Your Prompts and Tips
Some free resources to help you write better and achieve the success you deserve
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Prompts:
1. Spring is a time of rebirth, and this a popular theme for writers. Write a few pages about a character who experiences a change of heart that causes them to be, in a sense, emotionally reborn.
2. 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.
3. Write a few pages in which two characters, who are vastly different and not particularly fond of the other person, get “trapped” somewhere—at a snowed-in cabin or an accidentally locked closet at work, for example—and start to see the other in a different light.
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Tips:
1. Any good mystery provides enough clues that the reader is able to make well-founded guesses about the outcome, but not so many that they can predict exactly what is going to happen. As you read, note how many clues the author is giving. Are there any plot twists or red herrings? Do you feel the author left enough clues or so many that you figured out the big mystery halfway through?
2. Take a close look at the world of the story. Could the story be told somewhere else to the same effect? Does it drive the plot in any way? For example, Sue Monk Kidd's “The Secret Lives of Bees” would not be the same if it were set anywhere but in South Carolina in 1964. Any time you read, pay special attention to the storyworld in which it's set. Is that world integral to the plot? How so?
3. Reading and talking with others about what we’ve read brings us together. Think about the point of view the writer chooses to utilize in a story. Is it first-person, second-person, third-person, or a mixture? Would you say the POV chosen is the ideal one to tell the story? How would the story change if it was written from a different POV?
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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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