Where readers, writers, and stories meet.
For some reason, this article gave me a ton of story ideas while I was reading it. For today’s Wednesday writing prompt, choose a title below, or read the article and come up with a new one of your own.
Write a story, post it to your blog, share a link here in the comments.
Continue reading “Wednesday Writing Prompt: A Day in the Life of a Shadow Consultant”
In a recent blog post on writing villains, The Write Practice’s Joe Bunting says that in every story, “there is always only one internal villain… whether it is fear, lust for power, or control.” This, of course, got me to thinking about my own protagonist in one of my current works in progress. I decided to do a freewrite on this topic and share it with you.
She just wants to go somewhere and lead an adventure. She doesn’t seem to care where she goes, which allows her to be led by evil people to places that she doesn’t want to be. She is so afraid of being ordinary and being stuck where she is that she jumps at any opportunity to be someplace and someone different.
My protagonist could use a little Katy Perry in her.
One of the problems that I seem to be having with my protagonists in this and with Valley of the Bees is the fact that neither of them seem to have any agency. They both allow themselves to be victims of plot. I can’t decide if this is good or bad. I feel like it’s something that my protagonists need to overcome. But at the same time, I’ve been taught that characters who just allow themselves to be carried along by the plot are the weak superheroes of weak stories. Am I writing weak stories? Continue reading “Freewriting practice: Name your protagonist’s internal villain”
Write for fifteen minutes on the following prompt:
Post your work in the comments below or post it on your own blog and share a link to your blog post below. Continue reading “Wednesday writing prompt: Mark Twain and Margaret Atwood”
Write for fifteen minutes on the following writing prompt:
Post your work in the comments below, or share them on your own blog and post a link below so we can read what you’ve written. Continue reading “A Wednesday Writing Prompt”
There’s a stall in the basement restroom of my office building that I swear is haunted. It always sounds like there is someone in that last stall, rattling the toilet paper dispenser or shifting around on the toilet seat, even when you know for a fact that you are in the restroom alone.
Write a story about the haunted restroom stall and share your story in the comments below (or on your blog with a link to the post below.)
Continue reading “Writing prompt: The haunted restroom stall”
This week’s Annotated Bibliography entry comes from Rachel Spear, who argues that students may act as witnesses to trauma as enacted in trauma stories. You may view the full text here.
Spear, Rachel N. “Let Me Tell You A Story.” Pedagogy 14.1 (2014): 53-79. Academic Search Complete. Web. 4 Mar. 2015.
In this article, Rachel Spear argues that teaching trauma narratives should not focus only on the trauma and the students’ response to the trauma. Instead, she argues that teaching trauma narratives can have a transformational effect on students as well as the teacher and the writer of the trauma narrative. Spear uses what she refers to as a “wounded healer pedagogy” which incorporates the healing of all participants. She also outlines a Writing as Healing course that she created to address these issues in the classroom. Continue reading “Annotated Bib: “Let Me Tell You a Story””
For today’s Wednesday writing prompt, write a story from the following:
Continue reading “Wednesday writing prompt: What are you hungry for?”
The following is my third course autobiography for the course I am taking on women’s writing. I just have to write one more of these and then a 20-page final paper, and my homework will be done for the semester! In this piece, I wrote about how I would use this text to create a framework for a creative nonfiction essay assignment. I think this would also make an excellent writing prompt!
In Plaintext, Nancy Mairs explores how individuals embody the labels that are placed on them by society. In her essay, “On Being a Cripple,” Mairs chooses to define herself as a “cripple” regardless of the fact that others may wince at the word. She says, “Perhaps I want them to wince. I want them to see me as a tough customer, one to whom the fates/gods/viruses have not been kind, but who can face the brutal truth of her existence squarely. As a cripple, I swagger” (9). She challenges the politically correct euphemisms that others use and would have her use to describe herself. In many ways, she refuses to meet society’s expectations of her as a cripple, even seeking to change the meaning of the word. I would like to teach this text in a writing course where I could ask students to examine their own labels, how they embody their labels, and how societal expectations based on these labels impact the individual, as well as how the individual can impact society by either meeting or shattering those expectations. Continue reading “An analysis of “Plaintext” by Nancy Mairs”
Have you heard about the “vertical city” that is the new Shanghai Tower? According to a documentary I watched recently on PBS, the tower will contain everything that a person needs so residents will never have to leave the building. Can you imagine what it would be like to live like this? What if we all someday must move into these towers to escape the smog? And what will happen to the people who aren’t able to afford to move into these towers in such a future? Watch this video, and then write a story that takes place within this or a similar self-contained city.
As always, please feel free to share your work in the comments below, or post to your own blog and share a link to the post. Continue reading “Wednesday Writing Prompt: Shanghai Tower, vertical cities”
I have this idea stuck in my head, and I can’t get rid of it. I envision it as a screenplay, even though I don’t have the slightest idea how to write one. It could be a movie or a television drama. But I am committed to finishing one of my current projects before starting another, so I just can’t allow myself to start writing on this one, no matter how badly I want to! Do you want to take a crack at it?
Setting: A retirement community for elderly writers.
Plot: The residents of this retirement community suffer all of the same ailments and need the same level of assistance as the residents of any retirement home. The only difference is, these residents are all writers! Some have written professionally for most of their lives, while others have always wanted to be writers and decided to join the community in an effort to spend their golden years doing what they always wanted to do. They have experienced varying levels of success, but not one of them has ever been a household name. Until today. Today, a bestselling author is about to join this writing community and turn the place upside-down.
Continue reading “Wednesday writing prompt: A home for elderly writers”
Write on the World 