Your Prompts and Tips
Some free resources to help you write better and achieve the success you deserve
This is a selection we've harvested from our archives, RELOAD THE PAGE for more!
Prompts:
1. Imagine there is a knock on a character’s door, and when they peer through the peephole, they see someone who they haven’t seen in over a decade. Write a few pages telling us who the visitor is and why they're showing up now.
2. Write a few pages about what would happen if the fashion police existed and gave out tickets for wearing white after Labor Day.
3. Imagine you get a summer job working in an ice cream truck, but one day it breaks down on an especially hot day. Write a few pages about how you would handle it. Do you give away as much as you can? Or do you pop the hood and try to fix it yourself? Think fast, it’s melting!
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Tips:
1. Do you ever reread a story? The first time around, don’t worry about analyzing every detail—just read for fun! Your goal is to get a more general, natural sense of the narrative! The second time around, you’ll have a working understanding of the story that makes it easier (and more rewarding) to dive deeper into the nuts and bolts of the story.
2. Toss Perfectionism. Or, as Voltaire candidly quoted in his Dictionnaire Philosophique of 1770: "Il meglio e l'inimico del bene": the great is the enemy of the good. Excessive self-editing sabotages creativity and completion. Free yourself up on your first draft. Revision is your ally!
3. We joke about the cliché of a psychologist asking “How does that make you feel?” but it’s valuable to take stock of how a story makes you feel. Since emotions can be complicated in the world of stories and real life, oftentimes it’s a mixed bag. Do you think the writer intended for you to feel that way?
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TO DO LIST:
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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,
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,
ADD DO
Show Dones
Metric:
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Words
Minutes
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