Prompts

In November 2010, we posted a poll about it and discussed the idea with a lot of you, and at the start of the new year, we started posting writing prompts to inspire your writing ventures.

What is a prompt? Some sort of theme or topic, a sentence or perhaps even a song or movie clip that would be designed to spark your creativity to write something about it. As of now, we're posting a prompt bi-weekly, but we're open to changing scheduling based on your feedback. Each new prompt will be submitted individually, while this blog will remain as an archive of previous prompts. Feel free to come back and be inspired by prompts that you may have missed!

Also, send any prompt-inspired works to us via note! Please specify which prompt was it written after so your watchers know, and we do too. (: we'll then include it in the New Prompts folder in our gallery.

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2011

February 16: Think of a pairing that is somewhat paradoxical in nature, but in an unexpected way.

Examples:
• Hummingbirds and taxicabs
• Statues and oil spills
• Silk and bulldozers
• Angels and cigarettes

March 23: Write from the perspective of someone who cannot use the sense that you write the strongest with.

Explanation: Do you write most often with visual descriptions? Write from the perspective of a blind person. What would their world be like?

April 6: Write about something ugly, but find the beauty in it.

Examples: War, fear, hate, cruelty

April 20: Write a love letter or poem from one inanimate object to another.

Example: "A Love Letter " – Sarah Kay

May 18: Take two significant lines from a published poem, and expand upon them in a way that is completely your own. Be sure to quote and name the poet at the top of your piece!

Example: "Litany " – Billy Collins

June 9: Write in a form, genre, or style that isn't normal for you.

Example: If you write horror stories, try writing a mystery; if you write free-verse poetry, try writing a villanielle or another fixed form.

June 23: Someone who you are extremely close to unexpectedly dies. Write that person a letter explaining what you will miss most about him or her.

July 7: Pick an event from your childhood that you wish would have gone differently. Write it as though it had happened ideally.

July 19: Choose your favorite book. Then, write a first-person narrative from the viewpoint of a minor character.

Example: Write from Boromir's perspective in The Lord of the Rings.

July 31: Use a point of view you aren't used to.

Example: If you write confessional, first person poetry, try writing narrative or lyric poetry. If you generally tell stories in first person, try third person. Or even second person!

August 14: Write from the perspective of the opposite sex. Include at least one situation (prose/narrative) or condition (poetry) relating to their interactions with your own gender.

August 28: Go out and try something new, be it a food (e.g. sushi), going to a new place (e.g.  to an art gallery), or an activity (e.g. going on a hike or eating at the sidewalk tables outside of an eatery). Record as much as you can during or after. Be sure to include items of all senses if applicable. Recreate the experience as genuinely as you can in a piece of writing.

September 12: Choose a poem you like. Take the last line and use that as the first line of your own poem.

September 26: Write a (romantic, if you want) story about someone, focusing on the quirks of their personality.

Example: Listen to the narration of this video for an example.

October 4: Write about the biggest lie you've ever told.

October 18: Write a poem or short story focused on the changing season. Let the characteristics of fall inspire your description of the characters.

November 2: Find a song and use the title and/or lyrics as inspiration for your piece.

November 16: Write a different bit of writing at the same time of every day in the next week.

Example: Like, 8:30 am every morning for a week. They can be about the same theme/storyline or completely different.

November 30: Write about the wind. Any way you like.

December 6: Odyssey Into 2012: A Site-Wide Collab

December 13: Use a story/poem to tell us about a word you've created.

December 20: The story starts when your protagonist tells the truth. Another character is someone who has no problems with blackmail.

December 27: Write about an alien entity who is from the past.

January 3: Write about a bus driver who believes your protagonist is a long-lost family member.

2012

January 15: Love at second sight. Any and all relationships welcome.

Example: Person to person, person to nature, object to object, etc.

January 25: Collecting photographs.

Explanation: What are the photos of? Who collects them? Why? What are the stories behind them? Are they being used for anything?)

February 5: no.1: Write about an uncommon occupation.

Examples: Mortician, street sweeper, lamp-lighter, etc. Can also be a fictional occupation.
no.2 What's at the end of the rainbow?

February 19: no.1: Mea Culpa. (Latin for 'my fault'.)
no.2 What would happen if you tipped over an hourglass? Think outside the box.

February 26: Write about a point of no return.

March 11: Write from the point of view of a board game piece. Some examples: a character from Clue, a Scrabble letter, the dice inside of the Trouble bubble, etc.

March 25: Write a letter to someone you've never met before. This person could be an actor, a writer, a family member, even a fictional character.

April 8: Put your iPod/mP3/any music player really on shuffle. For the first five (or more) songs that come up, incorporate two (or more, whatever you want) lines from each song into your piece.

April 24: Write an epistolary piece involving at least three people and at least two different kinds of media. (Get creative: don't just use letters or e-mails, try IM programs, bottle-messages or wiki edit wars!)
Not all the entries have to be directed at each other, but they should link up in some way. Perhaps two people are editing a document together and one of them starts receiving mysterious texts. Perhaps someone stumbles on a decades-old correspondence and it helps to uncover mysteries in the present. Go wild!

May 6: Write from the point of view of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Give them a personality, have them interact with other sins, or even some of the Seven Heavenly Virtues. For example, is sloth secretly in love with chastity, but is too lazy to overcome chastity's, well, chasteness?

May 22: Write from the voice of someone in a different time period. Examples: Regency period, Victorian England, or in the far far future. Basically, choose a time period you don't usually write about. Added challenge, switch up the setting as well. It can be something as broad as space, down to a corner inhabited by dust bunnies.

June 3: Pick a piece of art, it doesn't matter what it is, whether it's a painting, a song, a dance, etc. Write a story for it. If it has one already, pick a different facet/point of view. You can also try muting a video or a random part of a movie and use that as well. A good place to look would be through your very own favorites collection on dA. Or somebody else's favorites. Whatever tickles your fancy.
Here's a few things to start you off if you're stuck:
This Heineken ad.
"Be Mine" choreography.
Renoir. (Except that was just an excuse to share that painting; it's one of my absolute favorites. )
These two.
This.

June 17: You're stranded somewhere. (Post-apocalyptic world, desert island, out on the English moors, your math class, etc.) You must pick four things to have with you. Yes, they can be people. Take it from there. What are you using these things for? If there's people, how are you interacting? For my poetry folks out there, write the four things in stanzas (or however you like to format your poems).

July 15: Write something you've always wanted to say to someone, but never had the chance to. It can be a confession, a secret, a simple "hello", a rant, etc. I can be to a parent, a friend, a significant other, a pet, a deity. Use your imagination!

July 19: Expand a six word story.
Check out SixWordStories' gallery for inspiration. Or Six Word Stories on Twitter.
Here are a few of my favorites:
Deathly silent groom. Literal shotgun wedding.
Drink to Life. Drive to Death.
Fortune cookie reads: That wasn’t chicken.
Poked hole in condom. He’s mine.
She merely smiled. His world stopped.

November 26: Make up a word, and then write something about that word!

December 24: What is the last thing that comes to your mind when you think of a plant? Write about it.

2013

January 7: What will you leave behind?

January 21: What would you put in your bucket list?

February 4: What happened after breakfast?

February 18: Write about or as the person / object / the paint / the material of the visual art piece you chose. Some suggestions:
Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket, by James Whistler.
The Winged Victory of Samothrace.
The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali.
Night, by Raffaelle Night.
A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, by Georges Seurat.

March 4: what is hurt, to you?

March 18: what does it mean, to reinvent or be reinvented?

April 1: Write something inspired by the older festivals of April Fool's Day, Hilaria and Feast of Fools. How can a masquerade symbolise a social revolution, or a breakdown of societal or political roles? Why does humour and celebration enable us to ignore those roles? How do we find freedom or power in disguise?

April 15: Be silly, be relaxed, be wild - imagine yourself landing on an earth-like (i.e. containing life) planet and, in poem or prose or script form, describe this place and the life on it.

April 29: Write something inspired by a real-life conversation - either put yourself somewhere to eavesdrop, or take something from randomsnippetsofconversation!

May 13: Write something inspired by a title - from a book, a poem, a play, anything (and don't forget to credit it)! Some fascinating ones, in case you're stuck:

In Praise of Shadows. The Melancholy of Resistance. The Anatomy of Melancholy. A Short History of Decay. Because I Was Flesh.  The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. Passing Strange and Wonderful. I Was Told There'd Be Cake. If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?! I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. If On A Winter's Night A Traveller. Their Eyes Were Watching God. The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart. It Was Like This: You Were Happy. Things to Do in the Belly of a Whale.

May 27: Look into these eyes. Stare into them, and think, man, I wonder what he's seen? If you'd ask us if that were our latest prompt, you'd be right. Write about the answer to that prompt!

June 10: Imagine if your house gained the five basic senses, that is to say, if your walls could hear, your floors feel, your ceilings smell, your windows see, and your doors taste... play up the five senses and incorporate them into different furniture and fixtures in your home, like making your kitchen taste or your closet see. Do go ahead and go as fantastical or as non-fiction as you see fit. What if a house (your house, someone else's house, anything) had the five basic senses?

June 24: Write about injustice. Anything goes, fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, etc., but injustice is the name of the game - an event, a societal construct, a stereotype, a character - anything. What is it? What's unfair about it? What makes people angry about it? Is it obviously wrong, or a more subtle wrong-doing? Can it be fixed? Is anybody doing anything to fix it? And so on and so forth. Go wild.

July 8: The Overview Effect: "a cognitive shift of awareness ... reported ... during spaceflight ... while viewing the Earth". It is, basically, the effect of seeing Earth and realising how small you are. You don't have to write a letter or anything like that - a poem or a short story or a play (or anything else) you can think of, incorporating the Overview Effect into it.

July 22: Here's the deal: rework an old fairy tale into the modern world - no deus ex machina. No magic. A deus ex machina, Latin: "god from the machine," is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved, with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. (Wikipedia).

August 5: Write using in media res, or: begin in the middle. In media res - "in the midst of things" - is an ancient literary technique where your story, poem, play, what have you, begins mid-way through. Start from the middle of a sentence / line, or the middle of your narrative, or in a non-linear chronology, or use flashbacks, or have the narrator explaining as you go, etc. The options are limitless. But the basic rule is you start with the middle - explanations later. Homer's Iliad is an example: it opens up in the middle of the Trojan War.

August 29: Use a flash-forward.

September 23: This image.

October 7: This photograph.
:thumb334862213:

October 21: Retell a story you know, but this time, add monsters. (From writingprompts.tumblr.com). What sort of monsters will you show us? Are these real, physical monsters or those of the psyche, ripping your characters apart? Will they have fangs and claws, or words and hands? Do the same for poetry or for prose - how do relationships change with monsters? How misunderstood are monsters? How not misunderstood are monsters?

November 4: Click on this Random Line Generator" for poetry and this Random Line Generator for prose. Use that line in your poem/prose. It doesn't necessarily have to be the starting line, but I want to see it somewhere in your work!

December 2: This image.

December 16: This site gives you random nonsense text - "verbiage" - based on the works of William Gibson, who writes cyberpunk, speculative fiction. Take the first line of what you get - refresh only if you have to - and write something based off it. Pick a phrase from word, ignore some words if you want, use the entire line, or, if you're feeling daring, pick more than a line (a paragraph, two paragraphs, the entire text). Up to you. Here are some examples:

knife pen soul-delay saturation point tanto computer katana modem.
math- convenience store boy film rebar assassin shoes girl boy San Francisco kanji Kowloon silent.
vehicle 3D-printed dolphin man meta- girl faded industrial grade nodal point.
camera augmented reality drugs nodality silent sentient refrigerator urban skyscraper fetishism.

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During the end of 2013 there was a long talk within the admin team about the need to refresh our Prompts. We wanted them to be more inspiring, more of a challenge. So we changed! Our prompts become monthly, they feature more specific challenges, and 100 points go to a lucky participating deviant each month!
These are the new prompts we've submitted so far. Feel free to try any of them, even if the prizes have already been given.

February Prompt: Not About the Sky: This story is not about the sky. The sky is a recurring theme of your writing, either because your protagonist is an aviator or because they're scared of flying, because they study astronomy or they're looking for god up there, because they're mourning a death or because the airplane trails make them think of their far-away family, or lover. The sky is used in metaphor, in interior monologues or dialogues, but it is NOT the center of the story: in other words, make a decent plot goddammit and the sky is just used as a recurring metaphor or subject of conversation/reflection.

March Prompt: What to Do with Loss:Someone has lost something. That thing could be a person, a physical object, or an abstract object: the loss of this object affects the plot, however, the plot is NOT the search for it. So, you say, what does this mean?
Basically, your story must feature a loss of any kind, and whether this loss makes the character who is going through it happy or sad, the plot cannot be the search for what they lost! It can be about their feelings, the events leading up to the loss, the way they deal with it or escape from it, but it cannot be about the search for it. Simply put, this is not going to be a treasure hunt for the fairy godmother heirloom you lost when you moved out of your parents' house, or the adopted child looking for his biological parents/siblings. be creative!