Writer Resources and Tools: Writing Prompts

Hey everyone! I’m back here again with another weeks post about writing. This week I’m hoping that everyone will be excited to know that the post is on writing prompts. It’s on time, it’s on an interesting topic, and we’re even one post closer to the end of this series before we move onto another one. So exciting! Without further ado…

Writer Resources and Tools: Writing Prompts

Writing prompts! Writing prompts are so useful for any writer. They’re especially useful if you are like me and get bored writing the same story day after day sometimes. They’re a useful way to get your writing brain working again and often times they are really helpful for beginning new books. For example, for Nanowrimo this year I took 3 separate writing prompts and molded them together to create a good idea for a story and then developed it from there and I’m actually really excited about where it’s going. Writing prompts also help me a lot when I’ve reached a point in my story where I’m not exactly sure where to start and I can use a writing prompt to give me some ideas.

As I’ve been trying to decide how to write this post I came to the conclusion that it would be best to summarize writing prompts by breaking them into 4 separate categories.

1. Visual

The first kind of writing prompt that I’m going to write about is visual writing prompts. Visual writing prompts are usually unique pictures that are created or chosen just for the questions or ideas that it might create. I sometimes enjoy using these pictures when I’m too lazy to do too much reading. They are also really good to try and find some pictures with the same theme and put them together and try to make a single story from several pictures.

Here are just a few visual writing prompts that I’ve really enjoyed. A few of them I’ve reused for several years and couple others I’ve only used occasionally but they’ve all inspired short stories, poems or free writing of mine.

I once used this picture for a short story I wrote called Haunted. It was a short story about a girl who moves into a house with her family and they all end up disappearing. Obviously there’s more to that actual story but I didn’t like it much when it was done so I don’t think I’ll ever do anything with it.

I’ve never based anything off this picture but I once tried to work on description by describing the waves of water and the sunlight.

This picture was also used mostly as a description tool. This one I used for size writing. I was trying to see if I could look at a picture, describe the size of something and then have someone read it and understand what I was talking about. I got really good at it.

I once used this picture to inspire a poem that I titled Mother. It was a really good poem about how motherhood comes in all shapes and sizes.

In one of my books titled April Showers this photo inspired a religious area called the Floating Rock Garden where the bodies of the dead were placed on rocks as they grew and eventually broke away from the ground and returned to the heavens carrying the body of the deceased.

This photo inspired a short story about demons in a post-apocalyptic/space station world. It’s kind of complicated so that’s all I’m going to say on the subject. I particularly like the statue in this one.

2. Plot

The second kind of writing prompt is plot prompts. These are prompts that are written to give ideas of a good plot to start a story off of. I don’t use these all that often. I much prefer to come up with my own ideas after implying things from visual writing prompts or dialogue prompts. I’m not much for plot prompts or character prompts. But they can sometimes start you on a really good idea so here’s a few examples.

3. Character

On these ones I have about as much to say as I did about plot prompts. I don’t usually use these ones all that much. I prefer to come up with all the information myself. But these can sometimes be helpful if you just need that one last character to round out your selection and you have absolutely NO idea of what to do for them.

I couldn’t find any of the images of these prompts but here’s a few examples.

She’s a recent immigrant. Her dreams of a better life are crumbling around her.

Ella didn’t want children, but she has 3. She wanted to travel, but she never has.

Patricia’s daughter is two months old. Patricia is determined that nobody will ever see her be less than perfect. Whatever the cost.

4. Dialogue

I use these prompts the most often out of all of these types of prompts. I have a whole lot of dialogue prompts on my phone to use whenever I can’t think of anything. I think the reason I like these best are because I like to add body language or emphasis to certain words to change the situation that they could be in when the dialogue was said. I love using the same set of dialogue prompts to write 3 separate story ideas that are completely different. It’s super fun! So here a few dialogue prompts that are really fun.

So those are the four kinds of writing prompts. Writing prompts are super effective. They are extremely helpful for all sorts of kinds of writing and can inspire some of the coolest things. I love using them and I hope that now that you know a little bit more about them you will love using them too! Next week is another post in this same series. This one is about writing conferences. I’ve only ever been to one specific group who did writing conferences but I went several times and I’m hoping to go to a different one that I’ve found when all of the COVID restrictions are up in the next year or so. So I hope you are all having a lovely Nanowrimo and that you have a lovely Thanksgiving next week and hopefully you’ll hear from me then!

Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!