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. Write a few pages about poetic justice, in which a character meets a stranger in need, makes a decision to help or not, and then gets what they deserve, whether that’s good or bad.
2. Write a few pages about an epic graduation party where things get out of hand after way too many people show up.
3. Write a few pages in which a family checks into a hotel to begin a vacation and immediately notices something off—whether it be the room, the staff, or the guests.
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Tips:
1. Don’t just say you like or dislike an aspect of a story. Dig deeper to support your view and get at the heart of your reaction. Did you find a particular metaphor effective? Or did a passage confuse you? In a workshop setting, it benefits the writer if you’re as specific as possible.
2. Whether a story ends on a cliffhanger or with a tidy resolution, it’s worthwhile to think about what life is like for the characters after. It reveals how much we understand them. Do you think some of them would resume life as normal? Would others approach daily happenings drastically differently?
3. 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!
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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,
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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