Writing Prompt: Meshing Random Words

What do dossier, derriere, Medusa, and lollapalooza have in common? Nada. Absolutely nothing. 

And that’s the beauty of it.

Ideas creep up on you. They stalk you and only appear when the moment seems the most absurd. I mean, think about it: You don’t plan on having a sudden inspiration. It just happens.

Byron Gordon and I had an…interesting…conversation in response to one of his posts, How To Write Compelling Characters. The write-up in itself was rather awesome, and you should read it. But more magic happened when our two minds combined, and we created our own writing prompt.

Meshing random words together.

We started with dossier and derriere, simply because they sounded fantabulicious together. Byron wrote his poem and challenged me to write my own.

Of course I couldn’t back down.

So I added a couple more random words to mine (Medusa and lollapalooza)…and threw this together. However, before I publish my own response to this writing prompt, here’s yours:

Get a list of random words together. For ideas, I listed a few awesome words below, but you could also Google “awesome words,” check out this website, or try out dictionary.com’s word quizzes.

Awesome words:

• Dossier
• Derriere
• Lollapalooza
• Zephyr
• Lackadaisical

Okay. Now. Write something. Anything. It can be a poem, a paragraph, or a song. Whatever you like. Just take a few words and link them together.

Writing Prompt: Create a Character

I want you to either: go outside, check out the newspaper, grab a magazine, turn on the TV, or search “person” on Google Images. Find a picture of a complete stranger (or just get a good look at one—just as long as he/she doesn’t catch you staring). Then, based on appearances alone, make up a short paragraph or two about this person. Give him or her a name, a family, and a personality. Make this stranger into a fictional—but believable—character.

Prewriting

Every single writer out there has experienced the fear that sometimes comes with writing that first sentence. What if it doesn’t turn out right? How can you express all of your thoughts in that one perfect sentence? What if it’s chalk-full of grammatical errors?

Who cares?

You see, that fear of writing down the first sentence—the “Writer’s Block” that so many of us often feel—is pointless and can be completely avoided. The trick is coming up with a system that triggers those writing juices that works for you. I have listed here four forms of prewriting to help cure that writer’s block and to get your ideas organized.

 

Keeping a Journal

Practice makes perfect. That saying holds true to every single subject out there: athletics, cooking, crafts, driving…and writing. To be a good writer, you have to practice.

By writing every day, you can practice writing whatever comes to mind without having to second guess yourself. If you say something stupid, who cares? It’s your private journal, and no one will read it except for you. You get to practice observing and describing the world around you, record random ideas that pop into your head, and vent about things that may be troubling you. By doing these things—by writing without that annoying sensor—you build your confidence in writing. Not only that, but the ideas that you record in your journal could be used later in essays and stories. Countless famous writers have kept journals to improve their writing and later used the thoughts that they originally recorded in their journals for their published works.

Of course, when you keep a journal, you should remember a few things. One, writing in your journal should not become a job. Avoid that day-to-day routine feel, and do not fill your journal with boring, choppy accounts of the day. (“Today I had cereal for breakfast. It was good. Yum. I like Coco Puffs. After breakfast, I called Brad to see if he wanted to go for a movie, but he was busy. I had mac and cheese for lunch.”) No. No, no, no, no, NO. Your journal should be used to record thoughts and opinions. You should be able to hear yourself speaking when you reread your journal entries; they should have personality. As you continue writing, you will improve on this. Then you can practice by pretending that you’re writing to different audiences: clergymen, friends and family, teachers, colleagues, a store clerk. The tone of your writing should change to fit your audience. For some, it should be formal; for others, slang may be appropriate.

Topic Suggestions for Journal Entries:

• Describe a childhood memory
• Rewrite your favorite scene in a book in your own words
• Write an imaginary conversation with a famous person or a deceased relative
• Find different metaphors for emotions such as anger, sadness, jealousy, and happiness
• Explain your views on a controversial subject
• Complain. The human mind is constantly full of complaints that it yearns to express—let it out.
• Summarize a movie, news report, magazine article, or story
• Reveal what happened the last time you cried
• Confess something that you feel guilty about
• Illustrate your favorite season without specifically calling it “summer,” “winter,” “fall,” or “spring”

 

Freewriting

By freewriting, you force yourself to begin immediately. Try setting yourself a time limit—say, ten for your first time—and see how much you can write. As you become familiar with the writing technique, you can lengthen your time limit to fifteen or twenty minutes. The trick is to write about anything and everything that pops into your head. If you can’t think of anything, write, “This is stupid. I can’t think of anything to write about.” Rant about having to write for ten whole minutes when you could be doing something else. I don’t care. There is just one rule: do not stop writing until your timer goes off. Your pencil must always be moving. If you can’t complete a thought, abandon it and jump to a different one. It doesn’t matter if you cut yourself off in the middle of a sentence; just do whatever comes to mind.

Freewriting doesn’t just help you overcome that fear of writing the first sentence; it also helps you discover the thoughts that are buried in your mind. Since you don’t have to worry about whether or not you’re using the right words to describe something, you are free to focus on the meaning of what you are writing. As you give your mind free reign, you can think of new topics to write about, and soon other ideas will come surging forth. When you’re done freewriting, you can select the ideas that pertain to your topic and expand on them.

Topic Suggestions for Freewriting:

• Cliques
• Make up
• Animal Testing
• Hunting
• Friends
• Pollution
• Relatives
• New York City
• Religion
• Cars
• Sun Tanning
• Money

 

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is very similar to freewriting in that you write everything that comes to mind about a certain topic in a certain time period (about fifteen minutes). However, unlike freewriting, brainstorming is done in the form of a list. Never pause to worry about grammar or spelling; those are inconsequential. The purpose is to get as many ideas down as quickly as possible.

Free association—which is the theory that specific words and images trigger other words and images—often leads your mind to unexpected destinations. Brainstorming explores this principle. By allowing your mind to wander freely, you will see aspects of the subject that you had not expected, and soon your paper will be filled with ideas. Many of these inspirations, of course, will be completely useless. But even the ideas that seem silly or irrelevant will trigger more ideas—free association. By the time your fifteen minutes has passed, your paper should be a jumbled, haphazard mess of random words and ideas, some of them completely unrelated to the topic. But that’s the beauty of brainstorming; somewhere within the mess, there is bound to be at least one idea that is worth expanding on.

Topic Suggestions for Brainstorming:

• Diets
• Diseases
• School
• Exercising
• Dating
• Vacations
• Motorcycles
• Animals
• Unions
• Time

 

Asking Questions

By asking questions about a certain topic, you can develop concrete ideas that have depth. Obviously, the six famous questions are the most impertinent: who, what, why, where, when, and how. Although not all six questions will apply to every topic and some subjects may suggest additional questions, asking questions lets you approach an idea in a systematic way. You are able to pick out any ideas that may have been stuck in the background and to see your topic in a new light.

Do you have any other ideas? Any special quirks or habits that you find help get the ideas flowing? Please feel free to share!

Writing Prompt: Research Despair

Everyone always has crap going on in their lives; there is always something to complain about. Whether it be a huge wage cut, a lost iPod, or acne that just won’t GO AWAY, there isn’t a single person out there that can say his or her life is perfect. So, what’s this week’s writing prompt? I’ll tell you what it is NOT: writing about something that has hurt you. No, I don’t want you to do that. If you want to moan about how horrible your life is, go away and bother someone else.

What I want you to do is research (Gasp! Oh no! RESEARCH?!) about a civilization that is going through some tough times. Of course, you could also research past events (i.e. the Great Depression, slavery in Africa, or any major war). But what I want you to do is to put yourself in that place of fear and despair. Live through it. Write about it.

And, most importantly, give thanks for what you have.

Tips for Curing Writer’s Block

• Don’t try to make your first draft perfect. Just WRITE. Then, AFTER YOU’RE DONE, go back and revise…don’t try to edit while you write. It’ll slow down your pace. A lot.
• Set a timer and write until it goes off. See how much you can write in ten minutes. Then, once the timer goes off, go and do something else.
• Turn off distractions: your computer, cell phone, TV…everything. Turn it all off and get in the “writing mode.”
• ALWAYS carry a notebook and a spare pen. In the car, on the bus, at your grandma’s… make sure that you have these things with you everywhere you go for when an idea sparks.
• Record yourself speaking. I know, I know…it sounds stupid. But think about it: you think MUCH faster than you can ever write. Speaking, at least, is faster than writing, and it’s much easier to let your thoughts flow freely when speaking. Plus, you can’t edit yourself when you speak…which will save you time.
• Don’t worry about how to make a sentence sound good; you can do that when you revise. This IS related to the first bullet – I realize that. But I just want to emphasize the fact. Again.
  Point taken? Good.

 

Do you have any tips that I didn’t mention above? Share your ideas below!

Writing Prompt: Nature’s Inspiration

One of the best ways to get inspiration for writing is to simply write about what’s going on around you. So, get off your butt, go outside (yes – OUTSIDE), and describe what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. I want all five senses here! Ready? GO!