Writing prompts help us deliver the goods, our genius, our innate talents, don’t they? They stop the monkey mind chatter and with a loving but firmly guiding hand, they help us knuckle down, apply pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, and push out some of the loveliest writing you’ll ever see.
How is that? A single word, a phrase, or a scenario that is so encouraging that it opens our minds, hearts, and souls to let the story that never before existed be a part of the world?
Who knows, but it’s seemingly a universal phenomenon. It stops procrastination dead in its tracks and in its place comes narrative, poetry, song lyrics, essays, riffs on scenes, concepts, and more.
With that knowledge of what the prompt does, let’s begin writing something awesome. This is the first prompt of what will be many, and I hope that it opens you up to writing a colossal story, or even just get a paragraph crafted to your satisfaction.
Despite my love story about prompts above, I don’t want to make too much of them other than to share some with you. Writing to prompts is just a step up from free writing, which doesn’t require a prompt at all. A prompt gives you the extra nudge to jump off the safe cliff and into the unknown. That’s what’s so lovely about them. They are just words that take you to places far and wide.
Accept them and write a response that’s literal, or use the prompt to write a metaphorical piece, or ignore the prompt and just write because there’s a prompt in front of you and that’s what you’re supposed to do—write.
Typically, the prompts will be big picture and evoke an emotion of some kind. In other words, I won’t be suggesting an actual story scenario. I don’t want to constrict your creativity. That’s the exact opposite of what I described above.
But know that there will be exceptions, including today’s, which is a classic in my opinion. It’s a fail safe prompt that I return to again and again because it delivers the goods—flashbacks, scenes, and dialogue can all come from this set of three simple words.
Today’s prompt is:
I remember when . . . .
I would love to see your creativity in action, so please feel free to share what you discovered after writing to the prompt, and also share some of what you wrote. You can do that in the comments below.