Wed. Writing Prompts XXX

1. Write a story about a maze. It could be a maze on paper, a magic maze, or even a maze that at first seems ordinary (like a corn maze) but turns out to be anything but your average romp in the fields. Be creative. See where your mind takes you.

2. Imagine getting a letter in the mail which says something to the degree of “the strange green liquid leaking from the classified storage facility at an undisclosed location within three miles of your home has been declared non-toxic” - - when you didn’t even know that this facility existed (until now.) Consider this idea for a few minutes, then write whatever comes to you.

3. Create a name that inspires you to write by combining two completely separate terms which mesh to create a new genre (like impressionist cyberpunk or classic rock fantasy.) Consider this new genre, play around with what the stereotypical piece bearing this label might be like, and then write your story.

4. Look at something random (like a bullet-riddled stop sign) and come up with an unusual, off-the-wall explanation for it. (Military bravely fights off invasion of evil, animated stopsigns bent on world domination, etc.) Now, make it into a story.

5. Write a love story where some grand, seemingly insurmountable obstacle rears its ugly head and threatens to destroy any chance at a relationship before it can even really start. What is this obstacle? What makes it so difficult to overcome? Is it eventually overcome, or does your story have a different ending?

6. Write about a sunrise. What does the sun dawn upon in your story? What does this say about society? About humanity? How meaningful is a sunrise?

7. Characterize your family. How would you label them? (A family of politicians? A family of black sheep? A family of moviestars? A family of TV commercial actors? A family of fixers?) Explain why you chose this generalizing metaphor to describe your family. Now, use that as the beginning of a story.

8. Create a story which is built around some bizarre metaphor (like a story about a long haul trucker which is ultimately a grand, complex metaphor for one man’s family life or the final moment that convinces a nun to leave the nunnery and go out into the world. Be creative, see where it takes you.

9. Consider a profound problem with the system, like the fact that those who break the law out of necessity because they are poor are penalized financially, the fact that one angry old professor has the power to utterly destroy your academic career and doom you to a life of poverty no matter how many A+’s you get in other courses, or the fact that schools which have poor scores on standardized tests because of their lack of funding receive less funding as their schools and scores deteriorate. Write about it, expose it, wake people up and make them think about it. Be the ripplemaker in the world.

10. Create your own writing prompt. Sit down for a moment and think about it, consider what you might tell someone to try writing about if they told you that they were all out of ideas about what to write about. Make it as simple or as complex as you like, feel free to encourage your writers to be creative or try weird or new things.


Note: This is the last one of these I'm going to do for now. From now on, Wednesdays will feature creative writing exercise resources for teachers of young adults. Make sure to come back and check out the new material! :)