Prompts

First order of business:
I wrote this post on Sunday and planned for it to go up early Tuesday, but then Mockingjay came out, and I had to avoid the internet for fear of being spoiled. (Side note: Mockingjay= wow). Anyway, now that I've finished reading the book (twice) (yes, really) the internet is safe again. So I'm back.

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Continuing with the Encouraging Creativity theme, we have prompts. Prompts are always helpful to me, because they give a starting point. And that's the main point of a prompt-- to get you started. Once you're writing, the words come easier. Creativity breeds more creativity.

As far as what prompts I used, there's a couple cool sites that use word prompts. One is Sunday Scribblings, which I found through Laini's Not For Robots site. It's a blog you can follow, and every Sunday they give you one word ("Dangerous", "View", and "half-way" are some recent ones) and you take the word and just start writing. You can then post it on your blog and link back to the Scribblings blog and you can check out what others made of the same prompt.

Then there is Oneword, which follows the same idea. You get a one word writing prompt, and you just write. Oneword is a bit different though, because it only gives you a 60 second time limit. Very fun, slightly reminiscent of Dr. Wicked's Writing Lab.


I also used picture prompts. I'm sure there's a site or two for that as well, but I found it more useful to search flickr and other picture sites to find something that I found interesting. I would then take that picture and use it as a prompt to free write a paragraph (or more, if I was feeling it.) That was really fun for me, both the searching for photos and coming up with words to go with it. I'm going to try to keep it up, maybe posting some of my favorite on the blog.

Anyway, I thought I'd share the one I wrote last week:

Olivia Morrigan's wedding dress was a piece of art, from the jewel encrusted bodice to the many ruched silk skirts that swished across the floor whenever she took a step. Her hair was curled and pinned up, and diamonds sparkled from her throat and earlobes. The dress was mostly her mother's doing, for Olivia didn't care much about pearls and silks. To Olivia, the most important part of the dress was that it was long and flowing and nobody would catch a glimpse of her thigh-- or what she kept there.

Beneath the layers of petticoats and skirts, around her upper thigh where a garter ought to be, Olivia Morrigan wore a holster, which carried a shiny, black handgun.

Just in case, she told herself, smoothing out the wrinkles in her skirt. No one would know the bride came to the wedding armed, least of all the groom.

And of course, the picture that inspired it:




Do you like to use writing prompts?