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 set on a beach, where a character’s metal detector turns up a valuable but disturbing item.
2. 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?
3. Write a few pages about a family pet that is literally reborn, as in reincarnated. Do they come back as a puppy, or as something very different, like a tree or a new friend that just moved into the neighborhood?
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Tips:
1. From if a character will have a happy ending to how a romantic interest will play out, we all make predictions while we are reading, often without even realizing. Read a story and pay attention to the guesses you make along the way. Once you finish reading, compare your predictions with what actually happened. Did you find it too predictable? Or, would you have never guessed how it would turn out?
2. 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.
3. You’ve probably heard of flat and round characters, but what do they actually mean? As the name suggests, flat characters are fairly simple and unchanging throughout the narrative. Round characters, on the other hand, are more complicated and experience change as part of the story.
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TRACKING:
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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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