Dragon Writing Prompts

Worldbreaker is a collaborative game for creating worlds. There is one rule: Players take turns making simple statements about what the setting IS or ISN’T, or DOES or DOESN’T have. And that’s it. He suggests 2 - 6 or 7 players. (There are also several stipulations at his website to help the players play nice together. )

Probably the best way to explain it is an example. This is from the “Four-Fold War” world:

• stee: 01) The world IS NOT spherical.
• mari: 02) The world HAS magic.
• curi: 03) The world HAS fluctuating gravity.
• stee: 04) The world HAS a wide and diverse biosphere.
• mari: 05) The societies of the world HAVE moved beyond conventional firearms.
• curi: 06) There ARE several random wells of raw magic.
• stee: 07) One society DOES “mine” these wells.
• mari: 08) The forms that magic takes ARE widely varied.
• curi: 09) The planet’s plants and animals ARE capable of using the magic.
• stee: 10) There ARE at least three sentient species of animal.

and it goes on to expand on specific details that develop:

• mari: 89) There IS a group of humanoids who have combined magic with martial arts.
• curi: 90) The Avians DO HAVE a group of warriors who hide feather-shaped razors on their bodies.
• stee: 91) One group of humanlike creatures IS trying to provoke a war.
• mari: 92) The wandering god HAS gotten bored.
• curi: 93) The Plantlikes ARE using their shifting abilities to spy on the Avians and Humanlikes.
• stee: 94) The plantlikes ARE willing to unleash a virus upon the Avians to ensure their survival.
• mari: 95) The AI HAS a body.
• curi: 96) The Ursines HAVE made a pact with their pantheon representative to fight only in self-defense.
• stee: 97) The AI’s body IS a suit of humanlike power armour named Cortana.
• mari: 98) The gods WILL destroy everything if total war erupts.
• curi: 99) The Aquatic race IS preparing to perish if they can’t stop the war.
• all: 100) The setting IS called ‘The Four-Fold War’.

You can see the full “Four-Fold War” world and more examples are at his website where, besides the worlds themselves, you might find an idea or two that might spark your own world.

In honor of the Anime Boston convention that kept me busy all weekend and since nothing is coming to me that relates anime to poetry, the “Saturday” tip at least draws inspiration from Japan. This game was designed to play with a “Yaddy-Yadda” card deck. It’s no longer available (or temporarily unavailable) but you could substitute Scrabble tiles. Or write the alphabet on slips of paper. You may want to add extras of S, P, C, D, M, and A since those letters start the most words.

Yaddy-Yadda Haiku

For 3 or more players

To play this game, you need a Yaddy-Yadda Deck as well as pencils and paper for each player.

Overview

Each player will create a haiku based on letters drawn from the Yaddy-Yadda Deck. The title of the haiku will be chosen by one player who will act as moderator. The moderator will also judge the winning haiku based on criteria given at the start of the game.

Preparing to play

Remove both X’s and Z’s from the deck. They won’t be used in this game. Shuffle the remaining cards and place them in the middle of the table.

Next, choose a player to be the moderator for the game. Her role will be to choose a title and the criteria for judging a winning haiku. After all other players have written their haikus, she will also pick the winning poem.

A haiku in this game

The definition of a haiku will be in very general terms for purposes of these rules. Here, a haiku will consist of a title and three lines. The first and third lines will have five syllables each. The second line will have seven syllables.

Here’s a simple example from one of our games:

Cold Day

Under my blanket
I keep warm in pajamas
It’s freezing outside

Traditionally, the haiku is simple, dealing with ordinary life and seasons of the year. A moderator may always give a more specific definition of a good haiku for any session. A brief introduction to the art of the haiku can be found here.

Playing the game

First the moderator will turn over the top two cards of the deck. These two letters must be used to form a title for the haiku each player will write. There must be a word in the title that begins with each of the two letters just revealed. In the above example, an "D" and "C" were revealed giving way to the title "Cold Day". The order in which the moderator uses the letters is irrelevant. Also, there can be more than two words in the title, with other words beginning with any letter. However, it’s best to keep titles very simple for this game. Players should write the title of the haiku at the top of their papers at this time.

After the moderator chooses a title, she then must tell players the criteria she will use to judge the winning haiku. As examples, she may judge haikus based on…

• originality
• humor
• aesthetic value (possibly further clarified)
• relation to title

The moderator’s criteria may be a single aspect of the haiku or she may wish to list a few aspects she’ll base her decision on. It’s completely up to the moderator.

Next, the moderator turns up three pairs of letter cards from the deck onto the table. Each pair should be arranged in a separate row, so that players can easily see which letters are paired up. Each of these pairs of letters will be used to begin words in each line of the haiku. For example, if the first pair of letters was "H" and "M", the first line of each haiku must have a word that begins with an "H" and one that begins with an "M". As with the title, the order of these words in the haiku is irrelevant. So, given this example, a player could write "My hands shake with cold" or "A hundred or more-". The second pair of letters will be used for words in the second line and likewise with the third. Back to the "Cold Day" example above, the letters we had to work with are highlighted:

Under my blanket
I keep warm in pajamas
It’s freezing outside

At this time, players work on their individual haikus until everyone is finished. While the moderator can’t make and judge her own haiku, she may choose to make one that would represent the criteria she chose for the game.

When everyone is done, the haikus are passed to one player (other than the moderator) who will read each aloud. If the moderator chose to write one herself, she can begin by reading hers. Then the player reads each haiku to the moderator. She may request that any be repeated as often as necessary to make a judgement. Her judgement as to the best haiku is final, but a winning haiku should at least relate to the title given at the start of the game and it must follow the rules above regarding syllables and the use of the letters on the Yaddy-Yadda cards.

Further games

The game can be repeated any number of times. If each player is moderator once, an overall winner may be determined by keeping track of who wins each game. It’s likely several players may tie for victory in this case, but I hope it’s clear winning isn’t the only enjoyable goal of this game.

Players may choose to vary the poetry in many ways. Instead of writing only haikus, poems of any type can be created as the moderator chooses. Since words are chosen based on letter cards, the maximum length of the poem will always be dictated by the moderator. Game time, of course, becomes a major factor with longer poems. The moderator may create a rhyme scheme the players have to follow, or that may be left up to the individual players.

In Dialogue Chicken, players create dialogues based on two randomly-juxtaposed lines of dialogue.

What You Need

Many sheets of note-paper.
One pencil per player.
A four-minute timer.

Setup

Each player writes two separate lines of dialogue, one per slip of paper. Each line should begin with the name of a character, followed by something that that character says. Shuffle all the slips of paper into a face-down pile. Give each player a healthy supply of note-paper.

Generating the Prompt

At the beginning of each round, the current Judge draws two lines of dialogue from the face-down pile, and reads them aloud in either order. The Judge writes a (1) on the first paper, and a (2) on the second.

Writing the Entries

You have four minutes to write as many dialogues as you’d like which incorporate the two lines of dialogue. The two lines can appear anywhere within your dialogue, in any order. You don’t have to copy the lines; simply insert a (1) or a (2) at the appropriate place.

Judging the Entries

The Judge selects one player to read all the entries aloud. After hearing them all, the Judge picks two favorites, and the respective creators receive one point each. If the same player created both of the chosen entries, that player gets both points. Use the two lines of dialogue to track the points. After each player has been the Judge once, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins.

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Dialogue Chicken is a game that’s an offshoot of the “Chicken Game System” designed by Kory Heath and collaborators.

There are more pencil and paper games at The Chicken Game System and a commercial version called Why Did the Chicken …? with a bit on how to play.

Start with any movie title.

Replace one of the words with poop.

Yes, it’s juvenile.

Yes, it’s a lot of fun! :-)

Some examples:

Poop Wars
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Poop
Fried Green Poop
Lord of the Poops
James and the Giant Poop
Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Poop
Poop Hard
Pooping with the Enemy
Attack of the Killer Poops
Adventures in Pooper Sitting
Poopless in Seattle
A Midsummer’s Night Poop
The Sound of Poop
Dog Poop Afternoon
The Man Who Pooped Liberty Valance
Poop Soup
Monty Python and the Holy Poop
The Scent of a Poop

Hard to stop once you get started!

A preacher’s daughter mentioned a similar game she played as a teen in church which was to go through the hymnal and add the words “under the sheets” to the end of the titles. Someone’s mom taught this to her by adding it to song titles on the little jukeboxes at the tables in diners. :-)

A list member’s friend adds “in bed” to the end of fortune cookie fortunes.

(It just occurred to me that I recently posted about expletives and now poop and I should do something high brow for next week to make up for it but the expletives were a whole 3 weeks ago so maybe that’s enough time between ;-)

This is flawed but cool. Create Trading cards of your characters.

Answer a series of questions and at the end you can print out both sides on one page. You cut it out and fold the two sides together.

The problem is the print out is about half a page rather than 3.5 x 2.5 card size. (At least on my printer.)

There is a work around if your printer allows you to “print” to a file and you have some image manipulation software like Photoshop or Fireworks. After you click print on the card screen, click OK on the next screen and that might take you to the regular command page for your printer. There might be an option to save as a PDF Postscript file. (You won’t be able to edit a regular PDF file.) If so, then you can import it, shrink it (make it 3.5 x 5 since it’s both sides of the card), add a picture and print :-)

(There are several more games and activities at Read Write Think, some a bit schooly.)

Here are 3 online games based on word origins:

Etymologic “The toughest word game on the web”
Guess the language and root word for a set of 10 words. (It took me a bit to notice the answer and scores displayed at the top of the page after you click submit.)

Daily BuzzWord
Click on Daily Buzzword. For more words click Archive.
You’re given the definition and how it’s used and then have to answer a question that might be about the origin, or a synonym or …

FakeOut!
Guess the real definition from a list. There aren’t many words (click on More Words to access the archive) and you have to click on Fake Out link at the bottom of the page to move to the next word, but the words are challenging. (I’m not sure what inspired the grade ranges on the words. I think most adults would find them challenging.)

Google Image Labeler

Is it a game? I think so! At any rate it certainly challenges your ability to come up with words.

The object is to come up with keywords for a random image found by Google. You’re playing with a partner (some random, anonymous person Google chooses for you). The object is for both of you to come up with the same word to describe an image. The trick is that you can’t see the words your partner is coming up with.

You have 1.5 minutes to try to label as many images as you can but you can’t move onto the next image until you’ve both found a word for the current image.

It can be quite addictive!

Here’s the list of words that I used for the writing prompt — though more of a game really! — in the Dragon Writing fun shop at the Live and Learn Conference. (Click on Comments at the bottom of the post for a list of the words.)

For those who weren’t there, I had a whole bunch (maybe 300) colored popsicle sticks with words written on both sides. We drew a bunch of sticks and tried to come up with fantasy tabloid headlines.

The only instruction I gave was to choose 2 sticks of each color. That just gives you a good mixture of word types to start working with. You don’t need to use them all. You don’t need to use each color. You can throw back and redraw any that aren’t working and draw whatever color. Whatever helps!

I used two packs of colored popsicle sticks and put words on each side. I can’t remember how many were in each pack. (150 maybe?)

Plain - Conjunctions and Prepositions. These are the only ones that have 4 to a stick. Katelyn came up with this idea in the headlines she sent to the list and it seemed to make them more interesting. I went through the newspaper and kept track of the prepositions that were most common. There are multiple copies of each set. Katelyn needed an "on" a couple of times so I made one but it’s all by its lonesome at the moment. There’s a list of prepositions at Test Magic. Way more than the newspaper headlines ever use! ;-)

Green - Places and Objects. Probably the least useful category but interesting to have.

Red - Verbs. There are more words than I had sticks for so I colored some plain sticks with a red marker.

Blue and Purple - People and Creatures. Probably the most useful category since the nouns can often do double duty as adjectives: vampire astrologist for instance.

Yellow and Orange - Adjectives. If I were doing it again, I would change what adjectives I could to nouns, like "baby" for instance. (Especially since I had extra blue and purple and ran short of yellow and orange so had to make some.)

Using colored sticks isn’t important. It’s just less annoying. My daughter and I have another set of just plain sticks with random words on it originally intended to generate manga-ish story ideas. They’ve expanded beyond that (a recent one had something to do with a local radio personality and sparkly pants ;-) But since they’re all the same color, it’s annoyingly easy to pull out a whole series of nouns as you search for a verb.

I don’t know if it makes a difference but, as I was writing them, I had the words printed in two columns (4 columns for the adjectives) and chose the word for one side of a stick from column A and the other side of the stick from column B so all the "a"s, for instance, weren’t clustered onto the same sticks. As I said I’m not sure if it makes a difference but it seemed to make sense at the time!

Yellow &	Blue &	Red	Green	Plain
Orange	Purple
Adjectives	People & Creatures	Verbs	Places & Things	Conjunctions & Prepositions
(world’s) best	actor	accuses	abyss	of — 7 sets of each
(world’s) biggest	adversary	assassinates	altar	for
(world’s) oldest	alchemist	assaults	armor	outside
(world’s) smallest	alien	attacks	bakery	before
(world’s) worst	android	avenges	bazaar
(world’s) youngest	angel	banishes	bones	after — 5 sets of each
340 pound	apprentice	betrays	camera	inside
abandoned	artist	bewitches	castle	outside
acclaimed	assassin	bites	cavern	before
accused	astrologist	blames	chamber
alienated	avatar	blasts	computer	over — 5 sets of each
ambitious	Barbie	blesses	crypt	but
amnesiac	beggar	bribes	diary	with
ancient	bounty hunter	builds	dungeon	and
angry	boy	burns	empire
annoying	bride (of)	captures	fire	on — 1
arrogant	brother (of)	celebrates	forest
baby	bunny	challenges	garden
balding	cat	charms	goblet
barbarian	creature	cheats	grave
beautiful	crime boss	chills	heaven
bitter	cult hero	chokes	hell
bizarre	cult member	claims	holy book
blasphemous	cyborg	completes	island
blind	death	conquers	jewel
brawny	death god	convicts	key
brilliant	demigod	cooks	kingdom
broken	demon	corrupts	labyrinth
brutal	demon hunter	curses	monastery
bubbly	demon slayer	dares	palace
charismatic	dog	deceives	paradise
chocolate	dragon	defeats	ring
compulsive	dragon hunter	defends	runes
corrupt	dragon slayer	deposes	sanctuary
crazy	dwarf	destroys	sarcophagus
creepy	elf	devastates	scroll
crimson	Elvis	disappears	space colony
crooked	embezzler	discovers	star ship
crumbling	emperor	disguises	sword
cultured	enchantress	dooms	tavern
cursed	evil overlord	dumps	temple
cyber	executioner	eats	tomb
dancing	exorcist	eliminates	tower
dark	fairy	escapes (from)	underworld
dastardly	father (of)	exiles	volcano
dead	fiend	exorcises	well
delirious	fortuneteller	explodes
delusional	ghost	exposes
desecrated	ghoul	falls for
deserted	girl	fears
devoted	goblin	fights
diseased	Godzilla	frees
disguised	goth	gives birth to
dishonest	groom (of)	hatches
disturbed	harpy	hits
divine	heir	imprisons
doomed	hellion	invades
dreamy	horse	is
dusty	husband (of)	jealous of
dying	investigator	kidnaps
eerie	king	kills
embarrassed	lady	liberates
emerald	lizard	locates
enchanted	lord	loses
enigmatic	mage	mourns
escaped	mecha	murders
exiled	mermaid	plots to kill
extinct	monk	poisons
faded	mother (of)	proves
failed	mouse	quests for
fake	murderer	rebels against
famous	musician	recovers
fanatic	mystic	rejects
feline	ninja	reproduces
first	ogre	resists
fluffy	orphan	resurrects
forbidden	outcast	reveals
forgotten	Ozzie	ridicules
foul	pickpocket	rips off
fractured	pig	rules
frozen	pirate	runs off with
ghastly	poet	sacrifices
giant	priestess	saves
glowing	prisoner	seeks
gold	psychic	seizes
golden	pyromaniac	separates
greedy	queen	shames
grotesque	rat	shoots
hairy	runaway	silences
half	side kick	slays
haunted	sister (of)	smacks
heavenly	slave	smashes
hellish	soul	stabs
hidden	soul stealer	strikes
hollow	specimen	stuns
horrific	spider	substitutes (for)
hot	spirit	sues
hungry	spy	summons
hysterical	tabloid reporter	suppresses
icy	terror	surrenders
idiotic	thief	terminates
illegal	troll	terrorizes
imaginary	undead	threatens
immortal	vampire	torments
impenetrable	vampire slayer	tortures
indecipherable	villain	transforms (into)
infamous	warlord	traps
infested	warrior	tricks
ingenious	weasel	uncovers
inhuman	werewolf	vanquishes
insane	wife (of)	was
insectoid	witch	weds
interstellar	wizard	weeps for
invisible	wolf	yields
isolated	worm
killer	writer
last	youth
lavender	zombie
loathsome
long buried
lost
lucky
mad
magic
malevolent
masked
massive
mechanical
miniaturized
missing
mist enshrouded
mistaken
moldering
monster
morbid
mortal
murdered
mutant
mysterious
mystery
mystical
mythic
naked
noble
notorious
obsessed
oozing
otherworldly
outcast
paranoid
paranormal
paroled
passionate
peculiar
perverse
phobic
pink
poetic
poisoned
primitive
primordial
puzzling
quirky
radical
random
rare
reincarnated
renowned
repulsive
resurrected
revolting
rotting
royal
ruined
sacred
sapphire
secret
secretive
shadow
shattered
silver
singing
sinister
smelly
sparkly
stinky
strange
stupid
supernatural
suspected
tattooed
teen
telepathic
time traveling
toothless
twisted
tyrannical
ugly
unearthly
unholy
unlucky
vain
vanished
victorious
violent
virtuous
wacky
weird
wicked
zany

This is from David Parlett’s Suspensions.

One player takes a short sentence from a novel, less than 10 words, and writes it down. To the rest of the players he announces the initial letters of each word. Each player then writes down a sentence with words that begin with those letters. The players pass those back to the person with the real sentence who then alphabetizes them by first word and then reads them. Players try to guess which is the original sentence.

Tip: If short sentences are hard to find, cut out some of the phrases.

If you want to keep score, give a point to each person whose sentence gets picked as the real one.

Just like the kind for your refrigerator: Online Magnetic Poetry.

There are several kits to choose from: Artist, Genius, Poet, Office, Romance and Gardner

Here’s one I created with the Artist Kit by grabbing words at random and rearranging.

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.
.

You only need two people for this game. The first person writes “What is _____” and fills in the blank with anything. Abstracts work well (love, anger, beauty, justice, equality, reason) but it can be any word. The first person folds the paper to hide what they’ve written. The second person writes a sentence in the form of a noun followed by a verb.

You can of course play this on your own by writing several of each on slips of paper and then drawing them randomly.

Here’s some examples to get you started:

What is reason?
A cloud eaten by the moon.

What is equality?
A hierarchy like any other.

What is loyalty?
A dog beaten with a stick.

What is love?
A parrot holding a beer.

What is a clock?
A bottle floating down the river.

What is life?
A popsicle melting in the summer.

What is a balloon?
A dream come true.

What is a smile?
A model in a magazine.

What is an individual?
A midsummer night’s dream.

What is fear?
An expedition like no other.

What is religion?
A sea flowing towards the sand.

What is love?
An apple that has fallen from a tree.

What is anger?
A thunderstorm with no lightning.

What is beauty?
A cup of medicine to make you sleep.

What is life?
Any job you’ve ever done.

What is eternity?
Something that never lasts.

What is knowledge?
A person who tries to fly.

From a game played by surrealists described at What is? on the Rhizome site.

One more poetry reference for April.

Trypto is a game by David Parlett.

Take a short poem or stanza (or piece of a song) that is unfamiliar. (He suggests about 30 words.) Make a list of all the words. (If you’re clever with word processors you can do a global replace of all the spaces with carriage returns to make a list.) He suggests alphabetizing. It might be more fun to cut the words up so you can shuffle them around easily. Then each person tries to recreate the poem. (Or make up an even better one!)

Here’s one that he used as an example:

all
and
bars
girls
going
hat
home
hung
I
I
I
in
loved
my
stars
the
the
the
upon
was
when
young

The original is below:

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

I loved when I was young
The girls in all the bars,
And going home I hung
My hat upon the stars.

— Victor J Daly

Make a haiku generator. Stack 5 haiku on top of one another, staple then slice the pages between the lines. Then you can mix and match the lines of the poems to make a total of 125 haiku.

You can write your own 5 haiku (there’s some of Basho’s below to choose from if you want). When you print them out make sure you leave enough room between the lines to cut.

You can choose or write any haiku but if the corresponding lines of each are grammatically similar, that is, all first lines are noun phrases, then they’ll all mix and match, at least grammatically! (Not all of the haiku below match each other grammatically.)

You can read more about Exquisite corpses and where the name came from.

This idea comes from Queneau … at Rhizome. It, in turn, comes from an idea by Raymond Queneau who wrote a book of 10 sonnets (14 lines each) that were grammatically similar so that lines could be mixed and matched freely to form 100,000,000,000,000 poems!

Matsuo Basho haiku translated by Robert Hass from Poem Hunter:

A bee
staggers out
of the peony.

A caterpillar,
this deep in fall–
still not a butterfly.

A cicada shell;
it sang itself
utterly away.

A field of cotton–
as if the moon
had flowered.

A snowy morning–
by myself,
chewing on dried salmon.

Autumn moonlight–
a worm digs silently
into the chestnut.

Awake at night–
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.

Blowing stones
along the road on Mount Asama,
the autumn wind.

Waking in the night;
the lamp is low,
the oil freezing.

Winter rain
falls on the cow-shed;
a cock crows.

The sea darkens;
the voices of the wild ducks
are faintly white.

Coolness of the melons
flecked with mud
in the morning dew.

First snow
falling
on the half-finished bridge.

Moonlight slanting
through the bamboo grove;
a cuckoo crying.

Spring rain
leaking through the roof
dripping from the wasps’ nest.

Stillness–
the cicada’s cry
drills into the rocks.

The dragonfly
can’t quite land
on that blade of grass.

The morning glory also
turns out
not to be my friend.

This old village–
not a single house
without persimmon trees.

When the winter chrysanthemums go,
there’s nothing to write about
but radishes.

Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.

Winter solitude–
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.

Fleas, lice,
a horse peeing
near my pillow.

(Basho spent a lot of time traveling about Japan so he probably slept in less than ideal circumstances fairly frequently!)

Translated by Geoffrey Bownas And Anthony Thwaite

Spring:
A hill without a name
Veiled in morning mist.

The beginning of autumn:
Sea and emerald paddy
Both the same green.

The winds of autumn
Blow: yet still green
The chestnut husks.

A flash of lightning:
Into the gloom
Goes the heron’s cry.

I saw this idea in the book Poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge a poet and wordlover. Reading Poemcrazy will make you want to dabble with words and poetry even if you think you don’t like poetry. (Which I can say because I think I don’t like poetry ;-))

(It also turns out that April is National Poetry month and I didn’t even know it.)

How to
Cut up paint chip samples keeping the color name. (The color names are often very cool.) Write a word or a phrase on each. Use permanent marker or gel pens (milky gels for the dark paint samples) or metallic markers or paint markers or stamps. Cut — or tear — words from magazines (or printouts) and paste them on. The paint chip samples will get swirled around in a bowl and shuffled about in pockets so keep that in mind if you feel the need to add embellishments.

Then what
Keep them in a bowl or a hat or an old shoe. Keep a handful in your pocket or purse. Keep some blank ones too to jot down words and phrases that strike you as you come across them. (It helps to shake them up in a grocery bag once in a while since they aren’t slick and tend to clump together.) Draw them out in pairs and triples and see where the serendipitous connections take you. Get a handful and turn them into a poem. Or a story prompt. Put them around the house randomly against and within objects. Paste them on Art Trading Cards.

Where
You can find words and phrases anywhere but I found the ideas and words in the book inspiring so here’s some ideas if you need a jumpstart.

• Poetry books - even — or maybe especially! — if you don’t like poetry. Poets love words so they’ve already done the filtering for you. Look in poems for words and phrases that make you pause.
• Maps - Wamphray, Blinkbonny, Scrishve, Cambus-puttock …
• Road signs - out of context “one way”, “no turns”, “soft shoulder” take on new meanings.
• Spam - check the titles as well as the paragraphs at the bottom: slug billion, bronzy buffalo, loose it, kittle, loudspeaking, chiffonier, tiresome grove, buckhorn.
• Thesaurus - walk is kind of a nothing word, but stroll … trudge … tromp … sashay …
• Magazines, books, newspapers, car manuals, catalogs, TV shows, song titles, movie titles, menus, cat breeds, knitting terms … Basically anywhere.

Some more examples

Nouns
ziggurat, fandango, kitten, window, doorway

Verbs
zigzag, swivel, churn, trigger, slink, swaddle

Sounds
Tintinabulation, swoosh, zoom, badaboom

Words that evoke feelings and memories and connections
luminous, feathery, moonstone, reflection, wanderlust, formerly, nourish, spangles

Split words apart (and mess about with the spelling a bit)
ant arc tic, flabber gast, do nut, tran quill

You’ll never look at — work shop –quite the same way again.

Mush words together
everclear, grasslover, stargazer

Words and phrases that are fun to say
pomegranate, ameliorate, gargantuan, cantankerous, burrow beneath, wild child, gather green, feather pen, celery salt

Alter the spelling
handy cap, farm a see

Make up words
fandoozle, fantabulous, confuzzle

Opposites to include the darkness with the light.
Angel and devil, spring peepers and zombies, light and extinguish, benevolent and malevolent, somewhere and nowhere, destruction and happy-kitty-bunny-pony (which is the title of a book described as “a saccharine mouthful of super cute”.

Names of plants and animals and places with interesting sounds
fiddleheads, damsel fly, Lamborghini, Sea of Crises (moon)

Things that work less well: people’s names and familiar places because they’re too specific. Brad Pitt will just be Brad Pitt and Harry Potter will be Harry Potter though brad — pit or hairy — potter or (Peter) may — hew may not be. Sweden will be Sweden though Skrinklehaven (Wales) can be whatever you imagine.

This is actually a game but it’s sometimes hard to find fun word prompts and this will work well as a word prompt.

The game only needs two people, but you can do it alone by writing the if and then phrases on separate slips of paper and putting them in separate piles and then drawing one of each randomly.

To play as a game, fold a piece of paper in half lengthwise. The first person writes down an “If” on the left, flips the paper over to hide what they’ve written and passes it to the other person. The second person writes down a “then”.

The ifs and thens follow the formula:

If noun + past tense verb + object
then plural noun + would ….

Here are some examples:

If octopi wore bracelets
then ships would be towed by flies.

If there were no guillotine
then wasps would take off their corsets.

If wizards really walked the earth
then ruins would be runes.

If animals could speak
then drones would mate.

If there were no such thing as clothes
then portraits would shed their frames.

If life really benefitted everyone
then serenity would not be obtainable.

This comes from Logic Exceeded where there are a fair number of interesting writing ideas.

This idea was suggested as a game but each person needs a dictionary and there’s a lot of flipping through pages involved so it may work better with a small group who love looking words up or as a solitary game.

Take a saying or short poem or short quote. Change all the nouns to the 7th word following it in the dictionary. (If the 7th word is a form of the original word (like mankind is a form of man) keep moving down the words until you get something bizarre.)

Save the best ones for writing prompts.

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To get you started, here’s a couple of haiku from Basho, one of the most famous haiku poets.

An old pond—
The sound of a frog jumping
into water.

The first cold shower;
Even the monkey seems to want
A little coat of straw.

And a couple of quotes from Basho:

“There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; There is nothing you can think that is not the moon.”

“Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

There’s also a huge list of aphorisms (short witty sayings) at Fortunes. NOTE: all the first ones are computer based. Keep scrolling until you see the first letter change to f or h or p.

b computer humor
c computer profound
f fortune cookies
h humorous
p profound/serious

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The only online dictionary I know of that will show the words preceeding and following a word is The Free Dictionary. Type in a word or phrase. Click “Look it up”. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page. The list of surrounding words is on the left. In fact it gives exactly 7 words before and 7 words after your word. Click on the last word in the lefthand list to get the next 7 words.

Go to Bonsai Story Generator. Take a piece of writing you’ve done. Cut and paste in a chunk of text. She says, “Three or four passages of 1000 words each are recommended for best effect (note that this box won’t hold text longer than about 6,000 words total)”

Paste it in and click Bonsai this text. It will cut and paste and twist your text around and put it in a sort of tree form.

Some of the juxtaposed lines might serve as writing prompts.

Here’s Kathryn’s:

Mr.
Katzah had just started the banquet.
I’m thinking that Avn had slept through.
Now, onto slightly more of them now do we?
Mr.
Katzah Korp.
indefinitely.
Everyone get packed, we’re leaving in deserted towns and eating Cornucopias.
And he just started the ones that say ‘Meep!’ and twenty eight minutes.
That is the gift The Martians give people special gifts like some kind of these
Gorbenphlappes can!
Watch out, and placing your ceiling and we suspect that there have dark purple
eyes and eating Cornucopias.
And he just started his gourd like some kind of this costume?
Anyone?
Or, does it just stay on everyone!!
I have to go to be hidden at all times.
How can he have explained rocking from Gorbenphlappes and blow things up.

And mine:

Oozing canker!
bellowed the rocks.
The demon sank its fangs into the lesser demon deformed and found himself against a berserker slaughterfest.
His hard gaze suggested his blade to a screech and sliced the wintery air.
But he drew his clothing and hair were covered with the effort.
He brushed idly at Rane.
With a lesser demon sank a mid-order demon.
And the rocks.
The lesser demon squirmed around and bewildered as he looked down on the scene.
In the cold as he prepared to a slit and hair and hair and flattened and face until he was still not satisfied.
What are you to greet you properly.
Forgive me!
Rane returned his blade to greet you to greet you to greet you to greet you doing?
Rane returned his blade to twice its treatment, the show.
Puking rump feeder!
The demon’s whine turned to a berserker slaughterfest.

Another game for over the holiday season, this is a writing game for a group.

What you need:

• a group of people
• writing implement for each person
• a sheet of paper for each person

How to:

Write down the side of each paper.

• Article (traditionally a, an, the, but also: some, all, every, one, …)
• Adjective
• Noun
• Adverb
• Verb
• Article
• Adjective
• Noun

The first person fills in an article and passes the paper to the right. The second person fills in an adjective and folds the paper over to hide the article before passing the paper to the right. The third person fills in a noun and folds the paper over to hide the adjective before passing the paper to the right. So each time the paper is passed, the person accepting the paper will only be able to see the most recently added word.

Keep going until all the words are filled in. Then open them up and look at the sentences created.

(You can use any structure of sentence. The above is the structure of the original game that prompted its name.)

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It’s speculated the name came from one of the first keepers “The exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine.”

If you would like to contribute to an online Exquisite Corpse Poem go to Exquisite Corpse Poetry. Click on Game (up at the top in the gray bar)

The circles show how many words have been added to a line. (If the last one’s blinking only one more word is needed and you can complete a line.) Click on a verse and it will tell you what type of word is needed. Type in your word and then submit.

Click on Verse (again up in the gray bar) to see lines that have been completed. If you change the month you can see the top vote getters. They can be used as writing prompts.

There’s also a longer ongoing poem at An Exquisite Corpse Poem. This displays the most recently submitted line of the poem. You supply the next. When you click “Activate” (which submits your line) you can see the poem so far.

If you’ll be with a group of loony people over the holiday season, this is a writing/drawing game for a group.

What you need:

• a group of people
• writing implement for each person
• small pad of paper for each person

How to:

Each person writes a sentence on their pad. They all pass their pads to the right. Each person looks at the phrase, flips to the next page and illustrates the sentence.

Pass to the right again. Each person looks at the illustration, flips to the next page and tries to reproduce the original sentence. (Obviously that’s not possible which is the fun part!

Pass to the right again.

Continue until the pads have gone all the way around (or through an odd number of people since it should end with a sentence.)

Then look over the evolution of the sentence.

There are links to examples at the bottom of Wikipedia Eat Poop You Cat article.