchemist
alien
android
angel
apprentice
artist
avatar
baby
Barbie
beggar
bounty hunter
boy
bride (of)
cat
demigod
demon
demon slayer
dragon
embezzler
enchantress
father (of)
fiend
ghost
ghoul
girl
goth
groom (of)
lady
lord
mouse
ogre
orphan
outcast
Ozzie
pig
poet
psychic
pyromaniac
rat
slave
soul
specimen
spirit
thief
troll
vampire
weasel
witch
writer
VERBS
assassinate
assault
bite
blast
bless
capture
celebrate
challenge
charm
corrupt
curse
disappear
discover
doom
dump
eat
exorcise
explode
expose
fall for
flee
hit
imprison
kill
knot
lose
murder
plot to kill
quest for
rebel against
resurrect
reveal
rip off
sacrifice
seize
shoot
silence
slay
smack
smash
stab
surrender
terminate
torment
torture
transform (into)
trick
vanquish
wed
weep
PLACES AND THINGS
bakery
bazaar
bed
bones
castle
chamber
clock
computer
diary
drum
dungeon
empire
fire
flute
forest
garden
goblet
grave
heaven
hell
island
jewel
key
knife
labyrinth
lightening
monastery
palace
paradise
parchment
phone
plastic
quill
quilt
ring
runes
sanctuary
sarcophagus
space colony
star ship
strands
sword
tavern
temple
thunder
tomb
tower
underworld
volcano
well
ADJECTIVES
340 pound
abandoned
accused
amnesiac
angry
annoying
blind
brilliant
crazy
crimson
crumbling
delirious
devoted
doomed
dying
emerald
enchanted
escaped
exiled
faded
feline
first
glowing
haunted
hollow
icy
impenetrable
indecipherable
infested
inhuman
lavender
lost
magic
monster
naked
noble
oozing
phobic
pink
primitive
resurrected
sacred
sapphire
shattered
singing
stinky
tattooed
teen
telepathic
wicked
For today’s poetry prompt imagine you’re a creature or thing. What’s it like to be a television or your cat or a cloud or a record album or a fish in a tank …
The children took the idea in many different directions: interviews, imagining what the answers would be, taking on the persona and revealing the answers … Don’t limit yourself to what you think the approach “must” be :-)
Examples:
I would like to be a pen because every day I would dance and whenever I’m out of ink they would put me away until I got ink. And I would go any place people go.
Questions to Ask Snow Person
Do you like to be what you are?
Do you like when people step on you and make snow balls with you?
Do you like your color white?
Do you like to be mixed with now?
Do you like to stand all day out in the snow with nothing to do?
Do you like when people fall on you?
Snow
The answer is
NO!!!
How does it feel to be a blackboard?
I think it would feel funny,
Always being written on.
Always having examples erased off.
What do you see?
You see many many kids.
Write a series of eight-word lines. Each line will contain one of each part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, interjections and conjunctions.) How many lines you write is up to your muse or your 15 minutes timer :-)
(Not sure why he — and lots of other grammar lists — leave out articles (a, an, the).)
Here’s a quick stab at it:
And, well, slowly his hungry Borslang chewed throughOkay, the conjunctions are tricky when you can only have one noun or verb per line!
But, oh, inside her dark Gorvopl patiently waited
And, alas, enormous hunger unexpectedly slaked within her.
Noun: person, place or thing. Can be general (the president, the city) or specific (David Palmer, Mos Eisley).
Verb: action word.
Adjective: describes a noun. (Red, hot, blushing …) (Hmm, could also have a poem made up of entirely one part of speech.)
Adverb: describes a verb. (Slowly, haltingly, boorishly …)
Pronoun: a word that takes the place of a noun (he, she, it, they, we, his, her, their, our, its … Actually there are way more than I thought since I usually just think of personal pronouns. There’s a list of Pronouns and a thorough list of personal pronouns at Wikipedia that include nonstandards like “youse guys” ;-)
Preposition: identifies the position of something (before, inside, under …) (A very thorough list of prepositions at Wikipedia)
Interjections: Words that can be followed by an exclamation point. (Uh-oh, yippee, shoo, jeez, ouch, wow, …)
Long interjection list at Wikipedia and a list of interjections by language, for no other reason than just because I stumbled across it and it’s cool! :-)
Conjunctions: Joining words (and, or, but, nor)
From: Charles Bernstein.
To warm up your poetry muscles today, have fun with false comparisons.
Use the form
As ____ as a ____.
and make comparisons that aren’t true.
As always, you can use that format for every line. You can use it at the beginning and then explore the comparison in subsequent lines. Or make a few of the same comparisons and move onto others.
For some reason, it’s a lot more fun and freeing than trying to come up with comparisons that are true. Maybe it ties into the psychology of wanting to do whatever we’re told not to do ;-)
Here’s some examples off the top of my head since this didn’t come from Koch’s book:
As quiet as a wolf in a hen house.
As quiet as a broken muffler.As alone as Santa at Christmas.
As alone as a Brittany Spears.As busy as a beach in winter.
As busy as a full bellied kitten.
Ew, sounds self reflective. And I promised, no self-reflection! ;-)
Still, I promise! You’re going to create a “found poem”. It’s a poem assembled from prose found in various contexts: newspapers, advertisements, books, labels, signs … For this poem, type your name into Google, and scavenge what turns up for lines to use in your poem. Rearrange phrases, words and sentences into some pleasing form.
Okay, I only promise if your name isn’t unique. :-) Mine is so all the pages are about me. So use someone else’s name: your best friend from childhood, college roommate, first crush, random lawyer from the phone book, Harry Potter …
For this warm up, in each line write an fanciful combination. Keep going for 10-15 minutes.
The following examples were all done by children who didn’t feel constrained only to combinations that make sense. :-)
swan of beesIf you want, you can use templates like:
sailboat of water
pajamas of oranges
book of stripes
kiss of babies
skeleton of discovery
blackboard of moons
swimming pool of doorknobs
hat of laughs
“I once saw …”
or
“I wish I had …”
From Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching children to write poetry by Kenneth Koch.
I’m always on the look out of books that approach a subject in a simple way without dumbing it down. I found this slim volume titled Extraordinary Poetry Writing by Margaret Ryan that’s a gentle but not dumbed down introduction to poetry writing. It’s nicely divided into small chunks with side bars and tips.
An obvious and yet intimidating statement ;-) At least from my time in school, I picked up the idea that you began with a subject and tried to write profound or amusing things about it, as though the poem in its entirety were hidden inside of you and you just needed to find a way to transcribe it. As she goes onto help you see, you begin with something to focus on and then let yourself free associate and explore that idea. Comparisons, contrasts, images, feelings, phrases, lines, memories, words … Then you play with those, finding patterns and interesting ideas that arise from the original subject.“Poems need to be about something.”
As she explains, little to none of that is there at the beginning. You begin with a subject but your exploration uncovers surprising things you didn’t know were inside you :-)“… it’s not so much the subject of your poem that makes it special. It’s the way you write about that subject — the language you choose, your insights, your point of view.”
(This is true of prose, too, of course!)
Tip FIle: “Just sit down with a pen you like and a clean sheet of paper, lined or unlined, and start writing. Play with words and images that interest you. Experiment with the music of words and see what happens. Let your subject emerge as you focus on it and it begins to clarify.”
Though some people find a blank sheet of paper intimidating! If you do, mess it up. Put marks on it. Crumple it. Write on the back of an envelope. Or in your writer’s notebook. Whatever will help you feel that you’re not about to begin a finished product. It’s notes. It’s supposed to feel like chicken scratch :-)
Then she goes onto the structure of poetry.“Let your mind wander. Daydream as you write. Cover at least one side of a sheet of paper with ideas, feelings, insights, and items you associate with your topic. Don’t ask yourself ‘Why does an orange make me think of gym class?’ Just write down that it does.”
“Be aware that most poems have more than one subject. There will be the obvious subject, the one that triggered the writing of the poem — a groundhog, a hyacinth in bloom, an encounter with a friend in the hall. Underneath will be another, larger subject that you will most likely discover during the process of writing your poem.
“Because this layer of subject — sometimes called a theme — will reveal itself to you as you compose your poem, you don’t have to worry about working it in.”
And, as she has already pointed out, you may not write the first line first. You may not write the first line until the end. You may find it in the middle of the poem.“The first line of a poem is an invitation.”
In the following chapters she discusses first drafts, final drafts (”Where the Ordinary Becomes Extraordinary”), and finally onto 5 poetic forms: haiku, list poems, dramatic monologue, ballads, sonnets.
Today take a journey around town and collect words that strike you: street signs, business names, sale signs, political slogans, lost and found posters, family names, graffiti, bumper stickers …
Create a list poem from them. A list poem is just that: a list, but a list that you’ve organized in some way that feels right to you. Play with the sounds and images as you order them. You may find some that create a rhythm and some that are opposites.
I’ve got it easy since our town is small, basically two blocks long ;-) If your town is overwhelming try just your street or your neighborhood.
Compare opposites for today’s poetry warm up.
Begin with a comparison that is opposite: a big thing and a little thing “An elephant is like a mouse” or two things that seem not alike “Rain is like a cemetery” and then explore how they’re alike. You can use one comparison or many comparisons in the poem.
Here’s something quick as an example:
An elephant is like a mouse.Hey, that was fun! :-)
Both are gray with long dangling attachments and papery ears and dark button eyes
Rain is like a cemetery.
They’re gray and dreary and make the grass grow.
A peach is like a snake.
They bulge when they are full of food.
A ghost is like a pencil.
You find them in the most unexpected places.
Warm ups: These are chances to be wild and creative and get the words and ideas flowing. Generate lines based on a template. The point isn’t to create a whole poem but to generate lines for the poem. The ones at the beginning will probably be trite, cliche and stiff. Let them out onto the paper. Allow them to clear a path that will allow the creative ideas to flow out. :-)
The “I” writing the poem doesn’t need to be you! It can be anyone or any*thing* you want.
If you get stuck before your 15 minutes is up, read back over what you’ve written to see if it inspires some more ideas.
When you’re done, you can toss out the ones you don’t like and collect the lines you like into a poem :-)
Sometimes having the structure dictated can free up your creativity. Seems odd, yet it’s like a coloring book. You don’t have to spend time making the figure look right, just mess around with color.
A diamonte poem begins with one subject and ends with its opposite. The number of words increase then decrease and, if you center it, it looks like a diamond. Well, sometimes, if the words are the right length ;-)
SubjectHere’s an example off the top of my head:
2 adjectives describing the subject
3 words ending in -ing telling about the subject
4 words, the first two describe the subject, the last two describe its opposite
3 words ending in -ing telling about the opposite
2 adjectives describing the opposite
Opposite
inkIf you like that structure, a diamonte poem is similar to a cinquain: A not so traditional cinquain and More nontraditional cinquains and the real one.
black liquid
flowing staining expressing
splatter blot soak splash
flowing washing obliterating
clear liquid
water
For today’s poetry warm up begin with:
If I were ______ I would ______.
Then either continue that pattern with different speculations or start each line with “I would” to expand on the original speculation.
Here’s an example from the book that was prompted by the more specific “If I were snow …” (so you don’t need to begin with the same object for yours, but can if you want!)
If I were snow I would fill up the streets.From Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching children to write poetry by Kenneth Koch.
If I were snow I would also freeze my brother.
If I were snow I would be mean and nice.
If I were snow and I saw somebody eating something very hot I would cool it for him.
Select one sentence each from a variety of different books or other sources. Add sentences of your own composition. Combine into a poem (or paragraph), reordering to produce the most interesting results.
The sentences can come from any printed source: children’s books, novels, chemistry texts, dictionaries, webpages, newspapers …
(From Charles Bernstein’s Reading/Writing Lab course)
For today’s poetry warm up, make a statement about something ordinary. Then think of strange, impossible or maybe beautiful things that you might wish were there but aren’t. For example:
The stars twinkle in the night sky.From Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching children to write poetry by Kenneth Koch.
None are falling to earth.
None spell my name in the sky.
Write the worst possible poem.
If you need inspiration, take someone else’s poem or one you’ve written and start substituting words, like:
Well, not nearly as bad as it could have been ;-)Burning, burning distant sun.
I needn’t consider what you’ve done.
Way off far in our galaxy
Like a nuclear inferno of kind maxi.
(From Charles Bernstein’s Reading/Writing Lab course)
Warm ups: These are chances to be wild and creative and get the words and ideas flowing. Generate lines based on a template. The point isn’t to create a whole poem but to generate lines for the poem. The ones at the beginning will probably be trite, cliche and stiff. Let them out onto the paper. Let them to clear a path that will allow the creative ideas to flow out. :-)
Write a noisy warm up poem. :-)
As a template for each line you can use one of the following (or come up with your own):
______ sounds like ______.
or
The noise of/made by ______ is like ______.
or
The sound of ______ is like _____.
You can use the same template line for each line. You can mix them up. Use the template as an aid rather than a straight jacket!
From Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching children to write poetry by Kenneth Koch.
An acrostic poem uses each letter of a word or phrase to begin each line of a poem. The poem will have something to do with the initial word or phrase.
There’s some amusing ones by Bruce Lansky at How to Write an Acrostic Poem.Voracious
Appetite
Mesmerizing
Personality
Icy
Reserve
Elegantly
Savage
All the examples happen to be single words for each letter but of course they don’t have to be!. Each line can be a phrase. The format of the acrostic is very loose :-)
Use a character’s name, a movie title, a word, an emotion, the beginning of a favorite poem.
April is National Play with Words Month!
Actually it’s National Poetry Month but to keep the prompts relatively short and encourage people who cringe at the word poetry, it’s a whole lot more about playing with words.
Last year I introduced Kenneth Koch’s poetry warm up exercises. (You can see them all here by clicking on Poetry Warm Ups over on the right.) They’re a way of playing with words to get stuff flowing :-)
No actual poetry will be produced, though you may come up with an intriguing line that leads to a poem or a story.
For today, use the structure of the first tabloid headline and generate similar lines of the form:
Food — Noun — -ed verb
Cucumber Killer Captured
Bean Bomber Bamboozled
Anchovy Anarchist Annihilated
Top 10 Tabloid Headlines from APRIL 1998
It’s been a bit since I’ve had time to stumble across an extra that didn’t feel like something to throw onto the list just because it’s the end of the week ;-)
Right now I’m reading Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver.
He gets into *how* to fix story problems. In the introduction he describes how the writing instructors he encountered focused on telling him his writing was wrong and that a writer needed to feel when writing was right. He kept asking *how*? Over the years he did manage to find a process that helps.
When a scene or a story isn’t working, he says, look to your five tools. (Really six if conflict is broken down.) The first are the Big Three, Want, Obstacle, Action, without which a story is going no where.
When analyzing a story, first ask yourselfConflict (Want + Obstacle)
ActionResolution
Emotion
Showing
While he does repeat himself. Over and over. A lot ;-) It’s a more practical writing book than most. (It’s based on the workshops he teaches so may account for the repetition which probably comes across in person as emphasis for the evening’s writing exercises than it does in a book.) He’s not saying anything new so much as the way he’s saying it: as a set of writing tools to analyze your own writing with.
The one section that made me sit up is his analysis of why writing is so hard sometimes. It’s because we need to make the characters do the opposite of what we naturally do in real life: work hard to *avoid* conflict. And I realized avoiding conflict is what my characters do a lot ;-) They do what makes sense. But what a story needs, what makes the readers turn pages, is forcing the character to plunge head first into conflict. The characters *needs* to upset his life to get to his goal.
“Ask yourself how you get along in society, how you survive when you’re out in the world. By making as much trouble as possible every change you get? No, you survive by avoiding conflict, by playing it safe, by being careful, by dong the exact opposite of what you ned to do to write exciting stories.
“Writing compelling stories goes against the grain of all our socialized, civilized training. Creating fiction is an antisocial act. …. If you take the easy way out, which yo will be prone to do, consciously or unconsciously, because of your civilized nature and your affection for your character, if you take that easy way, you character will not act in a compelling way, your story will sag, and the reader will leave. So you must be cruel to your characters. It’s the only way.”
(Of course there’s cruelty and there’s character revealing cruelty! Running over a child’s puppy is cruel. What you want are more obstacles in the character’s path. Obstacles that challenge and illuminate in a way that makes sense in your story.)
You (or your character) have taken a vacation on Naboo (just before Star Wars Episode 1 begins.) Then the Trade Federation invades. Write home about it.
(Feel free to substitute a vacation to any place in a movie or book or TV show or video game or story you’ve written … :-)
Create a bestiary. Use each of the following words in the name of the beast or one sentence description of the beast.
amnesiac
bewitches
chamber
disguises
eerie
flickering
graffiti
hypnotized
invisible
journey
karma
laughing
moonbeam
nuzzle
outcast
pilfer
quake
rumble
saccharine
taunt
uneasy
valkyrie
whirl
explode
yammer
zigzag
I wanted to do something based around anime because of the convention, but after 7 1/2 hours (not exaggerating 10AM to 5:30PM) waiting in line to register, I’m a little punchy! Ah, but Kat had enough time to make new best friends ;-) It’s the 5th time we’ve been and it’s never been like that. I suspect they totally forgot that Friday was a holiday with all the kids off and only expected to be registering adults and college students like they usually do.
But this ain’t half bad considering … Make up blurbs, 2-4 sentences, for the following movies that might appear in TV Guide. You can go all the way with it and give star ratings, genre, actors.
Of Mice and Men
Shadow Dancing
I Was a Male War Bride
Based on an Untrue Story
Witching of Ben Wagner
Zombie Cop
Iron Monkey
Daughter of Darkness
Christmas Evil
But I’m a Cheerleader
They Live
Secret of My Success
Anu Garg of Wordsmith.org has been sending out a word a day for 14 years. In celebration this week all the words were not only 14 letters long but defined in 14 letters.
Use them in a story, a paragraph or even a single sentence. :-)
acritochromacy (uh-KRIT-o-kro-muh-see) noun — Color blindness.
tintinnabulate (tin-ti-NAB-yuh-layt) verb intr. — To ring; to tinkle.
tinctumutation (tinkt-myoo-TAY-shuhn) noun — Change of colour.
Brobdingnagian (brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn) adjective — Of gigantic size.
circumbendibus (sur-kuhm-BEN-duh-buhs) noun — Circumlocution.
Pick one of the following as a prompt. Mix up the elements if you wish, or go to the generator and make some new ones.
The story must have a hellhound in it. The story must involve a suit of armor in it. A character robs someone, and they aren’t happy with it. A character is kind throughout most of the story. During the story, a character drinks something they haven’t had in a while.
The story must have a water-spirit at the end. The story must involve a potion at the end. A character hits something in anger, but the action is misinterpreted. A character becomes attracted to someone during the story. During the story, a character finds out a dark secret.
The story must have a salamander in it. The story must involve a sceptre in the beginning. A character will prepare for a religious ceremony, and they are surprisingly overenthused about it. A character is kind throughout most of the story. During the story, a character is misunderstood.
The story ends during a funeral. During the story, there is an attack. The story must have a dragon in it. The story must involve a quiver of arrows in it. During the story, a character becomes pregnant.
A character hits something in anger. During the story, a character discovers someone has written a book or article about them. The story is set during a sporting event. The story takes place at midnight exactly. During the story, there is a sudden change in weather.
From Seventh Sanctum where there are tons of generators for stories and characters and names and creatures …
Writing Challenge Generator
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=writechallenge
Print out the following words in a largish font, cut them up, shuffle them around to create fantasy tabloid headlines like:
Acclaimed Ghoul Eats Mist Enshrouded MonasteryYou may need to throw in some prepositions (in, through, on, etc.) to use the places and things. Feel free to add in your own words. There’s also a longer list at Dragon Writing Sticks.
Toothless Pig Dumps Ugly Android
Adjectives
Creaturesacclaimed
annoying
barbarian
blasphemous
disturbed
enigmatic
foul
fractured
glowing
golden
grotesque
insectoid
mad
massive
mist enshrouded
morbid
oozing
quirky
sapphire
toothless
ugly
Verbsandroid
assassin
baby
bunny
dragon
queen
cult hero
dragon hunter
fiend
fortuneteller
ghoul
mouse
musician
pig
priestess
soul
thief
vampire
warlord
witch
worm
Placesassaults
avenges
betrays
bewitches
blesses
burns
cheats
completes
corrupts
curses
deceives
destroys
deviates
disguises
dooms
dumps
eats
escapes (from)
exorcises
falls for
fears
hits
imprisons
jealous of
kidnaps
loses
mourns
quests for
rebels against
rejects
resists
rips off
rules
sacrifices
saves
seizes
separates
shoots
silences
smashes
strikes
sues
summons
surrenders
terrorizes
threatens
tortures
traps
tricks
weeps for
yields
abyss
altar
bakery
bones
camera
castle
diary
dungeon
goblet
grave
heaven
island
key
monastery
paradise
ring
runes
space colony
tavern
volcano
well
Write a paragraph that begins with a one-word sentence. Followed by a two-word sentence. Followed by a three-word sentence. Keep going as long as you can :-)
From #167 in Unjournaling: Daily Writing Exercises that Are NOT Personal, NOT Introspective, NOT Boring! by Dawn DiPrince and Cheryl Miller Thurston.
“Now I don’t have to listen to those damn drums every morning — and all the dead bodies are gone!”
You’re an investigative reporter and you overheard this. Dig in to find the story behind it. (Of course, if you get inspired in another direction, feel free to go for it :-)
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