Dragon Writing Prompts

---

.

---

Updated every day of Nano. You may need to scroll down to see today’s prompt.

I had a last minute NaNo inspiration that will help me. I tend to skip over description. So for each day of NaNo month I’ll send out a prompt to focus your attention on something you might not ordinarily notice in whatever scene you’re working on. The intent is not to generate great prose but to force you to expand your vision of what’s going on around and inside your characters.

Write at least one paragraph for the day’s prompt:

Today’s prompt:

7. In the next conversation, describe something the character is doing as they speak each line of dialogue.

Previous prompts:

1. Describe your point of view (POV) character’s current emotional state and how it affects him or her from head to toe.
2. Describe the shoes of the next character that walks into the scene and what they remind the POV character of.
3. Describe the weather (or environment if weather isn’t relevant to your story) in the scene you’re writing right now. Involve all 5 senses.
4. Relate something in your current scene to a toy from your POV character’s childhood.
5. The current situation to your POV character is [fill in an animal]. Extend the metaphor. What in the situation are the teeth? Why is something like the breath? How does it relate to the sound the character makes? (And whatever else you can come up with. Use all five senses!)
6. It starts raining (or stops raining). Describe the emotions *and* memories this evokes in your POV character.

NOTE: Don’t link to this post! Blogsome includes the day in the URL and I’ll be updating the date as I add each item to keep it at the top of the blog throughout November. If you’d like a link, use the post at Blogspot: A month of NaNo prompts.

---

.

---

Use the following idioms as literally as possible without mentioning the original idiom, so “wet blanket” will include a real wet blanket. For Nano you may want to pick just one :-) For others, write a few sentences for as many as you can in 10 minutes, or use one and see where it takes you.

Cry over spilled milk.
Pull the wool over his eyes.
Wet behind the ears.
Wild goose chase.
Sky’s the limit.
With flying colors.
Face the music.
Throw a monkey wrench into the works.
Can’t make heads or tails out of it.
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Third time’s the charm.
On cloud nine.

---

.

---

Have your character list 5 ways they’re ordinary (for their world, of course!) and 5 ways they’re not ordinary. (Though you don’t need to include it, they picked those particular items out of the totality of who they are for a reason.)

Idea from Charloft where’s there’s a new theme each day for your characters. (A very active community.) There are loads of responses to this particular one. In case the Live Journal community disappears one day, I saved the list.

I also opened an Ordinary and Special topic at the NaNoWriMo forums.

---

What’s special or ordinary about the picture? Go to Face Research — Make an Average. Click on several pictures. Click View Average and see what a composite of the pictures is like. (Try all the thin faces, all those with dark hair, all those with long chins, all with large ears ….) I tried to create a girl’s face where race wasn’t easy to pinpoint.

Roll over the post’s image and you can see all the faces, male and female, averaged together. (The sampling of images does contain a large proportion of Caucasians.) Is it a girl or a boy? It would be interesting to see a composite of all 20 yos, 30 yos, etc in the world :-)

What’s interesting is that average isn’t bland but tends toward beauty. So beauty isn’t so extraordinary as it is average!

---

.

---

---

.

---

Come up with a zombie party plan — for real zombies. Invitations (date, time, place). Special instructions for guests (as in bring your own brains, dress). Food. Games.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

---

.

---

---

.

---

---

.

---

---

.

---

Create your own comic strip with the Historic Tale Construction Kit. There are people, buildings, animals and text from the Bayeux Tapestry to play with. When you’re done you can submit it to the gallery. (Though I couldn’t get the email or gallery to work. I had to save all the images and paste them together in Photoshop.)

Don’t let the historic images limit you! Googling images for the kit I see several Harry Potter comics. (Like this bit of Harry Potter slash: A Chance Meeting. Note: preview it before you show it to your kids so you’re not surprised by unexpected questions! ;-)

If all the possibilities leave you stuck for a story, begin with the foundation of storytelling: a desire, a want, a need. One of those characters wants something. Other characters will get in the way with desires of their own. One of those desires will triumph. Or not. Maybe a dragon will eat them all ;-)

(Click the image to see mine.)

Two tips:

If you like your backgrounds consistent from panel to panel, line images up with flaws on the fabric.

Sometimes the images misbehave. (At least they did for me in Safari.) Back up to the previous panel then return.

---

.

---

“Morning.”
“Morning.”
“Sleep well?”
“Yeah.”

Somewhere in your piece will be those lines of dialogue. (You can build up to the first “Morning.”)

Not much to go on. Or, really, too many possibilities! This is from an exercise on subtexting from Getting Into Character by Brandilyn Collins. The point is that we often don’t say what we mean … and it builds tension when our characters don’t either.

The first “Morning,” might really mean, “Where were you last night?” or “I know where you were last night (heh, heh, heh),” or “I’d like to bash your head in with a 2x4,” or “I wish everything were as normal as I’m trying to make it feel.”

One challenge of hinting at what’s beneath the surface is that only one character, the point of view character, reveals their thoughts to the reader. The other character offers only a tiny, foggy window into what they’re thinking through their body language, facial expression, tone and what they’re saying instead of what they mean. What’s going on beyond the fog is open to interpretation by the reader and by the, not necessarily objective, other character. (The point of view character is often not objective about their own thoughts and feelings either!) But the cool thing is that not knowing builds tension also and raises questions in the reader’s mind that makes them want to read on and find the answers. (Which are all the current skills I’m working on!)

As always, and as mundane as the lines are, don’t feel tied to a contemporary setting.

---

.

---

---

.

---

---

.

---

Is this unexpected?

Is this normal in your world?

Are other animals fighting or just the squirrels? Fighting over what?

---

.

---

Roll a die and pick one from each of the four following categories. Use them as the starting point of your piece.

Time

1. Dead of winter
2. During a thunderstorm
3. The morning after
4. When the moon is full
5. Just before dawn
6. Midnight
7. Height of summer
8. In the middle of a battle
9. In the middle of a storm
10. The night before

Situation

1. A death
2. A secret needs to be told
3. Someone has or will hurt someone
4. A crime has occurred or is about to
5. Someone has lost/found something
6. Someone is falling in love
7. Reminiscing on how things change
8. There has been a family emergency
9. Something embarrassing happened
10. Someone holds a medication

Character

1. A match maker
2. A nerd
3. A barista
4. A visitor
5. A homeless man
6. A novice
7. A mechanic
8. An eccentric
9. A musician
10. An actress

Setting

1. A theater
2. A wedding
3. A cemetery
4. A restaurant
5. A dungeon/jail
6. A mountain peak
7. An inn
8. A cave
9. A sporting event
10. A convention

Adapted from 6 Creative Writing Prompts to expand them beyond contemporary topics. All the situations except the last that mentioned a doctor were amazingly universal :-)

---

.

---

---

.

---

---

.

---

“Listen, we’ve got a proposition for you.”

As always, let you imagination take you where it will. Don’t let it be hampered by 3 real monkeys staring at it. ;-) They could be aliens! Or products of a deteriorating mind. (Or so you think!) Or a sentient species in a fantasy world. Or …

---

.

---

Write a resignation letter.

You could use it to tell the boss what you really think about him or her and the job and your co-workers.

Or resign from being the boss and tell your underlings what you think of them.

Or from:

• being the country’s ruler.

• • being God. Or the Devil.

• • • being a hero. Or the bad guy.

• • • • being someone’s fan. (You’ve moved on? They’ve disappointed you?)

• • • • • the “perfect” job that didn’t even give you a call.

• • • • • • being a slave. Or being a prisoner. Or school.

• • • • • • • a marriage or family.

• • • • • • • • association with a race or species.

• • • • • • • • • a religion or political party or life style.

• • • • • • • • • • being someone’s pet.

• • • • • • • • • • • being someone’s possession (car, television, stove ….)

---

.

---

---

.

---

What’s a warm up?

---

.

---

What’s a warm up?

Pick your favorite recipe. Your character has been planning to create this dish for quite some time as a special event or celebration. The dish can be grand but needn’t be — like the last ballpark hotdog with relish eaten with Dad, the “special” last maggoty meal the evil overlord served his prisoners — but it’s emotionally tied into the character or someone the character feels strongly toward and holds some special importance. Each ingredient has been carefully chosen or overseen from its beginning.

As you go through each ingredient, have your character talk about where it came from, why and what its importance is. Maybe they’re far from home — a ship? another planet? an alternate universe? — and the ingredients aren’t easy to come by.

Then describe what it’s for. It could be something sweet :-) It could be twisted Wherever it leads you.