Forum / writing prompts

• 
  brian warfield

  Mar 27, 05:07am

  http://bbirkensnake.tumblr.com/

• 
  Susan Gibb

  Mar 27, 10:25am

  Neat place with some interesting ideas. I tend to avoid writing prompts only because it feels to me like, if I didn't have the idea, then I'm stealing someone else's. Almost as if I were plagiarizing. But that's just me and I followed the 52/250 prompt words back in 2010 and a few other projects. In 2011, writing a story a day for a year, I just sat in the dark mornings until a story came through.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 27, 11:12am

  I like picture prompts and the list of interesting word type prompts.

• 
  Susan Gibb

  Mar 27, 11:22am

  Pictures are particularly interesting to study and write about, and even words conjure up different meanings and stories to each writer. Very few stories are written not using a prompt of some sort, as all are taken from something learned or experienced.

• 
  Joani Reese

  Mar 27, 12:02pm

  I bought some old black and white photo books at Half Price for a poetry workshop I taught for undergrads. Imagining the story behind photos really helps some writers to loosen up and get down to the task of writing fiction or poetry. Whether simply used as a preparatory exercise or the writer intends to use the photo as an entry to writing an ekphrastic poem (or story based on the narrative of the picture), they're helpful for many people.

• 
  Jim V

  Mar 27, 01:59pm

  I make up my own prompts, often at random. Joanie's idea is a good one.

• 
  Dolemite

  Mar 27, 03:31pm

  I need a dump truck baby to
  unload my head.

  --Bob Dylan

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 27, 04:00pm

  I usually just surf through my tumblr feed. There's always crazy awesome art going past.

• 
  brian warfield

  Mar 27, 05:04pm

  These I made specifically for the Birkensnake theme I am co-editing. I usually don't like prompts either.

• 
  Susan Gibb

  Mar 27, 05:42pm

  You make a good point, Brian. To allow some measure of cohesiveness in an issue, a theme or prompt is necessary. When I worked on a few years' worth of 100 Day projects, we fed off each other and came up with ideas based on images of both photographic and original art, poetry, flash, whatever and all had some sort of tie-in based on the reader/viewer perception.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 27, 06:00pm

  Matt: I have a similar problem, my racing thoughts. The less external input the better but I could always experiment.

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Mar 27, 06:55pm

  Prompts are great triggers for reverie... as is music. Photographs are an excellent launching pad for prose. In my current WIP, a novel set in the fifties and sixties, based on some actual events and some imasgined, I did a lot of research. A lot... biographies, newspapers, magazines.

  I found that listening to the music for background and focusing on photographs of the few characters who were real people and news photos of the events was much more than essential, but surely priceless.

  The visual tags coupled with personal experience is invaluable.

  The internet is a fine tool for writers and resources from Youtube... newsreels, documentaries, etc. are light years beyond time spent in libraries.

• Frankie Saxx

  Mar 28, 09:18am

  I think of prompts not as things to inspire an idea, but more like catalysts, a focal point bringing together diverse ideas I already have that, by themselves, are too weak to work.

• 
  Gloria Garfunkel

  Mar 29, 04:31pm

  I have to admit writing some of my best and worst stories with prompts.

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