Your Prompts and Tips
Some free resources to help you write better and achieve the success you deserve
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Prompts:
1. Write a few pages inspired by this famous couplet by Ezra Pound (“In a Station of the Metro”): “The apparition of these faces in the crowd / Petals on a wet, black bough.” Does a character interact with one of the people in the crowd? What is the meaning behind the gloomy setting?
2. Write a few pages in which an aspect of a character’s life correlates with increasing warm weather. For example, as temperatures rise, so does the number in the character’s bank account. How hot will it get?
3. Write a few pages of a story that begins with the phrase “It was a dark and stormy night." Maybe your character unravels a mystery between the clashes of thunder.
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Tips:
1. The most valuable takeaways from a story are those that stay with us for hours, days or even years after reading. Contemplating what you can recall from a story is a useful tool to better analyze which aspects of the writing are effective and make an impact.
2. Stories usually have one driving force behind them: plot or character. Of course, both of these elements are strong in good stories, but one usually has more influence. When you are reading, think about whether a narrative is carried by a compelling plot or a character that almost walks off the page.
3. The believability factor is an important one in any story. Even if the story is about talking garden gnomes, it still has to be realistic enough in the way the characters act, emotions are depicted, etc. to ground the reader in that world. When you read, ask yourself if the author really put themselves, and thus the reader, in the scene.
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TO DO LIST:
Add tasks to your sortable list, then revel in checking them off.
SCRATCHPAD:
Cache your gems as they fall in this always accessible place.
PRIVATE JOURNAL:
Reflect on your process — good, bad and ugly — in your dated diary.
TRACKING:
Measure your progress with key writing metrics, automatically,
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