Dragon Writing Prompts

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Updated every day of Nano. You may need to scroll down to see today’s prompt.

I had a last minute NaNo inspiration that will help me. I tend to skip over description. So for each day of NaNo month I’ll send out a prompt to focus your attention on something you might not ordinarily notice in whatever scene you’re working on. The intent is not to generate great prose but to force you to expand your vision of what’s going on around and inside your characters.

Write at least one paragraph for the day’s prompt:

Today’s prompt:

7. In the next conversation, describe something the character is doing as they speak each line of dialogue.

Previous prompts:

1. Describe your point of view (POV) character’s current emotional state and how it affects him or her from head to toe.
2. Describe the shoes of the next character that walks into the scene and what they remind the POV character of.
3. Describe the weather (or environment if weather isn’t relevant to your story) in the scene you’re writing right now. Involve all 5 senses.
4. Relate something in your current scene to a toy from your POV character’s childhood.
5. The current situation to your POV character is [fill in an animal]. Extend the metaphor. What in the situation are the teeth? Why is something like the breath? How does it relate to the sound the character makes? (And whatever else you can come up with. Use all five senses!)
6. It starts raining (or stops raining). Describe the emotions *and* memories this evokes in your POV character.

NOTE: Don’t link to this post! Blogsome includes the day in the URL and I’ll be updating the date as I add each item to keep it at the top of the blog throughout November. If you’d like a link, use the post at Blogspot: A month of NaNo prompts.

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(Scroll down for today’s prompts.)

• You know how sometimes an idea will pop into your head while you’re writing something else? It’s an obvious idea and you know you’ll remember it so you slog through the scene and by the end you’ve forgotten what it was?

 

• You know how sometimes you’ll hover over the keyboard, debating which choice to make and you just can’t decide what would work best?

One of the Nanoers at our local kick off party mentioned a technique in Weekend Novelist called:

Writing Down the Page

(I can’t find a description on line so either she misremembered its name or no one else found it nifty, but I’m finding it useful! If anyone knows what it’s called, please let me know!)

It’s a way to capture fleeting ideas and get you writing instead of hovering.

If you use this for your whole NaNo (which I’m doing), you’ll end up with a flowing collection of ideas. Which is a great way to send your internal editor on vacation since you may not be writing complete sentences and you’re deliberately including a range of ideas some of which you know you’ll eventually eliminate.

The important part is: don’t write paragraphs. Hit carriage return after each sentence or snatch of an idea. It’s going to look more like a poem, a long list, than a novel. It’s a free flowing brainstorm. You can put an extra carriage return when you start a new idea and label it with some bold text.

Sometimes a fairly cohesive scene will flow out. (Mine is conforming to scenes and chapters.) Often it will be snatches of dialog. Bits of description. Questions for you to answer. Or half a dozen possibilities of what a character might do and why.

So if you’re stuck, don’t ponder. Write down the problem. Explore it right there in your Nano. Brainstorm a list of possibilities. If an idea for a scene comes up while you’re doing that, write it down right where you are. (You can mark it with xxx to remind yourself to move it and expand it later.)

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What I’ve done with it so far is, at the beginning of each chapter, I explore the character’s desires (wants, objectives, goals). Each scene will have a goal (getting the demon nest rooted out, for example) as well as the character’s greater goal of the novel hovering over them.

Then I explore obstacles (conflicts) I can throw in their way. (I tend to be too nice to my characters! Deliberately brainstorming obstacles keeps me focused on a story’s engine: overcoming difficulties!) Each of these obstacles creates an evolving set of minigoals for the character to achieve (getting away from the annoying coworker, getting shoes that don’t have a broken heel, for example).

Then I write down possible responses to the obstacles and how the character can reveal more of who he is, reveal more of what’s going on in the story, in what he chooses to do and the way he chooses to do it. It helps remind me of the tree I’m writing about rather than getting lost in the foliage of a few thousand individual leaves.

I’m finding it much easier to throw problems and obstacles at a character when I don’t (yet) need to write the scene that gets them out of it!

Use the following idioms as literally as possible without mentioning the original idiom, so “wet blanket” will include a real wet blanket. For Nano you may want to pick just one :-) For others, write a few sentences for as many as you can in 10 minutes, or use one and see where it takes you.

Cry over spilled milk.
Pull the wool over his eyes.
Wet behind the ears.
Wild goose chase.
Sky’s the limit.
With flying colors.
Face the music.
Throw a monkey wrench into the works.
Can’t make heads or tails out of it.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Third time’s the charm.
On cloud nine.

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Have your character list 5 ways they’re ordinary (for their world, of course!) and 5 ways they’re not ordinary. (Though you don’t need to include it, they picked those particular items out of the totality of who they are for a reason.)

Idea from Charloft where’s there’s a new theme each day for your characters. (A very active community.) There are loads of responses to this particular one. In case the Live Journal community disappears one day, I saved the list.

I also opened an Ordinary and Special topic at the NaNoWriMo forums.

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What’s special or ordinary about the picture? Go to Face Research — Make an Average. Click on several pictures. Click View Average and see what a composite of the pictures is like. (Try all the thin faces, all those with dark hair, all those with long chins, all with large ears ….) I tried to create a girl’s face where race wasn’t easy to pinpoint.

Roll over the post’s image and you can see all the faces, male and female, averaged together. (The sampling of images does contain a large proportion of Caucasians.) Is it a girl or a boy? It would be interesting to see a composite of all 20 yos, 30 yos, etc in the world :-)

What’s interesting is that average isn’t bland but tends toward beauty. So beauty isn’t so extraordinary as it is average!

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Whether you’re gearing up for NaNo or want to try your hand at flash fiction, NaNo liasons have passed on Plot Generator for the beginning of your story and Plot Twists.

Flash fiction are stories less than a 1000 words and come in many varieties with sometimes very specific rules. Some other names are: short-short stories, sudden, postcard, minute, furious, fast, quick, and skinny fiction. Many have websites where you can share the torture of confining your writing by word count:

365 Tomorrows posts a new flash fiction everyday. You may submit your (science fiction based) stories for consideration.

Camille Renshaw provides a good overview of the craft in The Essentials of Micro-Fiction.

Here are a few types of flash fiction with specific limitations:

• pinhead stories (50 words or fewer)
• nanofiction (less than 50)
• 55 word (55 or fewer but must include a setting, character or characters, conflict, resolution, so it’s not, for example, a slice of life piece.) You can read the 2008 winners of the 55-word contest run by New Times magazine for inspiration.
• 69er, 88er, 99er
• microfiction (under 100)
• drabble (100 exactly and its spinoffs: dribble - exactly 50 words, droubble - exactly 200 words) The Drabble Project has some examples from drabble’s beginnings.
• ficleys (64-1024 words but you can continue someone else’s story).

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I should have guessed there would be lists of costumes based on puns on the internet! Once I started gathering, I couldn’t stop. :-) If you’d like to guess what they are, you can reveal the answer by highlighting the line.

Gathered from around the internet, particularly Pun Intended: Costumes with a Punch Line.

• Get a bunch of watches and tie them around your waist, like a belt. Waste of Time
• Pin a bunch of sponges to your clothes. Self-Absorbed
• Wear pale blue and pin cotton batting to it in random places. Carry a small spray bottle filled with water. Partly Cloudy With A Chance of Showers
• Wear all black and attach to your clothes things like chewed up gum, candy wrappers, popcorn, empty paper cups, etc. Floor of a Movie Theatre
• Go as a purple pumpkin. The Grape Pumpkin
• Attach stuffed dogs and cats to an umbrella. Raining Cats and Dogs
• Attach a P to your shirt and paint your eye black. Black-eyed Pea
• Attach 7 Cs to your shirt. (Or do it with 7 friends each wearing a C.) The Seven Seas.
• Don a pig mask, wrap yourself in a blanket. Pig in a Blanket
• Attach arms to a coat. Coat of Arms
• Attach fake hair to your arms, chest and neck, carry a flower pot filled with dirt and a little shovel. Hairy Potter
• Attach a bunch of (small) cereal boxes to your shirt with plastic knives stuck in them. Cereal Killer
• Wear a BIG band-aid on your butt. Pain in the Ass
• Attach a yellow circle to your stomach. Add some devil horns and a pitch fork. Deviled Egg
• Wear a gold outfit, gold accessories, gold hair, carry a shovel. Gold Digger
• Attach a dollar to each ear. Buck-an-Ear
• Strap a doll to your rear-end and sit on it. Babysitter
• Wear a brimmed cap with a leaf (or snowflake) dangling down in front of your face. When someone asks what you are, blow on the leaf (or snowflake). Leaf Blower or Snow Blower
• Carry a quarter and a hammer. If someone asks what your costume is, put the quarter down and pound it with the hammer. Quarter Pounder
• Attach a throw rug to your head. Carry a broom. Swept Under the Rug
• Drench yourself in water and carry around two sticks, a scarf and a carrot. Melted Snowman
• Cut out a large “1″. Cut a hole in the middle of the 1. Attach it to your chest. Hole in One
• Put “Hello my name is…” tags with random names all over your body. Multiple Personalities
• Attach a pack of Tic Tacs to the tip of your shoe. Tic Tac Toe
• Pin men’s underwear to your shirt front. Chest of Drawers
• Dress as a girl. Form a large arrow pointing up with safety pins. Pin Up Girl
• Wear all black, and attach a postage stamp to your chest. Black Mail
• Dress up as a present. Attach a tag that says “From: God, To: Women.” God’s Gift to Women
• Attach large labels that say “Shirt: $30…Jeans: $50…Shoes: $70……Halloween costume that took minimal effort: Priceless. Mastercard Ad
• Glue a poker chip to your shoulder. Chip on Your Shoulder
• Carry a toy aircraft in a basket. Aircraft Carrier
• Write “Go Ceilings!” on the front of your shirt. Add other gear (pom poms, big foam finger, etc.) Cheer! Ceiling Fan
• Tie a computer CD around your neck and carry a lighter. When someone asks what you are, hold the lighter up to the CD. CD burner
• Attach dollars to stars on your shirt (or make dollars into origami stars). Starbucks
• Attach a guitar pick to your pocket. Pick Pocket
• Attach pictures of Robert De Niro all over yourself. Mucho Dinero
• Dress as a man. Tape an “E” on your chest. “E”-male
• Carry fake eye balls. When someone asks you what Halloween costume you’re wearing, drop them on the floor. Eye Drops
• Wear buttons and carry signs that say “Devil is #1″ and “Vote for Satan,” etc.. Devil’s Advocate
• Write the number 3.1415926 on an orange pumpkin shape. Attach it to your shirt. Pumpkin Pie
• Attach some quarters to hairclips, and place in your hair. Headquarters
• Attach an empty M&M candy wrapper to your chest. Eminem the Rapper!
• Attach white trash to yourself. White Trash
• Carry several bags filled with construction paper “B”s. Bee Keeper
• Wear all black clothes. Cut out big, bright numbers and attach them to your clothes. Someone You Can Count On
• Tape a quarter to your back. Quarterback
• Attach a quarter to your back and a dollar to each ear. Quarter back for the Buckaneers
• Wear a nice suit. Attach legal documents all over yourself. Lawsuit
• Carry a stuffed dog. When someone asks about your costume, throw the dog up and catch it. Dog Catcher
• Wear a name tag that says “Susan.” Paint your eyes black. Black-eyed Susan
• Wear a bra on the outside of your shirt and attach the letter “Z” to it. Zebra
• Wear a name tag that says “Johnny”. Cut a circle out of cardboard or plastic, big enough to stand on. When someone asks you what you are, throw the circle on the floor and stand on it. Johnny on the Spot
• Attach a large brown “E” to your chest. Brown-E (Brownie)
• Take two round circles of brown fake fur and attach them to the back of your pants.. “Bear” Bum!
• Attach an empty bag of Wise potato chips to the back of your pants. Wise Ass
• Tape a disposable razor to your back. Razorback
• Wear pink clothes. Add a name tag that says “Floyd.” Pink Floyd
• Dress in normal clothes and carry a sign that says “Strike.” Nudist on Strike
• Attach a nickel to your back. Nickelback
• Wear a large garbage bag over your body. Attach a large letter “T” to the front. Tea Bag
• Make the letter “I” out of cardboard, write “Beauty” on it, and attach it to your shirt. Carry a beer. Beauty is in the Eye of the Beerholder
• Wear a pot on your head. Pot Head
• Put a picture frame around your neck and sign your shirt. Self Portrait
• Carry a small dumbbell. Stare at it intently when asked what you are. Weight Watcher
• Attach a large picture of yourself to the front of your shirt. “Stuck on Myself”
• Wear an extra-large bra over your clothes. Stuff it with jars of spices. Spice Rack
• Attach Smarties candies all over your pants. Smarty Pants
• Dress up as a bug and a lady. Lady Bug
• Attach stuffed animals (and horseshoe magnets) to yourself. Animal Magnetism
• Attach chicks to yourself. Chick Magnet
• Wear a slip with Freud written across the front. Freudian Slip
• Dress as a basketball player. Wear 2 large donuts around your middle. (Even better with 2 people, each wearing a donut.) Dunkin’ Donuts
• Put peas or peapods all over you. “I Come in Peace.”
• Color your neck red. Redneck
• Dress as a bunny and carry a feather duster. Dust Bunny
• Dress as monk and carry chips. Chipmunk
• Attach a bunch of green Ns and Vs all over you. Green with Envy
• Wear scrubs with pepper packets attached. Dr. Pepper
• Dress as a cat. Attach trash you’d find on the street. Kitty Litter
• Dress in black. Attach a strip of yellow tape from right shoulder to right ankle and left shoulder to left ankle. (And a dotted line down the middle if you wish.) Attach a fork to your chest. Fork in the Road
• Dress as a star made out of “rock”. Rock Star
• Dress in a somber suit, attach women’s panties, tucked into pockets. “Undy Taker.”
• Dress as a bat or Batman. Carry a customer service bell. Ding Bat
• Write “Bless You” on your shirt. Wear nose glasses. Blessing in Disguise
• Attach fake thumbs to all your fingers. All Thumbs
• Attach a picture of an anchor to your chest. Anchorman or Anchorwoman
• Drag a picture of the Queen of England or a Queen CD. Drag Queen
• Paint your face white and draw a musical staff and notes on it. Face the Music
• Attach a chick (or picture of a chick) to your hip. Hip Chick
• Dress in shades of green. Attach a bottle of dressing to your side. Mixed Greens with Dressing on the Side
• Attach a pink I to your chest. Pink Eye
• Carry knives, splash yourself with fake blood. Attach a B to your chest. Killer Bee
• Drip fake blood on yourself. Wear a “Mary” name tag. Bloody Mary
• Wear hospital scrubs, under a brown hooded cloak, carry a light saber and a speculum. OB-GYN Kenobi
• Wear an orange toga with a laurel crown. Orange Julius
• Wear bat wings with a baseball uniform. Baseball Bat
• One half of the couple wears an army shirt, and the other half wears army pants. Digestive Tract (upper and lower GI)
• Wear nerdy glasses, a toga, and a pocket protector. Geek Goddess
• Pin socks all over your normal clothes and SMILE. When people ask, flash a manic grin. Ecstatic Cling
• Cut out many pictures of porpoises. Fan them out around your face with a headscarf. All Porpoise Flower
• Get a Scott Baio mask or print out a picture of his face. Dress as a wolf. Beowolf
• Guy dressed in a maid’s costume. Trans-janitor
• Dress as a bee. Attach words to you. When people ask, spell the words. Spelling Bee
• Wear a trench coat. Inside attach lots of flowers. When people ask, look around as though being secretive then flash open the coat. The Secret Garden
• Dress as Gene Simmons of Kiss with a French beret. French Kiss
• Dress as a skeleton. Carry a bell. Dead Ringer
• Hang a Welcome sign around your neck. Wearing Out Your Welcome
• Carry Zs around in a fish or butterfly net. Catching Some Zs
• Dress as a poop with angel wings. Holy Shit
• Dress up as a cow (horns, bell, udder) and angel wings and halo. Holy Cow!
• Wear normal clothing and tell everyone, “I’m a homicidal maniac. We look just like everyone else.”

Come up with a zombie party plan — for real zombies. Invitations (date, time, place). Special instructions for guests (as in bring your own brains, dress). Food. Games.

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For each letter of the alphabet write a sentence that’s ghoulishly alliterative.

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A bit overkill for this ;-) but as I searched for a link for the picture, I found Wikipedia’s List of monsters by culture.

Like Star Wars? Like zombies? Click the picture. :-)

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Create your own comic strip with the Historic Tale Construction Kit. There are people, buildings, animals and text from the Bayeux Tapestry to play with. When you’re done you can submit it to the gallery. (Though I couldn’t get the email or gallery to work. I had to save all the images and paste them together in Photoshop.)

Don’t let the historic images limit you! Googling images for the kit I see several Harry Potter comics. (Like this bit of Harry Potter slash: A Chance Meeting. Note: preview it before you show it to your kids so you’re not surprised by unexpected questions! ;-)

If all the possibilities leave you stuck for a story, begin with the foundation of storytelling: a desire, a want, a need. One of those characters wants something. Other characters will get in the way with desires of their own. One of those desires will triumph. Or not. Maybe a dragon will eat them all ;-)

(Click the image to see mine.)

Two tips:

If you like your backgrounds consistent from panel to panel, line images up with flaws on the fabric.

Sometimes the images misbehave. (At least they did for me in Safari.) Back up to the previous panel then return.

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“Morning.”
“Morning.”
“Sleep well?”
“Yeah.”

Somewhere in your piece will be those lines of dialogue. (You can build up to the first “Morning.”)

Not much to go on. Or, really, too many possibilities! This is from an exercise on subtexting from Getting Into Character by Brandilyn Collins. The point is that we often don’t say what we mean … and it builds tension when our characters don’t either.

The first “Morning,” might really mean, “Where were you last night?” or “I know where you were last night (heh, heh, heh),” or “I’d like to bash your head in with a 2x4,” or “I wish everything were as normal as I’m trying to make it feel.”

One challenge of hinting at what’s beneath the surface is that only one character, the point of view character, reveals their thoughts to the reader. The other character offers only a tiny, foggy window into what they’re thinking through their body language, facial expression, tone and what they’re saying instead of what they mean. What’s going on beyond the fog is open to interpretation by the reader and by the, not necessarily objective, other character. (The point of view character is often not objective about their own thoughts and feelings either!) But the cool thing is that not knowing builds tension also and raises questions in the reader’s mind that makes them want to read on and find the answers. (Which are all the current skills I’m working on!)

As always, and as mundane as the lines are, don’t feel tied to a contemporary setting.

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October 31 at midnight, NaNoWriMo begins!

National Novel Writing Month is a time when people all over the world withdraw from life to crank out a 50,000 word novel in one month.

At first it seems insane and impossible. After doing it a few times, it’s really not so bad! :-)

Everything you need to know about it is at the NaNoWriMo website.

I’ll be posting prompts that are usable for Nano (or other writing) throughout the month. (If anyone wants to drop me a “Hi!”or add me as a buddy, I’m JFetteroll (so original, I’m always JFetteroll!) at the NaNo website.)

In the forums are online and face-to-face support. (Check out the regional boards to see if there are writing groups near you.) There are word wars (to see who can churn out the most words within a certain time) and prompts and people to help if you get stuck either emotionally, logically or factoidally.

And most people do get stuck around week 2, at the 15,000 word mark. Expect to hit that wall. At that point you’ve let your characters run rampant setting up their relationships and you suddenly realize you’ve written 15,000 words of crap and you’ve pushed the characters as far as you can go and alphabetizing your spices would be a much better use of your time. Every novelist hits that point. What separates the failed novelists from the successful ones is that the successful ones keep going. :-)

If you think you don’t have time, I found this week’s posting at the NaNo website inspiring :-) Cylithria Dubois — what a great fantasy name! — wrote her last novel while part of a forward observation team stationed in Iraq: Cylithria Dubois, Marine Corps novelist

Some tips:

✓ Don’t worry about quality. Your goal is quantity not quality. Send your internal editor on vacation. This month there’s no such thing as bad writing. (Or it’s all bad! Whatever mindset keeps the words flowing for you.) Note: No one will read it. Bots at the website count your words to see if you’ve gotten at least 50,000.

✓ Don’t worry about getting the beginning right. Jump into the middle of the story. Write the end first. Write the middle first. Doesn’t matter!

✓ Don’t worry about going in order. If you get stumped, or another scene is begging to be written, jump ahead. (As you find out more about your characters, you’ll know how to fill those jumps in — which might be after NaNo.)

✓ Don’t worry about finishing the story. The goal is 50,000 words of a single work (eg, not a bunch of short stories). It doesn’t have to be a complete novel. It’s a way to get you started. (Novels are closer to 100,000 words, though it depends on the genre.)

You can plan as much or as little as you want, but no actual writing before November 1. Some people like an outline. Some people don’t want to know where their characters are taking them. Whatever works for you.

Happy writing!

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Is this unexpected?

Is this normal in your world?

Are other animals fighting or just the squirrels? Fighting over what?

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Roll a die and pick one from each of the four following categories. Use them as the starting point of your piece.

Time

1. Dead of winter
2. During a thunderstorm
3. The morning after
4. When the moon is full
5. Just before dawn
6. Midnight
7. Height of summer
8. In the middle of a battle
9. In the middle of a storm
10. The night before

Situation

1. A death
2. A secret needs to be told
3. Someone has or will hurt someone
4. A crime has occurred or is about to
5. Someone has lost/found something
6. Someone is falling in love
7. Reminiscing on how things change
8. There has been a family emergency
9. Something embarrassing happened
10. Someone holds a medication

Character

1. A match maker
2. A nerd
3. A barista
4. A visitor
5. A homeless man
6. A novice
7. A mechanic
8. An eccentric
9. A musician
10. An actress

Setting

1. A theater
2. A wedding
3. A cemetery
4. A restaurant
5. A dungeon/jail
6. A mountain peak
7. An inn
8. A cave
9. A sporting event
10. A convention

Adapted from 6 Creative Writing Prompts to expand them beyond contemporary topics. All the situations except the last that mentioned a doctor were amazingly universal :-)

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“Listen, we’ve got a proposition for you.”

As always, let you imagination take you where it will. Don’t let it be hampered by 3 real monkeys staring at it. ;-) They could be aliens! Or products of a deteriorating mind. (Or so you think!) Or a sentient species in a fantasy world. Or …