Dragon Writing Prompts

I used to do these every Friday, but with time less free, I’ll try once a month.

If you don’t already own one, buy yourself a New Year’s gift of a small digital camera. Keep it with you and capture a quirky house, something that makes you smile, the uniqueness of a particular season so when you need to write a vision of snow in the middle of summer, there it will be! :-)

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It’s been quite some time since I posted a writer’s notebook idea and the beginning of the year seems like as good a time as any for anyone seeking a new writing habit.

A writer’s notebook is a place to capture ideas, bits of conversation, observations, dreams, words that capture your attention, favorite phrases, passages that you would love to have written …. anything and everything.

There are several ideas here at the blog.

Keep several notebooks. Keep a dream journal by your bed. Keep a small notebook in your purse or glove compartment. Keep one near where you read. Start a blog or a file on your desktop to capture bits that fly by you on the internet. (Though the physical process of writing by keyboard and perhaps even more so by hand helps you internalize the words.)

Today, visit a cemetery, preferably an old one. Try a non-Christian one. I visited Albuquerque several years ago and was captivated by the colorful shrines on the graves (many of them still decorated for Christmas). (Click the picture to enlarge it.) Here in Boston it’s winter and the graves and headstones are covered with snow. Capture names and sayings. Notice the groupings. Once several generations would share the same plot but how often is that true in newer cemeteries? If it’s winter, have people been visiting? Why do you think they would brave the cold?

This Writer’s notebook idea came to me while collecting poetry ideas for Poetry Month.

Observe people and things, notice sounds, smells, and textures then write comparisons using like or as.

(The previous notebook ideas are archived under the Writer’s notebook category to the right.)

Here’s some quick examples I generated while at Starbucks:

slumped like a drought touched flower
chewing like a sun beaten cow
alert like a nervous cat
pony tail flat against his back like road kill
teeth clutching her lip like a clamp
pony tail like a clutch of too long sheep’s wool
worrying at a nail like a cat peeling its claws
sign swaying on a corner in the wind like a drunk who has forgotten where he was headed
steaming like a teapot at a winter cafe
heavy sway of her hair like a horse’s tail
hair hugging her face like a hood drawn tight

It’s been a while since I posted a Writer’s notebook idea …

Carry a small notebook around with you this week and write down 10 things that irritate you and 10 things that delight you. They don’t need to be big things. Stepping on a marble. Dew on a leaf. Stereo that was left at a high volume and blasts you when you turn it on. Oreos on sale.

At the end of the week, choose some and reset them in your favorite genre.

If you joined recently, I’ve collected past Writer’s notebook ideas. (They’re in newest to oldest order, so scroll down for an explanation of what a writer’s notebook can be.)

(The white cat and lady with the sock make me smile each time I see them so those are the first on my list of delights for the week :-)

Inspired by #9 Mining Memory of What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.

This week pay attention to taste in your notebooks. Don’t forget texture, temperature and smell too. Breathe in as you’re tasting to get the full effect.

It’s a good excuse to try a new restaurant or food you’ve been thinking about.

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This week pay attention to touch in your notebooks. Kitties, mud, bread dough, dishes as you wash, laundry from the washing machine, spring buds, baby bums, rain washed car, sun warmed or shade cooled rock, keyboards …

Pay attention to anything and everything. Just close your eyes and feel.

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This week pay attention to smells in your notebooks. Fresh bread. New mown grass. Rain after a long dry spell.

This will be trickier! We tend to pay even less attention to smells than to sounds. Again, no suggestions this week. Pay attention to anything and everything. Just close your eyes and breathe in for a few minutes wherever you are.

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This week pay attention to sounds in your notebooks. No suggestions this week since we tend to filter out what we hear so sound is not as overwhelming as what we see. Pay attention to anything and everything. Just close your eyes and listen for a few minutes wherever you are.

(There is more about writers’ notebooks if you click the link in the category list to the right.)

This week take your notebooks on a walk and write down descriptions in terms of other things they look like. For example:

A bench that looks like a concrete marshmallow.

(Suggested by an exercise in Poemcrazy : Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan G. Wooldridge.)

As sort of a wrap up to a month of character questions, speculate on who the people are around you at the grocery store, in the car next to you, in the coffee shop …

Why are they here?
What brought them to this place?

Is the woman pushing a cart an international spy?
Is the couple at the corner table travelers from the future?
Is the bland looking man actually a superhero?
Is the too quiet child contemplating world domination?

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?

The windows to the soul.

I wish eyes were as easy to observe as they are to write. It’s tough to stare at people’s eyes without them eventually getting the feeling they’re being watched!

If you’d like to try something a little different, go to Flickr and type in “eyes”.

You can also do an advanced search and find specific types of eyes like “cat eyes“.

Things you may want to note in particular:

• Shape of brows
• How much of the iris is covered by the lids
• Wrinkles
• Eye glasses
• Where the glasses rest on the eyes (Can you see the eyebrows?)

This week collect names of colors that strike you. Paint stores, drugstores. (I found Wal-Mart impersonal enough that I didn’t feel like the manager was going to ask me why I was looking at products and writing things down.)

• Paint
• Make-up: lipstick, haircolor, nail color, blush, eye shadow
• And while you’re there, might as well do: Fragrances

This week pay particular attention to the elderly when you’re making notes of people you see in your writer’s notebook

As an exercise, try listing least a dozen ways to suggest someone is very old. Then scroll down and see some others that you may want to note as you’re observing.
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oversized nose and ears
amount of hair (many women’s hair thins as they age too)
hair line
color of hair
wrinkles
condition/thinness of skin
age spots
shaky hands
slow pace
unsteady gait
quality of vision
sensible shoes
pants hiked up
skeletal
posture
interests
condition of hearing
posture
quality of voice
bird-like appetite
eccentric
attitude or outlook
where they are on Saturday night

Half of the above are mine and half from “Funny, you don’t look 75″ in What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.

(There’s also a revised edition in hard back of What if? but I haven’t seen that one yet.)

This week pay particular attention to how people walk.

This is a continuation of ideas for a Writer’s notebook that I’ve been posting each Saturday. Click on Writer’s notebook to the right to see them all.

Some things you may want to pay particular attention to:

Speed
Sound of their feet
Posture
Leaning forward or backward
Foot position: splayed, pigeon toed
Movement of arms
Movement of hips
Other parts of the body they’re unconsciously moving in rhythm with their walk.

It seems when I capture descriptions of people I always do hair! So this week pay particular attention to hair.

Some things beyond the obvious you may want to pay particular attention to:

• hairline — even people who aren’t balding don’t necessarily have a smooth curve
• texture
• shape of sideburns
• whether beard is the same color as the hair

This week pay particular attention to people’s feet and shoes. At this time of the year those of us north won’t see much more than shoes and boots, but those say a lot about a person too. A woman in fashion boots with 3 inch heels is not the same person as a woman in salt stained Timberland boots.

Some things to look for:

• Size, length and width
• Stillness, movement
• How they’re held at rest (Don’t worry about how people walk unless you want to. Just doing how feet look is enough for a week.)
• Do the feet point straight, in, out, slump to the outside edges
• Color(s)
• How old
• Practicality
• Thickness of sole
• Size of heel
• Wear on the heels (amount, evenness)
• Clean or dirty (new dirt or layers accumulated)
• Stains
• Wear pattern
• Crease pattern
• Stockings, socks, patterns or solid

This week, when capturing descriptions of people in your notebook, pay particular attention to people’s hands. Some things to get you started noticing:

• Length of fingers
• Jewelry, tattoos
• How well tended the fingernails are, color, length, shape
• Wrinkles
• Stains, dirt
• Prominence of knuckles
• Coloration, smooth or splotchy
• Prominence of veins
• Moles, warts, rashes
• Calluses, scars, blisters, scratches (and think about the causes)
• How they’re held (tight, relaxed)
• How they move
• Whether the person need to use her hands to talk

Even if you never write contemporary fiction, details from real life can bring writing alive. Unless it’s integral to the story, in fantasy or future worlds, a raindrop with reflect the sun, people will get wrinkly as they age, cuffs will tatter and fresh poop with steam in the wintery air.

Every writer should have writer’s notebooks (or voice recorder or a Palm Pilot) handy to jot down ideas, descriptions of striking people, snatches of conversation, clever shop names, words that grab you, book titles and so on. Small spiral books are good to keep in a purse or the glove compartment. A bound journal can be better for home for longer ideas, quotes from books, dreams and so on.

There aren’t any rules but a couple of principles can be helpful: 1) Keep is simple to begin with! Trying to do it thoroughly can lead to doing it not at all. Build up slowly. 2) The more often you do it the easier it gets.

Some find it helpful to have different pages for different things they’re collecting. (But don’t try to keep multiple pages available. When you fill up one page of quotes, just start a new one wherever you are in your notebook.)

Some find it helpful to keep an idea notebook separate from their other notebooks. (It’s helpful to capture details of why you thought something intriguing and what prompted it when you jot down story ideas. A year later when you read “A white cat and a black dog” you aren’t going to know what you meant! But if you note you got the idea while watching Star Wars you’re more likely to remember the connections you were making at the time.)

Some find a binder with tabs useful but others prefer the freeform flow of entries kept chronologically to be more inspiring.

One idea is to keep a weather journal. (A 5 year diary might be handy for this to capture multiple years. Even better might be a file on your computer desktop where it’s only a double-click away.) Write snatches about the day’s weather. That way when it’s the middle of summer and you need to write about the weather on the ice planet of Korvath you can flip to December and get some images you captured.

Get into the habit of watching people. It’s actually surprising once you make it a habit how notable features will start jumping out at you begging to be written down .

The obvious places for people watching are grocery stores, coffee shops, buses, check out lines, traffic jams, baseball games but the very best, hands down, place I’ve found are airport waiting areas. People there seem the least conscious of being watched. Though airports aren’t quite as handy as coffee shops!

The one problem I seem to have when jotting down descriptions of people is there seems to be either too little to say — the people seem just too average — or there’s too much to notice. One trick for beginning notebook keepers is to concentrate on just one body part each time you record. Just look at hands, shoes, eyes, or face shape for instance. I’ll send out a weekly notebook idea.