Writing Prompts/Ideas

Come up with a title that you think sounds cool and then write a story from it. That's always fun.

*thinks*

Rachel Winston and the Horse Lords. Now, I have no idea what the heck that story would be about. Probably a medieval woman who snuck into a trade caravan headed for China and got caught up in the Mongolian invasion. It might end up being a ridiculous story, but it helps exercise the imagination.

When I am sat on the pan is when I come up with some of my most creative ideas, I have a notepad in there and a mini fridge with assorted drinks whilst I demonstrate my straining face, the ideas just seem to flow!

How unique. 

I think the mini-fridge is a funny touch, just wish it didn't bring up visuals.

Must be a guy thing, but whatever works.

Why not just write on the roll of t.p.?

If you have a fridge full of bevys, it's no wonder you're in there awhile. 

It's a very efficient system....in and out without even having to get up.  Must save a lot of time, and you wouldn't lose your train of thought because of distractions.

All you need to do now is get pizza delivered.

Hope for your wife's sake that there's another bathroom in the house.

I find I'm inspired by the Internet.  In particular, I like to look at the Yahoo answers section, ant the requests on hubpages too.  For me it goes beyond what is written - I think about who would write such a question, their background, why they need to ask - and which answers they will follow.  You could have a novel before you even know it.

I've been enjoying writing memoir because all you have to do is think back over your strong memories, those that seem to have a significance that seems to just get stronger over time.  I don't always know what the significance is but it is easy to sort out memories that have power.  I literally sometimes sit down a make a list of memories that I think are worth writing about and just pick one.  The only problem on the internet, is that there are some memories that I would like to write about but won't because I don't want them public.  I try to write only about things that I wouldn't mind my students (I am a teacher) knowing about me.

What I usually do is think of my friends, and then I think of them as characters... but not just like my friend Joe Schmoe is now in a book I'm going to write... I think of his character as an extreme.  I find his weaknesses, and strengths, and features and I exaggerate them like there's no tomorrow.  If he's unreliable once in a while, he becomes the most unreliable friend I have in my story... never to be counted on, but since we grew up together, such is life, and we deal with him.  Or if he likes grilling and having a beer once in a while he's suddenly a washed-up master chef, and a raging and unreliable alcoholic.  I know it's not the greatest start for a story, but hey... it's what I could come up with right now... and if I could come up with something like that in about 30 seconds, imagine what you could do in half an hour?

Go nuts.

P.S. - I love "Joe Schmoe" as a friend, but I find for writing that exaggerating their bad characteristics works a lot better at creating drama and tension in a story than if I were to write a story about how he grills us some mean ribs and hands me a beer! 

I had a writing teacher once that just told me to wake up every day and write.  Set a timer and write for a specific amount of time, and stop mid sentence.  It doesn't matter what you write about.  You can write about an object around you, you can write a paragraph of useless nothings and then change perspective on it (ie, from third to first).  Whatever you want!

The main idea is just to get in the habit of breaking down the barrier between your thoughts and your writing.  The blank page is terrifying and I think we all feel like we need to start off brilliant or just not start.

Forget it.  Just go.  A writer is a person on whom nothing is wasted, so everything around you is inspiration and prompt.

I had trouble nailing down ideas to prompt stories for a long time, but recently I think I've boiled it down to a few things that work for me.

I'm primarily a Sci-Fi writer, so I'll usually build up a story around a technical element (or several technical elements) that I learn about by doing research on a topic and then following it all around until the idea snowballs into something in my head and I just have to write!

Another thing that I found recently that really helped was sitting down and writing challenges for myself. Like "I bet you can't write a story about such and such incorporating this and that element to make it interesting." I've only started doing it in the last six months, so I haven't put any of that material out for publication yet, but I like what I've come up with so far an awful lot!