Dragon Writing Prompts

April is National Play with Words Month!

Actually it’s National Poetry Month but to keep the prompts relatively short and encourage people who cringe at the word poetry, it’s a whole lot more about playing with words.

Last year I introduced Kenneth Koch’s poetry warm up exercises. (You can see them all here by clicking on Poetry Warm Ups over on the right.) They’re a way of playing with words to get stuff flowing :-)

No actual poetry will be produced, though you may come up with an intriguing line that leads to a poem or a story.

For today, use the structure of the first tabloid headline and generate similar lines of the form:

Food — Noun — -ed verb

Cucumber Killer Captured
Bean Bomber Bamboozled
Anchovy Anarchist Annihilated

Top 10 Tabloid Headlines from APRIL 1998

1. CUCUMBER KILLER CAPTURED! — WWN
2. BEN FRANKLIN SHOCKER!He was a Founding Father, a signer of the Declaration of Independence — AND A SERIAL KILLER! — WWN
3. Teens ordered to clean toilets after peeing on theater seats! — WWN
4. 10 GIRAFFES HAVE HEADS TORN OFF — when zoo truck passes under low bridge — WWN
5. Kitten drowned by a giant goldfish! Cat dips paw in tank & fish pulls him in! — WWN
6. Exploding grapefruits kill hundreds in Argentina! — WWN
7. DEAD HUBBY BURIED WITH WINNING LOTTO TICKET IN HIS POCKET Anxious wife digs up 103 corpses looking for him! — WWN
8. FARMER DEVELOPS THE ELVIS CHICKEN! New birds sport slick hairdos & swivel their hips when they walk! — WWN
9. Gun-totin’ Texan shoots baby kitten. . . THEN CLAIMS SELF-DEFENSE! — WWN
10. VENGEFUL OLDSTER SUES DAUGHTER FOR DEAD WIFE’S ASHES . . . SO HE CAN FLUSH THEM DOWN THE TOILET! — WWN

Create a bestiary. Use each of the following words in the name of the beast or one sentence description of the beast.

amnesiac
bewitches
chamber
disguises
eerie
flickering
graffiti
hypnotized
invisible
journey
karma
laughing
moonbeam
nuzzle
outcast
pilfer
quake
rumble
saccharine
taunt
uneasy
valkyrie
whirl
explode
yammer
zigzag

Curses and spells come in many flavors: love, money, revenge, protection, healing, curse removal, luck, happiness.

For the following words, come up with names of curses or spells:

absorb
brown sugar
cat nap
deep end
eye ball
frisky
glum
humble
ice water
jewels
kaleidoscope
longings
meander
night edition
obsessive
primal
quake
rubber stamp
skillet
trio
undead
vanity
wound
extinguish
yearn
zephyr

If you need a jump start of ideas to get your brain thinking in spell names, here are the names of some actual spells you can buy on line that are a little more colorful than the generic “Love Spell”. :-)

Preemptive-strike black curse
Financial-ruin black curse
Twisted-mind black curse
Doomed-to-fail black curse
Heartbreak black curse
Destroy-enemy black curse
Ultimate-revenge black curse
Grief-and-sadness black curse
Living-in-hell black curse
Haunting black curse
Break Them Up Now Spell
Restore My Life Spell
Cancel My Enemy Now Spell
Rescue Your Love Spell
Matchmaker Spell
Lucky Streak Spell
Come Back My Love Spell
Be My Valentine Spell
Couple-Buster Curse
Bind Us Together Spell
Creative Genius Spell
Winds of Change Spell
Irresistible Charm Spell
Banish Evil Spirits Spell
Shield of Isis Spell
Wall of Protection Spell

Come up with ship and boat names for each letter of the alphabet. The ships can be anything: land or water or air or space craft, from dinghies to cruisers.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Write a 26 sentence story. Start the first sentence with a word beginning with A, the second sentence with a word beginning with B all the way to the last sentence that begins with Z.

Dialog will probably help you out of a lot of problems since it’s easier to have someone say something beginning with odd letters than to start sentences with them! But it’s also a challenge to begin sentences with a variety of words. I know I fall into the trap of beginning sentences with pronouns (He impaled the vampire … She ripped the motherboard from the robot …)

A rhyming couplet is two lines that rhyme with each other.

For each pair of letters of the alphabet come up with a rhyming couplet that has to do with … well. the easiest would be animals or food :-) While not the most original of subjects for an alphabet, you may want to go easy on yourself and leave the challenge in the couplets.

Here’s an example off the top of my head:

Anacondas lazing in the sun,
Boas watching dinner run.

Or come up with pairs of words that rhyme*: air, bear; cat, drat … and build the lines from there.

Or to ramp up the challenge try characters from Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or other favorite show/series that had a huge enough cast of characters to span the alphabet.**

You may want to try generating an alphabetical list first, perhaps with a connection between the pairs (if you chose animals: predator/prey, same species, competitors for the same prey for instance). Don’t let the list confine what you write about! Feel free to make any changes as you go along. It’s just an aid not a jailor ;-)

---

*If you need help with rhymes try Rhymer or Rhymezone. If Rhymer gives you an overwhelming number of rhymes try choosing “Last syllable rhymes” or “Double rhymes” from the drop down menu. (Annoyingly, you need to type the word into the search box again.) Rhymezone returns fewer rhymes (which can be a good thing sometimes!)

---

**There are, of course, lists of characters on the internet:

Harry Potter:
Mugglenet’s list of Harry Potter characters
Wikipedia’s List of characters in the Harry Potter books

Star Trek:
Memory Alpha’s list of Star Trek characters
Wikipedia’s List of Star Trek characters

Star Wars:
Star Wars: Databank list of Star Wars characters
Wikipedia’s List of Star Wars characters

Buffy:
Wikipedia’s List of Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters

For each letter of the alphabet (or as far as you can get in 10-15 minutes!) come up with a spell (like light) and then play around with the sounds that make up that word to create another word or words that sound good with it to complete the name of the spell. *Avoid* starting your other words with the same letter as your initial word. If you want, tell what the spell does if it’s not obvious.

Here’s an example: If the word you begin with is “flame”, the sounds in that word are: “f”, “l”, “ay”, “m”. You don’t need to use all the sounds. You can substitute or add related sounds so “v” instead of “f”, “r” instead of “l” and “n” or “ng” or “nk” instead of “m”. So Flame of Morphelius and Flaming Rain would work.

Here’s a list of related sounds that I posted last year for the By the sound of things prompt:

Dentals (means teeth): t, d, th
Labials (means lips): b, p
Gutturals (back of the throat): g, k, ng
Labiodentals: f, v
Sibilants (they hiss!): s, z, sh, ch, zh, j
Nasals (nose): m, n, ng, nk
Liquids: l, r

The repetition of sound is what helps give Avada Kedavra a chilling sound. (Including rhythm and that “d”s and “k” tend to have a dangerous sound to them.) Expecto Petronum, Locomotor Mortis also have repeated sounds. In a story I’m writing I came up with Lufail’s Flay.

If you want to spend time playing around with sounds rather than coming up with the initial word, here’s some possibilities. Feel free to ignore or play around (change the tense, add plurals, etc.) with them.

anvil, angel, ancient
blade, blood, bubble
curse, crypt, candle
dragon, demon, dagger
elephant, enforcer, enigma
flame, fortress, feather
ghost, grave, glass
hex, hook, haze
interrogation, ice, itch
jinx, jewel, joy
kitten, kiss, killer
lance, lady, loom
mirror, mandible, moon
night, knock, nag
oil, oppression, ooze
puzzle, putrification, pumpkin
quill, quest, quiescence
reveal, riot, rogue
surge, seer, sword
torrent, tracker, thief
urge, ugly, ulimate
vine, vision, vitality
wing, wasteland, wisdom
xenophobia, complex, anxiety
yearn, yielding, youth
zoo, zombie, zero

Come up with a fanciful name that fits with the characteristics listed. The names can be short or long or in between. They can be titled or have modifiers tacked on, like, “the Rambunctious” or “of Ogre Canyon”. Include at least one name that starts with the corresponding letter of the alphabet but after that feel free to play around with the sounds. :-)

adventurous
bombastic
cute
delicate
efficient
fancy
gigantic
heroic
idiotic
juvenile
killer
luscious
monstrous
negative
optimistic
pompous
quiet
rapturous
sorcerous
terrifying
unscrupulous
wise
vapid
wicked
excitable (or xenophobic - afraid of outsiders, if the lack of a real “x” disturbs you ;-)
young
zany

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

Write 35 (or more!) *ways* for a character to murder another. Again, push it even if they start sounding wacky. Try doing one or more for each letter of the alphabet. It might knock some more ideas loose!

.
.
.
.
.
.

Write an alliterative (tabloid if you wish) headline for each letter of the alphabet.

.
.
.
.
.
.

Adverbs and adjectives can be useful but sometimes they’re used to prop up weak nouns and verbs, like “ran quickly” and “walked slowly”. Much better is dashed, bolted, darted, whipped … and strolled, sauntered, wandered …

For the following sentence, for each letter of the alphabet, write down a strong verb — or several strong verbs — that captures the essence of the night/moon/darkness leaving and the day/sun/light arriving. Dare to come up with bad writing :-) Bad is fun and loosens creativity. Some will change the flavor — vanquished? — but still get at the same idea. You can switch it around and make the darkness the subject (the active one) rather than the sun.

“The sun washed away the darkness.”

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

.
.
.
.

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

.
.
.
.
.
.
.

Write the alphabet down the side of the page. For each letter write a descriptive word that applies to your pet.

(Orignally I suggested favorite animal but Ranger, the dog of a member of the writer’s list, inspired an alphabet that painted a vivid portrait which worked much better, I think.)

.
.
.

Write the alphabet down the side of the page and for each letter come up with an alliterative disaster like “Torturous twisters tearing turf and tarmac from Toledo.”

.
.
.

Take the sentences you generated last week for Alphabetical dragons and, while trying to capture the same idea, rewrite using only words that don’t contain that letter of the alphabet. (You can read more about Lipograms and Anti-lipograms.)

Here’s the W example I gave last week:

Wini the Worm, wriggled wearily westward toward the Wailing Wood, wreathed in white wisps and wrapped in remnants of war.

And I’ll try to write it without Ws:

Fredi the Firedrake, jiggled tiredly anti-easterly in the direction of the Crying Forest, surrounded by pale tendrils and cloaked in remnants of battle.

(You can use your word processor search feature to search for the letter to see if one snuck into the middle of a word.)

---

If you need synonym help the Free Dictionary has a pretty good thesaurus.

Wiktionary, in addition to definitions, has foreign words and synonyms for some words. It was good for dragon (and forest) but just gave me a definition for wriggle.

And the Visual Thesaurus is cool :-). It’s a program/subscription but you can try it out a limited number of times for free. After you type in a word you can click on any of the words in the map and it will put that at the center with related words around it.

Write the alphabet down the side of the page and create an alliterative sentence for each letter that has to do with dragons, such as:

Wini the Worm, wriggled wearily westward toward the Wailing Wood, wreathed in white wisps and wrapped in remnants of war.

.
.

Write a paragraph (or one really really long sentence) using only words that begin with the letters in the alphabet in order.

Such as “A blustering caribou ….”

A Tom Swifty is a bit of dialog in which the adverb attached to “said” relates both properly and punningly to what was said.

They come from Tom Swift who is the main character of the series of adventure stories written by “Victor Appleton”. (Like the Nancy Drew series they were written by a number of different authors under one pseudonym.) He rarely spoke without a qualifier: “Tom added eagerly” or “Tom said jokingly”. (They were just qualifiers though. Tom didn’t intentionally do Tom Swifties!)

Examples

• “The doctor had to remove my left ventricle,” said Tom half-heartedly.
• “Elvis is dead,” said Tom expressly.
• “I swallowed some of the glass from that broken window,” Tom said painfully.

There are other punning dialogs that are accepted as Tom Swifties even if they aren’t of the adverb-said form.

Verb

• “My garden needs another layer of mulch,” Tom repeated.
• “You must be my host,” Tom guessed.

Phrase

• “I’ve only enough carpet for the hall and landing,” said Tom with a blank stare.
• “Don’t let me drown in Egypt!” pleaded Tom, deep in denial.

Someone other than Tom speaking

• “Who discovered radium?” asked Marie curiously.
• “I’m going to end it all,” Sue sighed.

Morphological; i.e. the words must be broken down into morphemes (smaller components) to understand the pun

• “This is the real male goose,” said Tom producing the propaganda.
• “The cat sounds as if she’s happy now she’s been fed,” said Tom purposefully.

Homonym or homophone

• “I have a split personality,” said Tom, being frank.
• “I love hot dogs,” said Tom with relish.
• “There’s no need for silence,” Tom allowed.
• “I won’t finish in fifth place,” Tom held forth.

Try your hand at some Tom Swifties by writing the alphabet down the side of the page and try to generate one for each letter.

If you scroll down I’ve included the adverb part of some from Tom Swifties Examples if you need something to get you started.

:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:

If you come up with some good Tom Swifties you can send them into the “Fun with Words” website

said Tom acidly.
Tom admitted.
Tom bellowed.
said Tom bitingly.
Tom chimed in.
said Tom cuttingly.
said Tom deferred.
exclaimed Tom dumbfoundedly.
said Tom ecstatically.
said Tom electrically.
said Tom fanatically.
Tom said fruitlessly.
said Tom with a glazed look.
said Tom gruesomely.
said Tom handsomely.
said Tom heavily.
said Tom icily.
said Tom intently.
said Tom judgmentally.
said Tom without justification.
Tom kidded.
said Tom, knitting his brow.
reported Tom lamely.
said Tom lumberingly.
said Tom mechanically.
Tom mourned.
asked Tom noteworthily.
said Tom, nonplussed.
said Tom oddly.
said Tom patiently.
aid Tom pathologically.
said Tom quiveringly.
said Tom quixotically.
said Tom rabidly.
Tom admitted readily.
said Tom sagely.
said Tom sheepishly.
said Tom tenderly.
said Tom triumphantly.
said Tom unaccountably.
said Tom unwillingly.
said Tom weakly.
cried Tom woefully.
said Tom xerophytically.
yolked Tom.
was Tom’s yuletide comment.
said Tom zestfully.
was Tom’s zippy rejoinder.

The above explanation was paraphrased from History of the Tom Swiftie. At the site he also explains the examples if you didn’t get all of the puns :-)

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.

.
.
.
.

When writing dialog it’s okay to use “said” when you want to help the reader keep track of who’s speaking. In fact it calls too much attention to your writing. rather than keeping the attention on the story, if you try to use a lot of different words instead of said.

But sometimes characters are “blustering” and “cooing” and “lisping” and occasional use of them can add some sparkle to the story and the character.

Write the alphabet down the side of the page. For each letter come up with as many different ways to say “said” as you can.

Pick a favorite topic like video games, baseball, Star Trek, unschooling, fantasy characters and so on and write an alphabet book for it. Use strong images that you could illustrate list colorful words and phrases for each of the letters. Use alliteration if you want, eg, Ailing Aliens arming ancient alligators, Belligerent Batboys bellowing at butterflies ….

Write the alphabet down the side of the page. Write a fantastic food for each letter of the alphabet, like Alicia’s Alluring Apples and Bernie Bott’s Every-flavor Beans …

Make up words that sound like foods if you can’t think of something right away since I’m betting X at least will be tough!

Write the alphabet down the side of the page. For each letter write a word that represents a sound like vroooom, glooosh, ding, splat.

They don’t have to be “official” word sounds. Have fun and make them up. (It’s harder than you think! Though probably easier for kids.)

Anyone who’s read any manga knows the Japanese have a huge repertoire of sound words!

---

Addendum: As I found out, strictly speaking some are not onomatopoeia but sound effects — eg, growl is onomatopoeia but grrrr is a sound effect — or even more strictly speaking for these Japanese words, situation effects, eg, shiiiin is the “sound” of silence.)

But onomatopoeia is a lot more fun to say!

Here’s a sample from Japanese Sound effects and what they mean:

bari bari = crunch, as in eating. K-san: “Pori pori is the quietest crunching. Pori pori is for cookies; bari bari is for chips. Kori kori is for broccoli and asparagus.” (see also kori, pari, pori)

bashan = medium splash (see also zabun for a very big splash)

batan = door slamming (see also patan)

bo = flame, fire (see also gooo, guooo, po). W-san: “‘Bo’ is like the ‘whoosh’ of a gas range turned on.”

bota = dripping, possibly something thick dripping, like blood. Compare to pi, picha, po, pota. (see also dara dara for thick liquid dripping)

chapon, chapu = plunk (water sound) (see also shapu)

chichichi = how you call a cat

da da da, daaaaaaaa = running away (see also do do do, ta, ta ta ta)

dan = bang, boom, sudden impact

Dobi = missed kick

don = BIG impact

don = sometimes added to a scene for dramatic effect, to show that something astonishing or important has happened (see also ban)

doron, dororonpa = the sound of magical transformation (see also bon, pon, pom)

shiiin = the sound of staring, of silence, or of remaining frozen/ motionless. Often used in djs to indicate that a character is moved beyond words, stunned beyond words, or just generally beyond words. (see also jiiiin)

shiku shiku = sobbing, whimpering

shire = shrug (we think) Definitely a strange ‘don’t look at me’ look.

zuru, zuru zuru = something heavy dragging or being pulled

zururu = slurp (see jururu)

zusasa = zu (vigorous) plus sasa (quick motion). We’ve seen it used for a quick scuttling recoil.

zuzu = sip (see also zuru)

Write the alphabet vertically down the left hand side of a page.

Write alliterative phrases or sentences that begin with each letter of the alphabet.

Examples:

N: “Nothing,” noted the nodding notary.
U: undulating underpants underwater

When you’re done, An Alliterative Alphabet is an alliterative alphabet about the alphabet.

“The A adeptly acts as an
aristocratic apex anchored atop
an accompanying alphabet.”