Dragon Writing Prompts

Make a list of the “Top 10 things I wish would just disappear.”

Brainstorm your own list first. (You may find the first batch are predictable so don’t stop at 10, keep going to let the mundane run out.) I suspect you’ll come up with a wider, quirkier variety than you could make up for a character. Poll your friends!

Then try your character’s.

(From Writing Fix.)

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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. :-)

Take any movie and add zombies to it. Write a blurb for the ones that spark your interest. Expand one that really grabs you.

If you need a list of movies, here’s one culled from Mr. Showbiz’ Reader’s Poll.

Star Wars
Casablanca
Gone With The Wind
Raiders of the Lost Ark
The Empire Strikes Back
It’s A Wonderful Life
E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial
The Wizard of Oz
Jaws
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
The Sound of Music
Fargo
Grease
Singin’ In The Rain
Dances With Wolves
The Princess Bride
Top Gun
West Side Story
Field of Dreams
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Jurassic Park
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Maltese Falcon
Ben-Hur
Back to the Future
Rocky
Dead Poets Society
The Lion King
The Breakfast Club
Toy Story

Obviously there are oodles of lists available just a Google away by searching for “100 best movies”. A good place to start is AFI’s 100 lists.

Zombie courtesy of toxiccandie.

I was maybe in my teens when I suddenly realized that suitcase actually came from suit and case. It struck me as outrageously funny that I hadn’t realized something so obvious before! ;-)

For each of the following compound words substitute synonyms for its component words. You can shoot for the same meaning or be more freeform and see what happens. You may come up with a word that means the opposite. :-)

So, if the word were beachcomber you might change it to shoresearcher or shorebrusher or oceansidegroomer or coastdetangler.

aircraft
ballroom
cowboy
dimwit
earthquake
frostbite
globetrotter
highway
ironclad
jellyfish
knothole
lawsuit
mastermind
nightfall
outlaw
pancake
quicksilver
raincoat
scarecrow
tattletale
underwear
vainglory
wallflower
xylophone <– fudging a bit for x, though it’s a compound in Greek!
yearbook
zookeeper

For each word or phrase write a sentence about one of your characters, old or new.

A few ways to use this (some tend to generate more than a sentence):

• I’ve used the word to prompt a thought from me about the character.
• I’ve let the character respond to an interviewer’s question containing that word. I didn’t even make up the question. The character “heard” an appropriately probing question, to which they often crafted a lie for the interviewer ;-)
• Brandilyn Collins in Getting into Character suggests acting as a psychologist and have your character respond to probing questions under hypnosis. That could be adapted to this and prevent the character from lying. ;-)
• A list member used the word in a sentence or bit of dialogue that might fit into her current story.

1. Introduction
2. Love
3. Light
4. Dark
5. Seeking Solace
6. Break Away
7. Heaven
8. Innocence
9. Drive
10. Breathe Again
11. Memory
12. Insanity
13. Misfortune
14. Smile
15. Silence
16. Questioning
17. Blood
18. Rainbow
19. Gray
20. Fortitude
21. Vacation
22. Mother Nature
23. Cat
24. No Time
25. Trouble Lurking
26. Tears
27. Foreign
28. Sorrow
29. Happiness
30. Under the Rain
31. Flowers
32. Night
33. Expectations
34. Stars
35. Hold My Hand
36. Precious Treasure
37. Eyes
38. Abandoned
39. Dreams
40. Rated
41. Teamwork
42. Standing Still
43. Dying
44. Two Roads
45. Illusion
46. Family
47. Creation
48. Childhood
49. Stripes
50. Breaking the Rules
51. Sport
52. Deep in Thought
53. Keeping a Secret
54. Tower
55. Waiting
56. Danger Ahead
57. Sacrifice
58. Kick in the Head
59. No Way Out
60. Rejection
61. Fairy Tale
62. Magic
63. Do Not Disturb
64. Multitasking
65. Horror
66. Traps
67. Playing the Melody
68. Hero
69. Annoyance
70. 67%
71. Obsession
72. Mischief Managed
73. I Can’t
74. Are You Challenging Me?
75. Mirror
76. Broken Pieces
77. Test
78. Drink
79. Starvation
80. Words
81. Pen and Paper
82. Can You Hear Me?
83. Heal
84. Out Cold
85. Spiral
86. Seeing Red
87. Food
88. Pain
89. Through the Fire
90. Triangle
91. Drowning
92. All That I Have
93. Give Up
94. Last Hope
95. Advertisement
96. In the Storm
97. Safety First
98. Puzzle
99. Solitude
100. Relaxation

This has been floating around Deviantart for a while, now residing as Variation 1 at 100 Themes Challenge and credited to AngieChild who says she got it elsewhere.

Most people use the themes as art challenges and they’re very cool to see!

“Top 10 things I believe with all my heart and soul.”

Okay, I did promise no self reflection in the prompts! But you don’t need to use it to dig beneath your dirty (or dull) layers ;-) Use it as a way to generate a real, heartfelt list that, with some tweaking, could be used for a character. Start with ten real ones, and then let them flow.

Though some may be weighty or serious, don’t let the prompt limit you. I certainly believe with all my heart and soul that Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream would beat any other flavor in a wrestling match on my tongue ;-)

When you’re done, look over what you’ve written. Take some directly, tweak some, get inspired by others to go a different direction then craft a character from the variety.

What are these guys thinking? Write a caption or a bit of dialogue.

A friend passed on some spam with words that caught my eye.

phasma symphonizing
vertebration riddled

I like the sounds of phasma and vertebration. Each sounds like it is several concepts bundled up snugly together.

Play with those. Let the sounds of phasma and vertebration and the combinations take you where where they will in free form writing for 10 minutes or so.

When you feel the ideas fading, check out the real definitions (and I thought they were made up words!) for a recharge for a few more minutes.

When you’re done, go back and circle your favorite phrases. See if you can arrange them into a poemish creation.

Come up with a new deck of cards for current times, a fantasy world, a future world, for your own or someone else’s world. J.K. Rowling showed us wizarding chess. What do their cards look like? Who or what is on them? What do Goth cards look like? Klingon? Robot? (They all probably exist! ;-)

You can stick with the standard 52+Joker deck of 4 suits or not. (Not to be practical on you or anything ;-), but I suspect a number close to 52 is easy to shuffle. The 65 cards in Five Crowns is tough! So maybe your characters have larger hands if you decide to have more cards or they have some technique to get around that.)

So, what suits have meaning for your world? Will you use something other than numbers? Do you have a set corresponding to the royals?

From Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield

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Did you know?

The kings in the French decks represent actual kings? King David (spades), Charlemagne or Charles IV (hearts), Julius Ceasar (diamonds), Alexander the Great (clubs). So do the queens and jacks (knaves).

The Ace of Spades picture is usually much larger for a reason? The cards in Europe were taxed and that’s the card chosen for the tax stamp.

That the ace, which used to be the lowest card, trumps the king probably came about during the French Revolution when the peasants revolted against the king?

There’s way more than you thought to question about playing cards :-)

On slips of paper, write down a dozen occupations that fit with your preferred writing genre. If you’re expanding beyond contemporary, you don’t need to stick with firefighter and doctor so you can throw in zombie hunter or holodeck author. But, even on Mars, they’ll have fires and someone needs to fight them. :-)

On another set of slips write down personality quirks (like kleptomaniac, no sense of humor, or superstitious).

Draw one from each set and use the combination as the inspiration of a character or three. Match them up and see what happens.

Brainstorm on the quirks for a bit. You’ll be surprised what starts coming out once you allow yourself to loosen up.

If you want to add in some quirks from someone else’s brain: 100 character quirks you can steal from me and 100 character traits you can totally steal from me part II. And a phobia list with a bit of story to set them up.

Use the following homophones in sentences.

toe/tow
pidgin/pigeon
complement/compliment
manner/manor
mane/main
medal/meddle/metal/mettle
principal/principle
vain/vane/vein
pi/pie

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A metaphor turns one thing into another. Start with the statement:

A road is a road for cars.

and see how many roads (and paths and byways) you can come up with that carry something from one place to another.

• An artery is a road for exhausted blood leading back to the heart.
• The internet is a superhighway for spam.
• School is a potholed dull path to college that they’ve been promising to pave for decades.
• A river is snowmelt’s road from mountain to ocean.
• Pretend is a road to anywhere.
• A lecture is a pathway to sleep.

Write a poem where each word begins with the next letter in the alphabet. (You can also write a paragraph or really long sentence if you wish.)

Andopholus Brown could devour entire fields
Grown heavy in July.
Kranky Luscious munched near open plains
Questing restlessly.
Soon Tontubulous Urvin would xray yellow zebras.

Okay, pretty awful! ;-) More prose than poetry, but the words flowed out more easily than I thought they would. (Feel free to use words beginning with “ex” for X.) It’s a nice short exercise since you only need 26 words, and with some work, an actual readable poem might emerge!

Some other ideas:

• Write from Z to A.
• Create a 26 word poem with each letter of the alphabet but allow any order.
• Make a list of alphabetized words or phrases about a subject (animals, your dog, restaurants, Star Trek technobabble …). You could put 3 per line and challenge yourself to see if you can make them rhyming couplets (each pair of lines rhymes).

There are several here:

Unskilled Poet, and these at the Rock, Waves, Beach blog, all written by Kate An Alphabet Poem, Another Alphabet Poem, A December Alphabet Poem, Knitting Alphabet Poem..

A ritual is a series of actions meant to bring about or prevent an event. A ritual gives a sense of control over the unseen forces shaping our lives. In the past the actions and order were created by shamans. Today, anyone can devise a ritual. (As many sports players and teams do! Like Top 10 Sports Traditions ;-)

Come up with a ritual for some event you (or your characters) would like control over. (It can be a simple prose list or a poetic list.)

Ron Padgett in Handbook of Poetic Forms (where this idea comes from) suggests:

1. Decide what you would like to have occur.
2. Examine all aspects of the subject.
3. Think of actions to illustrate some of these aspects.
4. Write each action down as a command.
5. Number the commands.
6. Let yourself go.

Here’s a Storm Ritual from Alaskan Eskimos who sought to subside a storm.

1. Build a snowman with a big head.
2. Give the snowman’s head a large mouth.
3. Catch salmon, skin the carcasses, freeze them.
4. Hack away at the frozen fish and push the pieces into the snowman’s mouth.
5. Afterward, have a big feast in which all the pieces of fish are eaten.

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More:

This reminds me of the experiments performed by B.F. Skinner. He placed pigeons in boxes and randomly released food. The pigeons eventually began performing whatever random action they had been performing before the food was released, suggesting a type or ritual or superstition.

“One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a ‘tossing’ response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds developed a pendulum motion of the head and body, in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return.”

There are a bazillion Monopoly editions. Make it a bazillion and one by coming up with your own for your favorite movie, anime, book, fruit, rock band, car, sports team, prison, decade, home town, store, sport, comic book hero, board game, planet, company, restaurant …

Shake up your imagination. The cat edition uses cat breeds instead of streets, kitty favorites (mouse, catnip, fishbowl) for the Chance, toys (yarn, box, scratching post, paperbag) for Utilities. The Coke edition has pewter Coke bottles and truck.

Some large images of Monopoly boards:
Here and Now: World Edition
Googlopoly
United Kingdom
Beatles
Cat lovers
Star Blazers
Lostopoly

Reduplications are words containing repeated sounds. The following are some rhyming reduplications.

Use them in order in a story.

boogie-woogie
even Stephen
herky-jerky
hurdy-gurdy
walkie-talkie
nitty-gritty
hootchy-kootchy
willy-nilly
yoo-hoo
hanky-panky
super-duper
abracadabra
mumbo jjumbo
teeny-weeny
namby-pamby
heebie-jeebies
handy-dandy
okeydokey
fan-tan
hobnob
tepee
razzle-dazzle

Bertrand Russell presented the following “conjugation” of an “irregular verb”:

     I am firm.
     You are obstinate.
     He is a pig-headed fool.

Use that pattern to conjugate more “verbs” — actually adjectives! — irregularly, going from flattery to insult. Begin the first with I, the second with you and the last with he or she.

Make up your own or use the following for inspiration:

     concerned
     beautiful
     imaginative
     affectionate

Inspired by The Play of Words: Fun & Games for Language Lovers by Richard Lederer.

Replace the dull verbs with active verbs. Use the 1000 Verbs to Write By list if you need some inspiration. Generate 5-10 sentences for each.

Notice how it changes the feel of the situation and the characters acting in the mini drama.

As a bonus, try changing the noun to see how that affects the sentence’s feel. Give the characters names. Change their sexes or species.

“No,” she said and walked from the room.

He took the book from the bag and sat on the couch.

She touched the object the man had held.

He pulled out the bottle and drank.

She saw him then reacted.

Write a movie review or blurb (like in TV Guide) for one or more of the following movie titles:

• The Stars Fell on Henrietta
• Zombies on Broadway
• Sometimes They Come Back … Again
• Zipperface
• You’ll Like My Mother
• Wrestling Women vs. Aztec Mummy
• Vampire Cop
• Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise

(They’re all real movies, by the way, but don’t let that get in the way of your imagination!)

For each letter of the alphabet create a frozen drink name (alliterative if it helps your imagination).

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Use all of the words on each line in a sentence. Use any order and feel free to changes tenses and word forms.

Make the sentences evocative of winter.

• stripes — terrific — distant — emperor — barely — horse — blizzard
• valley — slimy — boulder — vanish — ignorance — sly — rust
• modified — laugh — salty — drooled — crusty — attitude — flammable
• wander — slimy — past — crafty — bumpy — dictator — dependable
• luxury — sliding — jerk — stuffy — rainy — visitor — tattered

Big Hairy Audacious Goal … BHAG, pronounced bee-hag.

Indulge your fantasies. Make a list of goals you would set your eye on if time, money, obligations or motivation weren’t a factor. They can be goals that you would set for this year, the next five years, and life goals. Don’t edit! Free yourself :-) You can be fanciful — Become a wizard; Emigrate to Mars — but they should be ideas you can imagine focusing your life on.

Now take one of those goals and create a character who sets out to do it. Put all sorts of obstacles in the characters way but make determination to reach the goal a factor that drives him or her on.

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More:

“Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” — Google BHAG.

Big Hairy Audacious Goal was an idea developed by James Collins and Jerry Porras. They noticed the most successful companies had one clear compelling goal that energized their employees. It gave them something to focus on. People have since adopted BHAGs as life goals.

It’s well after Thanksgiving and there’s still 10 pounds of turkey left and you’re thinking that if you ever see turkey on your plate again there had better not be sharp implements within your reach. For 5-10 minutes brainstorm ideas of what to do with leftover turkey (including the carcass if you’d like.) It doesn’t need to be for eating purposes!

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Random words coming up! Here’s some ideas on how to use them:

• A description of someone or something.
• An advertisement.
• A poem of 3 lines, each using one of the words. Perhaps haiku.
• A longer poem.
• The title of a book, chapter, movie, song.
• An opening paragraph.
• A closing paragraph.
• A cryptic note dropped by someone.
• A headline.
• A snatch of conversation.
• A 15 minute story with beginning, middle and end. Perhaps the first word drives the beginning, the second the middle, the last the end.
• A telegram.
• The subject line of an email.
• The description of a menu item.

If you’re doing a story or poem and want to try to come up with a character or scene first, take a moment before reading on.

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balance
dictate
wander

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The words are from Three Word Wednesday. 3 new words every Wednesday. At the blog if you click on the submissions, you can see the variety of ways people used the words.

The Beetles were formed at the same time as the Beatles and musically they were equally good. The problem was they were really bad lyricists and couldn’t come up with a good song title to save their lives. And in fact they were held hostage by their record company to come up with some decent verbiage. Tragically they never did and they’re still sitting in the conference room writing.

Here’s a random list of best Beatles songs titles. Come up with the really bad title versions written by the Beetles.

Eleanor Rigby
Strawberry Fields Forever
All You Need Is Love
Let It Be
Hey Jude
I Am The Walrus
Come Together
She Loves You
Eight Days A Week
Drive My Car
Here Comes The Sun
With A Little Help From My Friends
Hello, Good-Bye
A Day In The Life
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Reprise
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Yesterday
All My Loving
In My Life
The Long and Winding Road

Random words to spark your NaNo or other writing.

Most of these came from 15 Minute Ficlets, a site for writing fiction in 15 minutes using word and picture prompts. The site is no longer active, but there are other, similar sites around. (The rest came from 15 Minute Fic, though the words weren’t quite as good.)

I like to think of these words as lenses. The word has colored how your character views his or her world and they’re seeing or feeling or remembering something about the current scene you’re writing that relates to the word. Unlike words randomly chosen from the dictionary, these have more flexible definitions. Feel free to play with word forms and tenses. They’re supposed to spark creativity, not chain it :-)

I’ve divided them up into chunks of 8 if you’d like to spread them out over the next 30 days, but feel free to use them however you want. (Hmm, if each word sparks about 208 words, there would be your NaNo! :-)

farewell
discovery
deluge
renewal
fool
explosive
heritage
screen

thunderous
mystic
lovely
moon
mediocre
open
peppermint
anxiety

exhausted
brisk
knave
electric
congratulations
misled
sophisticated
gateway

ambition
envy
premature
memory
catastrophe
blush
hold
transition

addiction
scorch
rescue
piercing
independence
fight
honor
discord

mockery
impatience
justice
fatigue
gloomy
reunion
unexpected
absent

nurture
unknown
blessed
rushed
congeal
youth
sin
growl

gratitude
overwhelmed
whispered
routine
kaleidoscope
resolute
scared
gluttony

festive
tidy
feast
tired
silence
chocolate
flood
connected

thick
odious
legacy
jubilant
acceptance
glisten
fever
anticipation

pinnacle
fretful
linked
sentimental
savory
vacant
inside
tail

deaf
zaftig
young
xenophobic
wondering
mother
tattered
challenge

transformation
missing
searching
karma
gourmet
juvenile
undeniable
limp

vitriol
contagious
discombobulated
quest
strike
translation
anguish
true

complicated
interrupted
giving
painful
freeze
stretched
consumed
mimic

complete
elegy
haunted
deserted
jealous
oblivious
frustration
natural

harvest
empty
falter
extra
abstract
capricious
pause
pawn

devotion
impression
bathtub
bloody
redeem
aggravation
father
replacement

drenched
tender
noisy
practical
incomplete
evasive
disaster
solid

deeper
abandoned
spring
collection
quirky
competition
misdirection
unusual

intoxicating
disguise
submission
examination
flaky
obsession
chilling
tweak

perfection
marvel
nostalgic
cookie
snow
forgetful
surrender
chicken

broken
gathering
dream
forgiveness
unfinished
late
humorous
form

conclusion
dust
alias
match
bright
abomination
slowly
question

salvation
prison
vacation
desire
loss
expectation
sign
shiver

fantasy
baby
light
apology
uncomfortable
happy
bridge
essential

relief
daze
frantic
bathe
sink
disconnected
training
impose

burrow
sketch
unforgiven
vanquish
flair
wave
blue
spell

bear
refine
hassle
fire
wait
engrave
leech
unbidden

hang
guilty
bank
quirk
blatant
honey
destroy
messenger

Come up with cereal names for each letter of the alphabet. They needn’t be nutritiously acceptible names. Go ahead and have Super Sugar Candy Crunchies. ;-) Of course if you do want a challenge, you can try making healthful cereals sound just as exciting as commercial cereals. :-)

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From Slate Magazine:

The Encyclopedia Baracktannica

Now with more words and definitions!

By Chris Wilson

It’s hard to imagine that Barack Obama would be as big of a phenomenon if his name were, say, Tom Smith. As numerous fans, detractors, reporters, and bloggers have demonstrated, it’s a name that lends itself to neologisms—everything from Barackstar to Obamania to Omentum.

We present the unabridged Encyclopedia Baracktannica, a list of words that have been Obamafied by Slate. This is a widget, so you’re welcome to add it to your site. To do so, click the “Get & Share” link below and choose a service.

A constrained writing prompt landed in my mail box today in Anu Garg’s Wordsmith.org’s Word A Day. And it’s a contest too.

We’ve done lipograms where you’re forbidden to use a letter or letters in each word and anti-lipograms where you must use a letter or letters. (Click Constrained writing over on the right for more.)

A univocalic is a piece of writing that uses only one of the vowels, an example for e is: “Help the peerless letter e perfect sentences.”

CONTEST: Imagine you are a headline writer for a newspaper back in the days when metal type was used. You have run out of all but one of the vowels in the large type size that is used for the headline. What univocalic can you come up with?

If you get stumped for substitute words, try the thesaurus at The Free Dictionary.

Email your univocalic news headlines (real or made-up) to (words at wordsmith.org). Selected entries will be featured in the weekly compilation AWADmail and the best entry will win an autographed copy of Anu Garg’s latest book The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words.

Deadline is Friday Oct 17.

“Most notably, [Christian Bök’s] 2001 Eunoia , seven years in the making, became Canada’s bestselling poetry book ever — an incredible feat for such explicitly experimental writing. No comforting fluff here; in the main portion, each chapter employs but a single vowel (e.g., “Enfettered, these sentences repress free speech”), a univocalic constraint.” — Ed Park; Crystal Method; Village Voice (New York); Dec 16, 2003.

What if your pet could suddenly talk to you? After you both get past the amazement, it seems your pet has a whole list of things he’s been trying to tell you for years and you’ve been apparently clueless. What’s on the list?

It can be a current pet, a past pet or someone else’s pet you know well. Or, of course, be creative! What would be the demands of a human who had been kept as a pet by some alien family?

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Why did the chicken cross the road?

She’s been doing it for a long time so she must have some mighty compelling reasons. What are they? Come up with as many as you can in the time you give yourself. You don’t need to write punch lines (though you might end up with some!)

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