A New Launch Pad for Your Writing
Ready to try someone else’s idea as a springboard? Here’s how to do it with these wonderfully open-ended prompts.
Pick a line that speaks to you, that suggests an image or idea. Free write for 20 minutes. Proofread.
Put it away for a day if you want, or continue for another 20 minutes and another. Whether you find yourself with a poem, a story, a hybrid, a rant, or something totally unexpected, we’d love to see it.
Share the results with us and we’ll say what we love in your writing unless you ask for something else. Use the Contact Box at the bottom of the home page. What have you got to lose?
Questions? Please ask.
Writing Prompts:
- It starts like this.
- This is how it is today.
- The last time I saw X’s handwriting, it was on the back of a grocery receipt.
- Nobody told me the house would smell the same after everything was gone.
- The dog knew before any of us did.
- I kept the voicemail for X years…
- We were not the kind of family to…
- I have two versions of this story and only one of them is true.
- Select an object in your room. Incorporate it into a story, write about its story, or use it as a symbol in a story you’re working on.
Our thanks to Lisa Cooper Ellison, who presented this list in an Amherst Writers and Artists Retreat.
The questions below will help you analyze your work:
- How did it go?
- What is your favorite line?
- What line has the most energy for you? You can use that as a starting point if you want to keep going.
- We’d love to read even a passage from your work. If you don’t see the place to post it below, send it through the contact box on the home page and we’ll get back to you.
- Can’t see a place to share?
- Please send it to me through the contact box on the home page and I’ll add it in.
- Can’t find the contact box or the home page?
- You can e-mail me directly at lgood67334 AT comcast DOT net. You know know what to do with the AT and the DOT. Thanks for helping me keep the bots and scammers off this page.
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