Dragon Writing Prompts

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

So many possibilities! An object? A person? An idea? A moral tale? An immoral tale?

Rather than project forward, have a favorite character (yours or someone else’s, good guy or bad guy) reflect back on what they did right last year.

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Merry Christmas! Here’s something to do while you wait for everyone else to get up so you can open your presents :-)

What if the following were acronyms? What would they stand for? They can deal with Christmas or not, you decide.

NOEL
SANTA
SNOW
STAR
ANTICIPATION

And here’s a present for you Star Trek fans: New Star Trek episodes.

Considering everyone’s doing this for free just for love of Star Trek, they aren’t bad. (Try one of the newer ones to begin.) The special effects are quite good and George Takei gets to show off his sword skills in World Enough and Time :-)

Hope your day is a joyous one!

Write a holiday or seasonal story using one of the following sets of objects:

• A stork, onion rings, and some building blocks.
• A gumdrop, a pair of snowshoes, and a bucket of sand.
• A can of soda, a romance novel, and a rubber animal nose.
• A new puppy, a silver bell, and a disguise.
• A cardboard box, an old car, and some peppermint candy.

Words generated at Random Writing Prompt Generators where there are several writing prompt generators.

Use as many of the following words as you can in a piece (story, song, poem or whatever you come up with!) that isn’t about winter or the holidays.

blustery
drifts
blizzard
dormant
mitten
frost
crystals
gifts
snowflake
pine
frozen
solstice
wind
wool
candle
spirit

You know those trees with the handprint leaves you write something to be thankful for on? Your favorite Evil Dude (E.D.) has been inspired to create one. Of course he’ll use severed hands instead of construction paper and carve his message with a fresh craft knife rather than use crayon.

So, what’s he thankful for? Make a list.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Enough poetry for a bit!

Write a eulogy that the bad guy has written for the good guy. Death can be the bad guy’s doing or old age or an accident or caused by a different bad guy or … Bad guy can be pleased or saddened or conflicted or irritated or …

It can be your favorite pair of antagonists. Or make them up as you write. Just let the ideas flow and you may discover two characters you’d like to know more about.

A typical eulogy might include how they met, humorous memories, a quote or favorite saying, what the eulogy giver most admired, will miss the most and will remember most about the deceased.

Come up with a list of news releases or reports for April Fool’s Day that sound believable enough to be true. Some examples:

Personalized Dunlop Tires
Computer Virus Spreads to Human
Virgin Atlantic Buys Butterfly Advertising Space

There are more examples at April Fools R Us.

According to the Chinese zodiac, Sunday began the Year of the Pig. Down below are the Chinese words for the 12 animals of the zodiac. Write a 12 line poem that tells what each animal is doing right this moment. You can begin each line with “At this moment …” which can give it a chanting rhythm or just the first line. (Or, of course, whatever inspires you.)

Unless you know Chinese you won’t know which animals are which, of course! It’s an opportunity to let the sounds (or your best guess at the sounds) inspire you. You can tie them to real world animals or make up your own.

gou
hou
hu
ji
long
ma
niu
she
shu
tu
yang
zhu

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More:

New Year’s for the Chinese is a time, similar to American Thanksgiving, when scattered families gather together. Traditionally the celebration is 15 days long but officially people only get a week off.

Families traditionally decorate their entryways with New Year’s poems written on red paper called duilian (spring couplets). A traditional duilian “expresses a person’s spiritual aspirations, feelings and thoughts of hope, faith, and respect towards the divine.”

The requirements for a duilian are two lines, containing the same number of characters, usually ranging between five to ten characters in length. The rhythm and the meaning of the two lines must match up.”

There’s a very interesting article Writing Chinese New Year Poetry: Recalling childhood memories of an ancient tradition by Jason Liu:

Here’s an excerpt:

Below is an example of a duilian , loosely translated into English:

May the shining stars bless our generations.
May our great virtue always bring success.

When I was little, during the Cultural Revolution, my father, who was a professor, was labeled as an “intellectual,” and as punishment we were sent to live in the countryside in the northeast of China.

We lived in a small village by the name of Taihe, meaning “very quiet and peaceful village.” The place was indeed very isolated, surrounded by mountains and rivers, and a long distance from Changchun, the state capital of Jilin Province. Winters were very cold with temperatures dropping down to an average of minus 20 degrees Celsius.

The villagers did not have much education, so it was hard for everyone to get help creating their New Year duilian . After entering the twelfth month of the lunar calendar, people would flock to our house, bringing their red paper, to request my father to write their duilian for them. There were over a hundred families in the village, and every family’s duilian had to be different.

From the time I was seven years old, I would assist my father in creating duilian . I remember gradually learning from him how to write a poem and practice my calligraphy. Sometimes my father would say the first line, and I would create the second.

Duilian are said to have originated about three thousand years ago. When working on our calligraphy together, my father would tell me the ancient myth that was recorded almost 2,000 years ago during the Eastern Han Dynasty.

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If you want to know which Chinese word goes with which animal, click on the Comments.

Write a love letter containing one or more of the following. Is the sender serious and think his compliments will be well received? Does the recipient appreciate them?

• Your eyes glow like naked livers burning in the sun.
• Seven donkeys and a concubine cannot compare with the tarnished sheen left in your path of combustion.
• Your timeless negligence has a way of arousing my palliative inuendo.
• Your legs are like threads of cotton, though much thicker, and filled with weevils.
• The microfine network of eyes traversing your shoulders causes me to shudder in anticipation of the coming of the wondrous season of jaundiced eskimos and impotent Anglican priests.
• My eyelids belch with effluvial afterthoughts when you tease me with gelatin and congealed chicken rinds.
• Madame, ist thou donning space underwear? For thine ass doth lie beyond the physical boundaries of this world!

From The Surrealist Compliment Generator.

Your favorite villain has made New Year’s Resolutions. Will he put more effort into his evil plans? Will he turn around and try to start anew?

Make a list. :-)

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Write a sentence about vampires for each of the following words. Feel free to change the tenses or word forms. To make it even more challenging, give the sense that it’s cold or even Christmas.

• android
• bristly
• castle
• diddle
• empire
• ferret
• grovel
• hollow
• immortal
• jaded
• knock
• low tech
• master
• notorious
• owl
• patience
• quirky
• rakish
• secret garden
• torment
• ugly
• violinist
• whimper
• explorer
• yanked
• zest

Come up with titles for the following genre’s using the words winter or Christmas. (Or let the season otherwise inspire you :-)

• Adventure/Action
• Animal
• Autobiography
• Biography
• Children’s
• Detective fiction
• Fantasy
• General
• Historical
• Horror
• Humor
• Mystery
• Non-fiction
• Poetry
• Reference
• Romance
• Science fiction
• Suspense
• Western

One great technique for upping the all important word count for NaNoWriMo is writing about food.

In NaNo, there are no lattés. But there are no whip, one pump, double shot, 120 degree, pumpkin spice venti lattés with organic soy milk. (16 words!)

In NaNo, there isn’t even roast goat, but there is organic Canadian maple roasted goat’s meat topped with cloves, festive green maraschino cherries, and organic Canadian pineapple rings all drenched in a delightful cane sugar and organic Canadian clover honey sauce. (31 words!)

(Remember, anything can be organic and everything can be from Canada. And dash mark’s come later in revising. honey-roasted=1 word. honey roasted=2 words.)

So, write about a feast or just a piece of (nine grain organic spelt sourdough) toast but be as florid as you can possibly be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s the harvest moon and she’s agreed to pose for a portrait. Who is she?

(Click the image to open a larger one in a new window from Amy Brown’s website. Or here if she’s moved her pictures again and the link doesn’t work.)

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To chill down from Thursday’s writing prompt, create cool breezy phrases or sentences for each letter of the alphabet.

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Create hot and humid phrases or sentences for each letter of the alphabet.

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You (or your character of course) come across ____ while spring cleaning. Then what happens?

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At least here around Boston it’s finally feeling like winter’s done teasing us!

Take your notebook for a walk and look for the signs of spring as well as the dregs of winter. It may be the time of crocuses but it’s also the time when the snow melts and leaves behind its winter storage of frozen dog poops ;-)

• Where does the sand and salt (or whatever is used in your area) accumulate?
• What does the air smell like? What does it feel like?
• Poke under the leaves? What’s there? What does it smell like?
• What does it sound like? (In our backyard we have baseball already!)
• Check the tips of branches. Do all budding twigs look alike?
• What’s blooming first?
• What are people wearing? Are some still prepared for winter? Are some eager to shed winter clothes?

Wish I’d stumbled across this site earlier in the month but since I didn’t I decided to send it as a Christmas present. :-)

Write a story that includes one of these sentences. Try writing the sentence down and working onward from it. Then if you find you need to build up to the sentence for the story to make sense, just add some at the beginning

• During the silent night jingled bright and lovely chestnuts.
• On Santa’s lap flew frozen and adorable children.
• In the winter wonderland flashed huge and sparkling snowflakes.
• During the blizzard rejoiced glittering and festive angels.
• Through the wintery darkness sparkled bright and colorful children.
• In the frozen north glittered toasty and warm carolers.

These sentences were automatically generated at WritingFix’s Great Sentence Creator: Funny Christmas.

Or do the same with one of these sentences. (You can rearrange the parts between the “/”s to make the sentences sound the way you want them to. For example, “on Christmas day” can go at the beginning. Of course you can always alter any prompt!)

• The sticky candy cane / drifted / behind the house / on Christmas day.
• Frozen Old Frosty / teetered / beside the big tree / during the snowstorm.
• Magnificent Mary / plunged / next to the chimney / late in the afternoon.
• The amazing angel / bounced / in back of the couch / before we said grace.
• A radical Rudolph / slunk / across the yard / on Christmas Eve.
• The luminous lights / drifted / next to the package / during the snowstorm.

These sentences were automatically generated at Who/What/When/Where Games: Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

Write the alphabet down the side of the page. Write an alliterative phrase — like wistful wishes — that has to do with the holiday season for each letter.

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Use the following words in a fantasy or science fiction story that isn’t about Christmas or the holiday season.

ice crystals
presents
chestnuts
batteries not included
cookies
winter berries
candles
silent
greed
cheer
fruitcake
pine
snowstorm
eating
traveling
three wise men

What will the winter holidays be like on a Moon or Mars colony?

What about an interstellar ship that’s traveling for months at a time (like the slow moving mining ships in Star Trek Voyager)?

How do garden fairies celebrate the winter holidays?

Do rocks have holiday spirit?

What do fire demons do at this time of the year?

How does Spider-Man celebrate the holidays?

Make a new list for the 12 Days of Christmas song. You could try a theme like Star Trek, classic monsters, Dragonball Z, food, cars …

Here’s the original:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Twelve drummers drumming,
eleven pipers piping,
ten lords a-leaping,
nine ladies dancing,
eight maids a-milking,
seven swans a-swimming,
six geese a-laying,
five golden rings;
four colly birds,
three French hens,
two turtle doves
and a partridge in a pear tree.

When you’re done, there are several parodies listed toward the bottom of the Wikipedia article.