I love using writing prompts.
Most of the stories I’ve written recently have started from a prompt, not from an idea I’ve been carrying around in my head. That includes my current WIP and my novel, Lakeside.
Lakeside was the first novel I wrote from a prompt and it was a surprise. I had used prompts many times for short stories but figured that for a novel it would be too much to try and start one strictly from a prompt.
But several years ago at a writing group meeting, we were doing creative writing exercises and I did one that was a “first line” prompt. I had to use the following first line to write/start writing a story: “She went to the toilet and on her way back, opened the wrong door…” And thus began Lakeside.
Lakeside is the story of Jemi, who needs to do a service project in order to graduate high school so she decides to clean up the town lake and it’s surrounding park. Of course, things don’t go as planned. And then there are evil spirits, there are spiders and there’s a badminton team. Lakeside is a contemporary YA novel with supernatural elements. It’s fun, humorous and lighthearted and perfect reading for the warm weather months when you’re hanging on your deck or on vacation somewhere.
But anyways, it all started from a prompt. What I liked about doing things this way is the detachment factor. Sometimes I can get really close to the story I’m writing, especially if it’s from an idea that I have. But with a prompt you’re given some random starting point and then you have to find a story there. I think this allows you to get out of your own way, if you know what I mean. You have to have a sense of curiosity and experimentation with a prompt and you might find something awesome that you didn’t know was there.
I keep a collection of writing prompt resources so I can go back to them again and again. Here’s a few I really like:
Twitter Prompts – There are a number of twitter accounts that just spit out writing prompts all day. I’ve collected some ones I like into a list. You can take a look at that here.
50 Flash Fiction Prompts – Just what the title says. 🙂 They are also organized by genre.
Creative Writing Prompts for Young Adult (YA) Fiction – 50 prompts. There’s some good stuff here.
Writing Exercises and Prompts – This site has all kinds of “generators” for certain types of prompts, like first lines, random words, first line of dialogue. There’s a bunch of them. Definitely check this one out.
25 Scifi and Fantasy Holiday Writing Prompts – Speculative fiction and the holidays. Good combination.
And if you’re really feeling spicy…
Have any writing prompt sources you like? Leave them in the comments! I might want to use them. 🙂
Amanda Linehan is the author of North, about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller, about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels.
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